How I got sacked by Kamala Harris

 

This is the story of my experience as an advisor to the National Space Council under Vice President Mike Pence and Vice President Kamala Harris and how the latter gave me the sack.

One day in 2017, a representative of Vice President Mike Pence asked me to be on the National Space Council as an advisor on something called the Users Advisory Group (UAG). That sounded interesting. "What are my duties?" I asked. "Give advice about space and stuff," came the answer. Prodigious.

 The first NSC meeting that I attended was in 2018 at Kennedy Space Center. When I met Mike Pence, I gave him an autographed copy of Rocket Boys. He immediately recalled not only that book but to my surprise another one I wrote, a fiction thriller titled Back to the Moon. It was nice the Vice President knew about me and I immediately liked him (and his wife Karen, a school teacher) but didn't expect much else to happen between us. I just thought, "Well, that was interesting!"

Me and Vice President Pence at KSC in front of the Apollo 11 Quarantine Trailer. I'm wearing my tie that has microscopic photos of the cells from the T.rex I found while exploring and discovering.

After a few months, I was surprised to find myself talking on the phone to "Mike," as he told me to call him. He said he was looking for new space goals and what did I think? We talked about Back to the Moon and I told him my opinion was that our destiny lay on the moon, not just to land there but to gather its resources. As for Mars, I said robots were doing a fine job of studying it for now but it would be better to just focus on the moon. This surprised him. He said that NASA Headquarters people told him Mars should be the goal for human landings because we'd already been to the moon. I told him that would be like the Pilgrims landing on New England and then heading off to Antarctica. Mike liked that metaphor and I was kind of proud of coming up with it on the fly.

 

Go here to learn more about my novel Back to the Moon

 

 Not too long after, Mike called again to say he was going to make an important announcement at another NSC meeting and he wanted it to be at the U.S. Space and Rocket Center (USSRC) in Huntsville, Alabama (where I live) while also celebrating the upcoming 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing. He told me that he thought I would really like what he was going to say.

 On March 26, 2019, the NSC met in Huntsville. The UAG had some nice internal meetings of our subcommittees which didn't amount to much and then, when it came time for Vice President Pence to speak beneath a fully-assembled Saturn V in our Davidson Hall, I found myself seated beside Buzz Aldrin. We had a nice chat before the VP's speech and then, while Buzz and I sat attentive, my friend Mike announced that it was his plan to have the United States land Americans on the moon by 2024 "by any means necessary." Mike's idea would be called Artemis, a nice name with echoes of Apollo. It worked for me.

Buzz and me listening to the VP in Huntsville

When Mike came up to me and asked what I thought of his speech, I agreed with his goal but what I didn't say and maybe should have was I didn't think it was a good idea to hand it over to NASA exclusively to do. NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine was there that day and, after Mike's speech, I noticed he had mostly a worried expression and was slumping a little. My take on Jim was he was a very nice, earnest fellow with a tough job that he happened to love but I also imagine he didn't much like folks like me going around putting ideas in the head of his boss.

NASA Administrator Bridenstine looking worried after the Artemis speech, VP Pence looking thoughtful, and moi nattering on about something

 

Mike had to rush back to DC but his staff hung around for the day. When they asked me about next steps, I told them that if they were serious about 2024, they should take the NASA-managed rocket called the Space Launch System (SLS) out of the critical path as it took too long to manufacture and was way too expensive. Since a couple of SLS's were already tediously working their way through the pipeline, I recommended they use it instead for some big cargoes such as a Skylab-like commercial space station or big robots to Europa or Titan. I also mentioned my consortium idea and suggested they read my study of long ago. Attentively, they wrote my recommendations down and then apparently forgot them since, before a week had passed, Artemis got totally handed over to NASA which naturally favored the program it already had - SLS with an Orion capsule on top.

 

As I feared they might do, it didn't take too long before NASA HQ converted Artemis into a "Moon to Mars" concept with the moon depicted as mostly a training ground to get us on out to Mars, that glittering red squirrel of space. They dusted off something called Gateway, a space station in an eccentric halo orbit around the moon, where ships were to whiz in and out on their way to the moon (yuk) and Mars (yay). I didn't think that was a good plan.

