America's Talking - Cost of SpaceX Mission to Recover Stranded Astronauts Could Top $150M

Episode Date: March 20, 2025

(The Center Square) – The cost to bring home a pair of stranded astronauts that have spent most of a year in space aboard the International Space Station could be as much as $150 million. Astronauts Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore, along with Nick Hague and Roscosmos cosmonaut Aleksandr Gorbunov, boarded a SpaceX Dragon spacecraft and splashed down in the Gulf of America near the Big Bend region of Florida late Tuesday afternoon. Williams and Wilmore arrived on the Space Station on June 6 and had spent 286 days in space, stranded because of issues with the Boeing Dreamliner spacecraft, which later returned without them in September.Support this podcast: https://secure.anedot.com/franklin-news-foundation/ce052532-b1e4-41c4-945c-d7ce2f52c38a?source_code=xxxxxxFull story: https://www.thecentersquare.com/national/article_c0d9606e-04c8-11f0-9fa1-cba34c98f87b.html Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Welcome to America and Focus. I'm John Stoiff. Elon Musk, SpaceX was called in to essentially rescue a space mission or two astronauts who were stuck at the International Space Station. I'm here with the Center Square Regional Editor, Steve Wilson. Steve, can you tell me why the U.S. decided to go outside of NASA to figure this problem out and why it didn't happen earlier? The astronauts that were up there that were stranded, they were testing the Dreamliner spacecraft, which is manufactured by Boeing. And there was a problem with the spacecraft's propulsion system. And it was only supposed to be kind of like Gilligan's Island, an eight hour tour. But it turns out that this turned into a 268-day mission that they just ended.

ended up integrating them into the crew of the ISS. And what happened was there was all this political wrangling about it. Elon says the Biden administration rejected his offer to go rescue the astronauts. They say that's not the case. The astronauts say that there was no political issues involved with having them up there and that they weren't stranded. But to me, it's just not a good look for our names. Space Agency, especially when the nation is grappling with $36 trillion in debt.

Steve, what do you think the takeaway is for this for the future of NASA and kind of this U.S. space program in general? We've seen a lot of privatized moves towards, I guess, being better at it than the U.S. and what do you think goals are in the future for NASA? I think the problem with NASA right now is I remember NASA was an aspirational thing. There was always a great mission that they were working on. You obviously had John F. Kennedy, who famously said, by the end of the decade, we will put a man on the moon. And guess what? We did it.

Then we built Skylab, which is fascinating. The first space station, then we started to build the space shuttle. The space shuttle was my general. aspirational thing. I remember watching the first space shuttle launch and just being mesmerized. And obviously, the Challenger, the Columbia disasters, that's been a definitely hurt NASA. But I think the thing that's hurt NASA the most is what are they going to do? What is that one singular thing that people can get behind and say, you know, we ought to spend billions of dollars on this because it's good for man kind. I don't see that now. I mean, you look at the Boeing Starliner spacecraft. The Boeing

company took a more than $500 million loss on that craft. And you just, I mean, in addition to their problems with the 737 max commercial aircraft, the KC46 tanker, I mean, Boeing investors have just taken a bath. And you just have to want. wonder what's going to happen next is I think, I think the administration needs to come up with a coherent plan and give some, give people a reason to, I hate to use a cliche, reach for the stars. Steve, one of the things we always focus on are the taxpayer dollars involved in something like this.

And you brought up all the debt, the federal governments, and we're talking about missions that what Reuters estimated, it was 100 million to 100%. $150 million for the SpaceX trip to even occur. One of the reasons they didn't go get those astronauts right away that they said were the costs involved. How much is all of this costing? And what's the value for regular people? It's a good point. You brought that up because one of the things that was great about the space program is there were so many technologies that filter down to the consumer level.

You think about the microelectronics revolution. You think about advances in materials. like Milar. Now, I'm not going to say Tang was in advance because that stuff is nasty. But anyway, the thing that I find fascinating is we just don't have that technological bleed down to consumers now. And I mean, Elon has done a great job with developing with SpaceX and their dragon, which holds seven people. I mean, that's a lot of people to put in one space capsule. But the thing is, I think what they need to do is figure out a way to get the public just captured by the lure of space travel.

But Mars, you think about it would probably cost a trillion dollars to send people to Mars. When you look at putting Elon, who's obviously in charge of certain things with the federal government right now with Doge, when you're, when you're, pay his company money in order to do something like this? Is it literally that he's the only one that had that technology that could do it? Or is there something nefarious going on with him getting a bunch of money in his company being involved? Like, how do you... I think a lot of people could really look at this and say that, well, Elon's tight with the president. Of course, they're going to go to him. They're not going to go to, say, Jeff Bezos in his Blue Origin company, which, I mean, that would be fair. But I think the thing that's the thing that,

is it just, for me, it's not a good look. The fact that Trump and Elon are so tight and interconnected, it's just to me, it's not a good look. And I think it's getting to be harder to justify considering that we're, like I said, we're 36 trillion dollars in debt pouring billions into a NASA that just, it isn't what it once was. All those great engineers and scientists, Where are the next generation? I just, the thing is, when I was a kid, the coolest thing that you wanted to grow up to be was either the president of the United States or an astronaut. And I just don't think kids now want to be an astronaut. And that's a shame.

What do you think is next in this? I know that they're going to do more trial missions of Boeing, but what do you think? I think that NASA, from what I saw at the news conference the other day, I think they're going to stick with the Dreamliner, even though, and the way it works, we're not taking that loss. Boeing, because I think it's a cost plus contract. Don't correct me if I'm wrong. They have to eat the losses on it. And like I said, their investors have taken a beating over it because they just,

the thing has a lot of problems. And it's just crazy to think that these space capsules, which were really no more different than what happened in the 60s, we can't build that anymore. And we can't build it reliably. And I think part of that, too, I don't know if you remember back in the, at the end of the Cold War, when Dick Cheney was the Secretary of Defense, he had what they called the Last Supper, where he literally sat all the defense contractors in there and he said,

the contracts of the good old days are gone. You either combine or you die. And what happened was we're down to like three companies now. Because you used to have McDonald-Douglas, used to have, Vought, you used to have Grumman before it combined with North of Grumman. Now you've got three companies. And you don't have the competition. And I mean, granted, Elon and Jeff Bezos are trying to add some competition to that.

But I think the future of NASA is actually commercial space. I think those guys have got it, have figured out a way to get there. And they've got the money to do it, and they've got the want to. and I just don't see the want to on the government side. Steve, thanks again. Always appreciate your insight. You can follow along with this story at thecentersquare.com.