The 16-year-old daughter of stranded Starliner astronaut Barry “Butch” Wilmore said she’s frustrated her dad has been stuck on the International Space Station since June — and blamed “negligence” and “a lot of politics.”
Daryn Wilmore took to TikTok to express how she longs to hug her father again and bemoan all the family moments he has missed during the orbital mishap:
“Hello everyone, and welcome to the long-overdue update video of “My Dad’s Stuck in Space.” I made a video a while back talking about how my dad got stuck in space, clearing some things up, and a lot of people have been asking for an update. But I was waiting to give an update until I had some more concrete information on a return date, and we have more of that now, and I’m going to be here to clear some things up and to put y’all in y’all’s place because some of y’all know squat about space travel and I’m here to educate you.
So quick recap: My dad is very much alive, I’m his daughter, Daryn, and in June of last year, he went to the International Space Station on the crew flight test of the Boeing Starliner. Now, the Boeing Starliner was a brand-new rocket created by Boeing with NASA to help with human spaceflight more, and it ultimately did not go as planned. So there were thruster issues, there were helium leaks, and they’re like, “You guys are staying up there.” And the earliest we can bring you back is at the end of the next mission because there were already people up there on the station, and they had to come back, and then more people had to come. But since you need a certain amount of people on the station at all times, they couldn’t come back with them immediately; they had to stay the duration of a six-month mission. Now, missions are always six months long as of recent years, and no, they’re not stuck in a little space capsule. They are on the International Space Station, which is flying 200 miles above the Earth, rotating it—it is a workplace, a laboratory, a home, and it’s where astronauts, cosmonauts, all the like, go to live and work whenever they go to space.
His crewmate, Sonny, and he have been doing okay. He finally got his own little crew quarter, which he didn’t have before; he was just kind of in a hallway-like situation because they just ran out. But when the other people left, he was able to get one. They’re kept busy, they’ve been doing lots of experiments. Last week, both Sonny and my dad did a spacewalk where they were helping, like, detach this big box thing—I don’t want to get into it, it’s confusing—but they did that, and they might do another one, and yada yada.
Now, there’s a lot of misinformation being spread. Some of y’all don’t know that the International Space Station is always manned. People always, in the past like 20-30 years, have been going to space for six months at a time. Now, this nine-month delay is uncommon, and they were originally supposed to stay for eight days, so it’s been really frustrating, and he’s missed out on a lot, and it’s been hard, if we’re being completely honest. Like, we believe that it’s all in God’s plan, and I’m not depressed or anything, even though people will say that I am depressed, I’m not. It’s just some things have been frustrating. It’s less the fact that he’s up there sometimes; it’s more the fact of why. There’s a lot of politics, there’s a lot of things that I’m not at liberty to say and that I don’t know fully about, but there’s been issues, and there’s been negligence, and that’s the reason why this has just kept getting delayed. They were supposed to come back at the end of the month, but weren’t able to because the next rocket that was supposed to go up to take everyone’s up there place was having issues—it’s just been issue after issue after issue.
I talk to my dad all the time. When I’m at home, every day— but because I’m here at college, it’s every couple of days or so, but at least we schedule a time every weekend and make sure we talk with him. He sends us a link on [service name omitted] and we’re just able to talk with him space FaceTime style, and that makes things really nice. But as of recently, we found out that he will most likely be coming back in mid-March, which is so exciting, and I miss him so much, and I can’t wait to give him a hug and see my sister graduate high school and see the show I’m in right now. But fingers crossed—things could always change, and especially with this whole thing, we’ve had so many changes that it’s, like, a bit mentally exhausting. And yeah, they’re fine. They work out two and a half hours a day, they’re kept busy, he’s been listening to music and watching movies in his free time. They have had cargo missions come up to bring them little care packages, more clothes, of course food—they always have more than enough food—and he’s just been bumped, but he’s fine. My dad’s very resilient, and he’s not in the worst place imaginable; he’s in space.
So yeah, if you guys have any more further questions, please ask me, and yeah, hopefully he comes back in March. Also, since y’all refuse to believe that he’s my dad, here’s some proof. Here’s a picture he sent me—me, him, and Florida: my mom, my sister, me, and my dad also at Disney, and this was at my graduation party. Oh, and this is us on FaceTime with him—he made that hat. And just because I like to brag on him, this is a picture he took. “What do you mean? That’s so cool!””