On June 5, astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams went to the International Space Station for an eight-day visit. They now face an eight-month stay.
This debacle has brought long overdue attention to Boeing’s and NASA’s incompetence.
However, this failure also belongs to Vice President Kamala Harris. She is the Chair of the National Space Council. For her entire vice presidency, Harris has done the bare minimum required by law as chair of the council and has been totally uninvolved in the policy process.
Former Pennsylvania Republican Congressman Bob Walker is a leader on space policy. As Chairman of the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology, he drafted the original 1989 legislation that created the National Space Council.
The council’s purpose is to provide a White House level of leadership on space policy and activities. The importance of space for military, scientific, and commercial purposes has grown dramatically in the 67 years since the Soviet Union launched Sputnik and galvanized America to invest heavily in space.
The leader of the National Space Council has a major opportunity to develop America’s future in space. Vice President Harris has simply passed on that opportunity.
President Joe Biden clearly articulated the importance of Vice President Harris’s job as chairwoman in a Dec. 1, 2021, executive order.
‘The Chair shall serve as The President’s principal advisor on national space policy and strategy.’
So, the leader of the National Space Council has a major opportunity to develop America’s future in space. Vice President Harris has simply passed on that opportunity.
President Donald J. Trump and Vice President Mike Pence, the previous council chairman, had a shared vision that space was extraordinarily important to America’s future. Pence grew up as a space enthusiast. Before he was in public office, he would pack up his family and drive to Cape Canaveral to watch space launches. President Trump understood that Making America Great Again had to include a big investment in space.
The Trump administration was further empowered by the development of reusable rockets. This was a concept we jointly pushed and funded the 1990s – only to have NASA fail to implement our appropriations.
Fortunately, in 2010, Elon Musk developed a reusable rocket at SpaceX in the private sector. SpaceX has reduced the cost of launching satellites by an estimated 90 percent. The extraordinary success of reusable rockets allowed SpaceX to move from its basic Falcon rocket to the larger Falcon Heavy. It is now to developing its massive Starship, which will revolutionize space travel.
Vice President Pence aggressively pushed the National Space Council to develop a dynamic program for returning to the Moon and sending Americans to Mars. President Trump and Pence also pushed to implement and develop the U.S. Space Force. This was the first-ever focused military effort to secure space for national defense.
To really drive the system, Pence led the National Space Council with eight different meetings. He held people and institutions accountable to achieve real progress. By contrast, Harris has held one meeting a year – the legal minimum.
As a result of Vice President Harris’s lack of leadership, NASA has regressed back into bureaucratic timidity. Huge Boeing contracts have continued to absorb money – despite repeated failures and no tangible results. Boeing’s Starliner program was awarded a $4.5 billion contract and later given an additional $300 million. It is now so over budget that its fixed-priced contract will cost Boeing an additional $1.6 billion to complete.
Boeing appears to be too big to manage. It has problems in its commercial aviation, military aviation, and space divisions. Its management has overemphasized lobbyists to get money from Washington and underemphasized engineers to get work done.
In 2019, NASA’s inspector general estimated that the Boeing Starliner would cost $90 million per usable seat and the SpaceX Dragon Crew would cost about $55 million per usable seat (various changes have raised the SpaceX cost to $65 million per seat – still $25 million less than Boeing).
In 2023, NASA’s inspector general estimated the enormous Boeing Space Launch System would cost $2.2 billion per launch. One scientific mission called the Europa Clipper was shifted from Boeing to SpaceX for $178 million. It saved $2 billion in launch costs compared to using the Boeing SLS, which is years past deadline and billions over budget.
Since Vice President Harris is pro-government bureaucracy and hostile to business in general, it is no wonder the lobbyist-focused and politically sophisticated Boeing system continues to survive despite its cost and failures.
Now the failure to implement aggressive oversight is coming back to haunt Vice President Harris. Just as she has failed to do her job at the US-Mexico border, she has failed to do her job as Chair of the National Space Council.
The next time you read about the astronauts stranded on the International Space Station, remember who left them there.
They are Vice President Harris’s abandoned astronauts. If she had done her job and held Boeing accountable, they would be home.
Republican Bob Walker represented Pennsylvania’s 16th District in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1977 to 1997. While in Congress, he served as Chairman of the Science, Space and Technology Committee (then known as the Science Committee).