Save the Stranded U.S. Astronauts! Ask Russia To Help Rescue Them!

Aug. 22—Orbiting Earth at 8 kilometers per second, 400 kilometers above the surface, two U.S. astronauts, Sunita "Suri" Williams and Barry “Butch” Wilmore have found themselves stranded aboard the International Space Station (ISS). Reminiscent of the “fateful trip of a three-hour tour” in which the passengers and crew of a sailing yacht shipwrecked on an island in the 1960s TV series Gilligan’s Island, what began as a routine 8-day mission to deliver supplies to the ISS and return to Earth via Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft has left them languishing since June 5.

In addition to delivering supplies, the mission was to certify Boeing’s new Starliner as an option, should SpaceX’s Crew Dragon, which has been ferrying astronauts to the ISS since 2020, ever have to go offline. During the docking maneuver, however, five of Starliner’s thrusters began misfiring, and the helium tank that keeps the thrusters pressurized sprang five leaks. What has happened to American industrial production capability and quality, including in its space program?  American companies keep failing to produce the perfect items which the space program demands—and make no mistake, this one is a potentially catastrophic failure, as so much of the national will is at stake.

The astronauts are now under a moratorium on spacewalks because their spacesuits have failed. They are reportedly living in less than ideal conditions, with a lack of places to sleep.

At an Aug. 14 press conference, Ken Bowersox, Associate Administrator of NASA’s Space Operations Mission Directorate, announced that before the end of August, NASA will hold a high-level readiness review to make a final determination on Starliner’s and the stranded crew's fate.

As NASA continues troubleshooting the problems with Starliner, it is considering two bad options. One is to have Williams and Whitmore fly back aboard the crippled Starliner. NASA has calculated the probability of them not making it back alive is 1 in 270—odds now considered acceptable by NASA, but not in the past.  Should this option be exercised, and Williams and Whitmore perish, public revulsion just might serve as an excuse to end the U.S. manned space program altogether: No return to the Moon, no mission to Mars.

A second bad option under consideration by NASA is to fly Starliner back empty and wait for a SpaceX Crew Dragon to bring them back. Crew Dragon can accommodate up to four astronauts. The idea is to fly it up with just two, and return adding Williams and Wilmore. But this option won’t be ready until February, after a July failure of Elon Musk's launch  vehicle. As neither Williams nor Whitmore have undergone the special training for an extended stay at the ISS, they are likely to experience increasing psychological stress, and other health issues, on return to earth.

Making the “least bad” choice when confronted with two bad ones, however, is defective thinking, especially when a third option is known and available. Best practice: follow the advice of the proverbial wise old rabbi: “When confronted with two bad choices, take the third one.”

The third option: Why doesn’t the U.S. simply ask Russia for help in rescuing these two? The sane answer would be, “Of course we should!”

Speaking Aug. 16 at the “Territory of Meanings” Youth Educational Forum, Yuri Borisov, General Director of Russia’s Roscosmos Space Agency, said that if asked, Russia would be prepared to send one of their Soyuz spacecraft to the ISS to rescue the duo. Unreported in the U.S. press, his remarks were covered in Pravda Aug. 16. Borisov elaborated: Space should be outside of politics. “Today, our American colleagues have problems with Starliner; they don’t know how to launch the crew. We are in constant dialogue with them.”

Why is America gambling with the lives of its astronauts (the two bad options), in order not to have them rescued with the help of Russia? The big decision of whether or not to ask now rests with Kamala Harris, who, as Vice President, also chairs the National Space Council. Why hasn’t she asked already? Maybe she just doesn’t have time to be bothered with such mundane matters, because she’s too busy trying to secure the Democratic Party’s coronation—not “nomination”—for President. Maybe she just doesn’t personally care. Maybe she just doesn’t know about the situation. Regardless, reaching out for help from Russia will require crossing NATO’s drive to destroy Russia, dropping the geopolitical baggage, and treating these brave Americans the way NASA used to, when joint collaboration with Russian cosmonauts and Russian spacecraft was the norm. Will she do the right thing?

