As space czar, Kamala Harris never took flight

Vice President Kamala Harris has failed our nation in her role as America’s space czar. Whether you care about space exploration or not, Harris’s record as chair of the National Space Council offers a serious indictment of her leadership capabilities.

On Dec. 1, 2021, President Joe Biden issued an executive order directing the vice president to chair a National Space Council composed of Cabinet-level officials, backed by an advisory committee of space industry leaders. Biden’s order echoed one issued by Donald Trump and public law going back to the Kennedy administration. The legally defined responsibilities of the council are to “coordinate the implementation of space policy and strategy” and to “synchronize the Nation’s civil, commercial and national security space activities.” The vice president is explicitly required to “serve as the President’s principal advisor on national space policy and strategy.”

These are electrifying times in space, and Harris was handed an opportunity to shine. The Trump administration, in which Greg served, left her a robust U.S. space program enjoying broad bipartisan support. NASA was leading a coalition of nations returning to the moon under the Artemis program. American companies had captured the lion’s share of a rapidly expanding global space market. SpaceX was boldly returning Americans to space on U.S.-built rockets. Boeing, Blue Origin and others were preparing to fly.

Yet Harris has been notably disengaged from space. Under Trump, the Space Council conducted eight substantive public meetings. Harris scheduled only three, just fulfilling the annual requirement. In the most recent meeting, hastily convened just 10 days before the end of 2023, Harris spoke for eight minutes and walked out, handing off her responsibilities as chair to her national security adviser, Phil Gordon.

The Trump administration led the development of six Space Policy Directives, addressing deep space exploration, space commerce regulation, space traffic, cybersecurity and nuclear power. It also established the United States Space Force. The Biden-Harris White House has issued a single Space Policy Directive, on GPS improvements.

NASA’s return to the moon has slipped years behind schedule. Administrator Bill Nelson openly worries that China will beat us there. Two American astronauts are stuck on the International Space Station in an increasingly humiliating saga. The space station is scheduled to be de-orbited in 2030. Commercial LEO Destinations, nongovernmental (low Earth orbit) space stations that NASA is planning as replacements, will not be ready, leaving researchers fearing a “LEO gap.” China’s Tiangong station is expanding and attracting international partners. Harris has neither stepped in nor commented on our troubled human spaceflight program.

NASA’s Science Mission Directorate has been particularly hard hit by the lack of White House attention. A newly parsimonious Congress has throttled NASA’s budgets with continuing resolutions and flat top-line appropriations. To accommodate the expanding cost of Artemis, science spending has been trimmed, resulting in some very damaging choices. NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory laid off 8 percent of its workforce in February. The agency’s biggest scientific mission, Mars Sample Return, collapsed under budgetary pressure, and the agency is soliciting “new ideas” from industry. In July, a nearly complete lunar rover, VIPER, was canceled and NASA announced it will fly a “mass simulator” (a dead weight chunk of lead) to the moon instead, as the lander and launch are already booked. Two American robotic moon landers failed this year.

Meanwhile, China is chalking up one lunar triumph after another, including working rovers and successful sample returns. Rather than stepping in with a space science rescue plan or even taking the opportunity to publicly admonish the Republican House of Representatives, our space czar has been nowhere to be seen.

Harris appears to engage on space only when it offers a good photo op. In 2021, the VP’s team auditioned a group of child actors to sit for a cringey, scripted “chat” about space. Even when speaking to adults, her lectures fall flat. Her speech at Vandenberg Space Force Base informing our USSF Guardians that “space is exciting,” was widely seen as patronizing. And she was silent as Vladimir Putin’s Russia prepared to orbit nuclear space weapons designed to attack U.S. commercial satellite constellations.

Summing up the vice president’s attitude toward space, an April CNN article suggested that Harris resented having been “shunted to fruitless parts of the administration portfolio,” as CNN described it, including “clearly junior varsity ones like chairing the National Space Council.” Homer Hickam, the esteemed author of “Rocket Boys” who served on the council’s Users’ Advisory Group during both the Trump-Pence and Biden-Harris White Houses, has noted that this team of high-level experts was never engaged by Harris and writes, “I didn’t think VP Harris cared a thing about space.”

We have heard the same story from concerned industry leaders, senior Space Force officers and former NASA leaders. As vice president, Kamala Harris had very few legally defined jobs, and she failed at this one.