OPINION:
Sen. Mark Kelly and his twin brother Scott Kelly — both former astronauts — have come out against thanking Elon Musk and President Trump for returning the two astronauts stranded by the recent bungled Boeing mission. It’s a prime example of keeping the “deep state” in the family.
Years ago, Boeing and SpaceX were selected as the two companies to move NASA into the era of commercial space flight. NASA paid Boeing more than $5 billion for this effort and paid SpaceX half that much, about $2.8 billion, for the same desired result.
History has shown that SpaceX has performed admirably and continuously under this program, while Boeing hasn’t even successfully completed the required unmanned test flight to the International Space Station.
After Boeing failed to get an unmanned spacecraft to the ISS, NASA once again jumped the gun and allowed Boeing to skip a redo of that requirement and put two human beings in what should have been a second (redo) unmanned test flight. The Boeing test spacecraft didn’t work. NASA finally admitted the Boeing spacecraft was unreliable and decided it should return to Earth with neither astronaut onboard.
NASA now had two extra, unplanned astronauts on the ISS. SpaceX reportedly offered to return the astronauts to Earth, but NASA and then-President Biden turned it down, leaving the two Boeing crew members on the ISS. They justified this by saying that since the two individuals were astronauts, they could be assimilated into the regular crew rotation (CREW-9) on the ISS.
This meant that two other astronauts — ones who had trained extensively for CREW-9 — were bumped and their training time and cost was sunk. Two astronauts trained for an eight-day Boeing capsule test flight were conscripted to serve an eight-month ISS mission for which they were untrained.
Yet both Kelly brothers have called this absurd decision the “right” one, while they’ve publicly derided both the leadership of SpaceX and Elon Musk’s offer to return the two astronauts.
This series of decisions in support of Boeing and against SpaceX cannot be honestly described as “right.” The only fair description is “political.” Boeing has proven incompetent and SpaceX has proven exceptionally competent. This is a perfect “deep state” scenario.
JAMES KOUT
Bowie, Maryland
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