Some important history that reveals the insanity of current U.S. thinking that could kill these astronauts.. The National Aeronautics and Space Agency (NASA) never actually built any spacecraft or rockets. Instead, they have always relied on the private sector to do so. After NASA terminated the Space Shuttle program in 2011, the United States relied on dependable Russian Soyuz rockets for crew deliveries to the ISS. In 2014, reflecting a political change in this U.S. relationship with Russia, Boeing and SpaceX both received multi-billion-dollar contracts from NASA to replace those Russian rockets and spacecraft with U.S.-built ones. But, so far, neither company has yet to produce a fully reliable carrier system.

Boeing’s Starliner is a partially reusable crew capsule designed to transport crew to and from the ISS and to other low-Earth-orbit destinations. This was its first crewed flight, even after seven years of delays from its promised 2017 launch date and a $1.5 billion in cost overrun above its $4.2 billion contract, Boeing can’t seem to make a reliable spacecraft (or a reliable aircraft anymore either. Witness the multiple deadly crashes of the 737 MAX).

The failure rate of SpaceX vehicles is higher than all other carriers. Some examples: the Falcon 9’s failure rate is 6%, compared to Arian 5 at 5%, Delta IV at 4%, and Atlas V at 2%. Elon Musk’s all-electric Tesla automobiles are recalled for manufacturer’s defects more often than those made by all other manufacturers As of June 24, forty-four individuals have been killed by autonomously driven Teslas and hundreds more injured.

The problem, therefore, is not simply with the faulty thrusters of the Starliner. The problem lies with NASA and in the general state of U.S. industry. In the halcyon days of the 1960s, with Project Mercury, Gemii, and the Apollo programs, NASA’s primary mission was to successfully put humans into space. At its peak in 1968, NASA employed 25,600, and collaborated with 20,000 industrial firms and universities for an estimated total of 400,000 involved in the space program across the nation.

As of August 2024, NASA is but a shell of its former self, with only 18,000 employees, its mission and the bulk of its employees largely diverted away from the real and urgent science of human space flight, to unmanned probes, and largely devoted to politically correct climate-change investigations. Isn’t it about time to take back NASA?

The vision to send a man to the Moon and return him safely to Earth, and the decision to commit the nation to accomplish this “by the end of the decade” was made by President John Kennedy in 1961. And that’s the way it should be. It is the elected President, into whose hands the citizenry places their trust, to wisely direct the nation to carry out its most urgent tasks; those mission decisions should never be the prerogative of any single private enterprise, or consortium of private enterprises.

What has happened to American industrial production capability and quality, including in its space program? Privatization was supposed to make things better, but American companies keep failing with the precision and quality required for safe, manned spaceflight.

The collapse is not limited to the quality and quantity of physical output in aerospace in the U.S. and the other so-called Western nations. American political leaders today and most of its citizens prance around, braying loudly all over the world about saving “Democracy,” the very concept (along with Monarchism) denounced by the Founding Fathers. Defending and promoting the constitutional principle of republican government, where the purpose, as stated in the Preamble to the 1787 Constitution, among other admiral pursuits, is to “promote the general welfare.” This requires a reciprocal relationship between the citizen and the government in which each is engaged to advance the benefit of the other, not acquire profits of a party faction, money, or power sort. Isn’t it about time to take back NASA and the country?

Former President Donald Trump, now the GOP Presidential nominee, attempted to reinvigorate the American  manned space program. He gave NASA and its contractors the mission of putting men and women back on the moon, with the Artemis program, but this time with a permanent manned colony, from which we could then  headifor Mars. Trump talked about America leading this effort, which he proposed to be a global effort for the benefit of all of humanity. Does anyone really doubt that when confronted  with a failure of an American built system and spacecraft that placed the lives of two astronauts in peril, that a President Trump would not have called Moscow and asked for help in rescuing them?

Under the weakest and most inept Presidency in history, the current leadership of everything is in disarray. And without forceful direction,  and with delays caused by systems failures, the program has slipped more than two years behind the schedule Trump had set for it. And Kamala Harris says and does nothing, chairing the council that was created to lead such space policy.  And so far, she has said nothing about our stranded astronauts. Pick up the phone, Kamala, as you did when your were securing your delegates, who were pledged to you fo