 

Here's NASA plans to land on the moon that I thought (and still think) is kind of harder than it needs to be. It's a pretty graph, though. I'll give them that. It also nicely reflects hope over experience.

 

During a UAG Internet meeting, I spoke up and said I had my doubts about the way Artemis was planned. When nobody supported my initial comment, I let it go. In a big meeting like that over the Internet, it's nearly impossible to actually get into a real discussion. It also feels rude. My experience at NASA was nothing ever got done in a big meeting, anyway, That happens later out in the hall. Zoom meetings don't have halls. We sign off and go to the bathroom.

 

Before long, I found myself assigned to only the Education and Outreach Committee chaired by retired Astronaut Eileen Collins. Since the other subcommittees weren't doing anything anyway, I was fine with this. Over the following months, Eileen really tried hard to make our little segment of the UAG meaningful. We had many meetings over the Internet with guests from the education and aerospace sectors with our findings forwarded to the UAG chair. Her steady leadership also gave me a glimpse of someone truly prodigious. She also wrote a great book! 

 

Go here to read the memoir by fellow advice-giver Astronaut Eileen Collins

 

The Artemis Moon to Mars (sigh) program rocked on. Occasionally, I peeked in on it and saw it was getting more like a Rube Goldberg cartoon every day. By then, my friend Mike was immersed in a reelection campaign where nobody much cared about Artemis and there was also that Pandemic thing.

 

But then everything got really kind of weird. My friend Mike was gone along with earnest Jim Bridenstine and here came a new bunch to take over.

 

And this is what happened next.

For you young folks, when you used to pick up a phone and there was nobody there, you heard this tone that was kind of disappointing. You might say it was a kind of nothingness. I'm glad you haven't had to put up with that but here's what it sounded like:

 

Old timey dial tone

 

When the Biden/Harris Administration took over in January, 2021, we UAG advisors and, for that matter, the entire NSC heard nothing but that dial tone for a long time. Many months passed with no activity or guidance given to anybody. Eileen continued to hold Education and Outreach meetings and forward our findings but the dial tone from the White House was pretty steady.

 

Dial tone.

 

When nothing happened for many more months, we advisors of the UAG began to talk amongst ourselves wondering if we, you know, still existed. Finally, there was an Internet meeting in December, 2021, seven months after VP Harris took official charge of the NSC. Admiral Ellis, the UAG chair, told us to be patient, that we advisors would have a role, that something would happen eventually.

 

Dial tone.

 

In August, 2022, a year and eight months into the new Administration - now not so new - the NASA/UAG coordinator emailed all of us advisors and apologized for the "radio silence" from the White House and asked us to continue to be patient, that he and his staff "did not have information that [they] were allowed to disseminate."

 

Dial tone. 

 

Finally, after a few more months of nothing from the White House, we heard the UAG would be reorganized to focus on "climate and work force issues."

Dial tone. 

 

In December, 2022, now two years in for the Biden/Harris folks, newly-appointed UAG chair Admiral Lyles sent me an email telling me those services would no longer be required. I had been sacked. I thought, "Mom was right. God looks after fools, drunks, and my little Sonny boy." My own experience also applied: "When an outfit is not doing anything except the wrong things, that might be the best time to leave.

 

Eileen Collins also received the same email.

 

The metaphorical phone hung up.

 

Since I don't think VP Harris cares a thing about space and also because I don't much agree with NASA's direction with Artemis, I took it as probably a good thing to be invited off the NSC/UAG. I therefore shrugged and went on with my life which is pretty darn good. We have three cats! And a publisher who loves our work.

Thus ended my stint as an advisor to the National Space Council, an organization which, to my knowledge, has done nothing since.

 

Anyway, it's 2024 and we are not landing on the moon and if this present crowd stays in, I have my doubts NASA ever will.  PS - Suicide is against both my religion and my general philosophy.

 - Homer Hickam, Author, retired NASA engineer, Vietnam veteran, and a Coolidge/Eisenhower/JFK Independent