If there was any political motivation at all it would simply be to save Boeing's arse. They're one of two commercial airliner manufacturers in the world, so the US clearly has a vested interest in keeping them running.
Q. Did politics influence NASA's decision for you to stay longer in space?
Wilmore: From my standpoint, politics is not playing into this at all. From our standpoint, I think that they would agree, we came up prepared to stay long, even though we plan to stay short. That's what we do in human spaceflight
The Ars article is filled with mixed messages.
When Starliner had issues, the already prepared backup plan was for them to join the crew and stay until "no earlier than February 2025" and be picked up by SpaceX on the crew rotation.
The early February SpaceX crew rotation was then pushed back by SpaceX to late March.
All of that was already "in the pipeline" as plans and contingency plans before Wilmore even left Earth.
Any offer by Musk falls more in the PR by Musk bucket side of the equation, and as an out of band out of scope offer it was likely just rejected due to there already being a rotation in the works ... which Musk had to push back in any case, casting doubt on any SpaceX ability to met any early pickup offer by Musk.
It's not mixed messaging if you understand the position the astronauts are in. Modern NASA has become deeply intertwined with politics. Many of the things they do are awful ideas and/or will never come to fruition. For instance Artemis is never going anywhere. Any person reasonably well informed in space, including every single astronaut, could offer countless reasons why. But in public they're required to smile, nod, and cheer its inevitable success on. If they don't - they're never going to fly again.
So astronauts will answer direct factual questions truthfully - but their opinions are not going to be given in earnest, but rather 100% political.
And there was no prepared backup for Starliner. That launch had been delayed for years and by the time it actually got off the ground (which never should have been allowed), it was probably as much a shock to NASA (and Boeing) as to everybody else. The final plan was only decided long after the fact, and caused major issues.
Whether the astronauts are rescued after 8 months or a week doesn't change the issue, as far as Boeing's unreliability in space goes. If anything the delay is even more damaging to Boeing because it's an ongoing issue that received ongoing coverage, constantly painting Boeing in a negative light.
