SpaceX founder Elon Musk boasts he's 'making life multiplanetary' amid concerning Boeing Starliner update from NASA

SpaceX founder Elon Musk says his Starship rocket will make 'multiplanetary' life a possibility hours after it was announced that NASA would be relying on SpaceX to rescue Boeing's Starliner-1 crew Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams.

After an X user shared a tweet of the Starship rocket and called it 'humanity's only hope for interplanetary life,' Musk wrote, 'I hope others succeed too, but at least there is one rocket where success in making life multiplanetary is one of the possible outcomes.'

Musk's tweet comes after it was announced that he astronauts who've been stranded on the International Space Station since early June will return to Earth on a SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule sometime in February 2025, NASA revealed.

The astronauts' mission was supposed to last just eight days, but based on this timeline, they'll end up being in space for going on eight months.  

Top NASA officials, including Administrator Bill Nelson, gathered Sunday in Houston and decided to use SpaceX's upcoming Crew-9 launch to be the vehicle through which the stranded astronauts will be freed, NBC reported.

'Spaceflight is risky, even at its safest and most routine,' NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said in a statement.

'A test flight, by nature, is neither safe, nor routine. 

'The decision to keep Butch and Suni aboard the International Space Station and bring Boeing’s Starliner home uncrewed is the result of our commitment to safety,' NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said in a statement.

NASA previously signaled that the most likely way to get Wilmore and Williams home would be to attach them to a different mission.

During a press conference at the NASA's Johnson Space Center, officials revealed they freed up two seats on the Crew-9 space craft for Wilmore and Williams.  

The Crew-9 flight is currently scheduled to launch on September 24 from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. 

The faulty Starliner, meanwhile, will be dislodged from the space station and reenter Earth in early September.

This represents a crushing blow for Boeing in its space race with Elon Musk's company. Even before their two astronauts went into orbit on June 6, the Starliner program was more than $1.5 billion over budget and years behind schedule.

This is only the latest in a series of failures for Boeing, which last month accepted a $243.6 million plea deal that would see the company avoid a criminal trial over two deadly 737 Max crashes.

That's on top of numerous Boeing commercial planes having terrifying malfunctions midflight, company whistleblowers mysteriously dying and former CEO Dave Calhoun delivering poorly received testimony on Capitol Hill.

Wilmore and Williams flew into space aboard the Starliner on June 5, but NASA and Boeing engineers quickly realized that a problem with the craft's thruster system meant it wouldn't be safe to undock and bring them home.

NASA officials said that one of their biggest concerns is that Starliner would burn up in Earth's atmosphere as it tried to re-enter - which would incinerate anyone on board.

The helium leaking from the propulsion system was an issue mission managers were aware of before it launched, but it appeared to worsen during the flight.

NASA and Boeing engineers spent weeks analyzing these problems using a test engine built for future flights. 

Two 'hot fire tests' were conducted in space, which involved firing the Starliner's thrusters while it was docked on the space station. 

This flight was supposed to be Boeing's last hurdle to overcome before NASA would feel comfortable certifying the Starliner to ferry astronauts to and from the space station on a regular basis.

SpaceX, for instance, has been taking NASA astronauts to the space station since 2020.

It's unclear how NASA will move forward with the certification process of the Starliner.