The following statement, as titled here, was released August 22 by LaRouche independent candidate Jose Vega, who is campaigning for election to the U.S. House of Representatives for New York’s 15th Congressional District, regarding the dilemma involving two American astronauts currently stranded on the International Space Station (ISS). NASA announced today that they plan to keep the astronauts on the ISS until February, when they will return to Earth on a SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft. The Boeing Starliner will eventually be returned to Earth without passengers. We reproduce the full statement, available at Vega’s website here as we think our readers will find it of great interest.
This is Jose Vega, New York candidate for the United States Congress from the Bronx’s 15th Congressional District. I have a question for Vice-President Kamala Harris: “Who is stopping NASA from asking for Russia’s help to safely return the two American astronauts currently stranded at the International Space Station?”
The Boeing Starliner spacecraft, flying its first manned space mission this past June, badly malfunctioned. It has left two American astronauts, Barry “Butch” Wilmore, 61, and Sunita “Suni” Williams, 58, temporarily stranded in space for the past two months. Not only do my constituents in the Bronx not know about this—most Americans don’t really know what has been going on, because the real story has been buried by an irresponsible media.
After seven years of delays, and going $1.5 billion above its original budget, the Boeing-designed Starliner spacecraft, on its maiden voyage, failed. This brings up another question, by the way: 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—and make no mistake, this is a potentially catastrophic failure.
Kamala Harris is the chairwoman of the National Space Council, as Vice-President. Why isn’t she, or any other Presidential candidate, saying anything about this? Yes, there has been talk about what SpaceX might be able to do, but there was a failure of the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket on July 11. As scheduled now, even when SpaceX returns to the International Space Station, the two astronauts will have to wait to return on the SpaceX vehicle in February. They will have to spend eight months in space, instead of eight days!
I think there is a bigger story here, that everyone is running away from. I think that the $1 trillion American war budget—which is mistakenly called the “defense” budget—may be 75% composed of fraud through price markups, cost overruns, and outright crime. The Stimson Center said in a report issued July 16, “Even with a near trillion-dollar Pentagon base budget, the military leaves service members with equipment that doesn’t work, while padding record-breaking profit margins for military contractors.” Ask yourself: How is Russia able to produce five or six times more ammunition than all of NATO, yet it only spends a fraction of what the U.S. does on its military?
