Lost in space and asleep at the wheel: The US space program is cratering

Today, two astronauts, Sunita “Sunny” Williams and Barry “Butch” Wilmore, are unable to leave the International Space Station on Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft. They are safe for now, but after nine weeks, the space capsule in which they arrived does not appear to be reliable enough to bring them home. The choices are risky, difficult and expensive.

NASA is considering several contingency plans, but the two most obvious are either to send only two astronauts up as part of Crew-9, to allow space for Williams and Wilmore to return on the SpaceX Crew Dragon, or to risk bringing them home on Starliner. If Starliner is brought back to Earth without astronauts, it is being reported that Starliner will require up to four weeks to update and validate its software to return to Earth autonomously.

Who decides what to do next?

As a deputy administrator at NASA, I experienced the process first-hand. The White House — specifically the National Space Council and its chair, Vice President Kamala Harris, will heavily influence the decision. Understandably, no one around the vice president wants her to be blamed if things go wrong, especially now. As she has been glaringly absent in her role as chair, she would be held responsible if a mishap occurred involving the astronauts or the capsule.

As a result, and perhaps shockingly to some, the astronauts will likely remain in space until after the November election, just to avoid a bad day for the Harris campaign.

The record does not instill confidence. We no longer lead in space. Instead, we talk about broken capsules that cannot get home, delayed and canceled programs, and trying to catch up with China.

As president, Donald Trump increased funding for space efforts across the government, and leadership in space was not abdicated to China and Russia, both of which continue to develop and deploy offensive weapons in space. Most of our critical infrastructure depends on space assets, including national security missions, the Global Positioning System that is essential for banking and navigation, and 5G networks. The current administration has allowed our peer competitors to “militarize” space. They can now grab, control or destroy our space assets.

We were directed by Trump’s Space Policy Directives to expand U.S. leadership in space, encourage private-sector growth and establish a human presence on the moon. This strategy was very similar to former President Reagan’s effort to protect vital sea lanes for commerce. Trump’s efforts included the Space Force and NASA’s Artemis program to reach the moon and Mars. In addition, he pushed SpaceX to realize its goals under the Commercial Crew Program of creating an affordable space economy, with regular deliveries of humans and payloads to low earth orbit.

When the current vice president took the job, the Space Council soon became irrelevant. As a result, the Artemis program is delayed, systems integration is lacking, and costs are out of control. The Viper program, which was to be a lunar robot that mapped resources for our return to the moon, is now canceled. The Mars Sample Return program, which was to retrieve samples collected on Mars, is deemed to have an unrealistic budget and schedule.

To be fair, it is not easy making such programs work. The challenges are daunting, but that is why it is vital to create a vision for our future in space, develop it and move forward to responsibly fund and execute that vision. Along the way, needed adjustments are made to keep costs down, and leaders do what is expected of them by using tools like honesty, integrity, courage, a desire to learn and an ability to motivate the team around you.

Serious leadership is required at the highest levels. On Election Day, it will have been 152 days since the astronauts’ arrival at the Space Station. That is a long time when they only planned to stay 10 days. They deserve better.

Jim Morhard served as deputy NASA administrator from 2018 to 2021.