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Starliner astronaut: We found things that we just could not get comfortable with

NASA astronauts Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore, who served on Boeing’s Starliner crewed test flight, reflects on the decision to send Starliner home empty and leave them in space.

The two NASA astronauts who piloted the first crewed test flight of Boeing’s Starliner capsule — and were left behind on the space station as the beleaguered spacecraft returned to Earth — took questions on Friday for the first time in weeks. Butch Wilmore, a Tennessee native and former Navy test pilot, said during the conversation that he and crewmate Suni Williams were “very fortunate” to have the ability to stay on the International Space Station a few more months and come home using a back-up option: hitching a ride on a SpaceX-made Crew Dragon vehicle. Wilmore added that time constraints are a fact of life aboard the space station, which keeps to a busy schedule as visiting spacecraft drop off rotating crews of astronauts and cargo ships.

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