Neither candidate for president has anything resembling a space policy, and neither seems to care about NASA overall. I should say up-front that I want Harris to win, for reasons that have nothing to do with the American space program, but I’ll try to lay out things as I see them, as someone who scrutinizes NASA for a living. 

First, the fundamentals. Here is the Republican platform for space:

Under Republican Leadership, the United States will create a robust Manufacturing Industry in Near Earth Orbit, send American Astronauts back to the Moon, and onward to Mars, and enhance partnerships with the rapidly expanding Commercial Space sector to revolutionize our ability to access, live in, and develop assets in Space.

Here is the Democratic platform for space (presumably written before Biden decided against running for reelection):

Under his [President Joe Biden’s] leadership, we’ll continue supporting NASA and America’s presence on the International Space Station, and working to send Americans back to the moon and to Mars.

As you can see, they are about the same. I don’t get the impression that Democrats are eager to publicly support commercial space (given that at this point it means SpaceX), but you’re not achieving a single one of those goals without Elon Musk. 

The Trump administration was good for NASA, in large measure because of Mike Pence, the former vice president, who was the force behind Artemis; and Jim Bridenstine, the former NASA administrator, who was its able executor. In terms of science, Bridenstine defended NASA’s Earth science program from climate change skeptics, and Rep. John Culberson of Texas lavishly funded both planetary and Earth science. Culberson really ought to be the next NASA administrator, regardless of which candidate is elected president.

Artemis, which began under the Trump administration, was the first deep space exploration program since Apollo to survive a presidential transition, and I expect that it will survive the next one as well. (Previously killed programs include the Space Exploration Initiative begun by George H.W. Bush, and the Constellation Program begun by George W. Bush.) The primary hardware driving Artemis I and II are the SLS rocket and the Orion capsule, both of which were born under the Obama administration, as was the Commercial Crew program.

The key human spaceflight issues NASA must face in the next four years include the end of the International Space Station, and prospect of China landing taikonauts on the moon. 

Last week, I attended the launch of Europa Clipper at Kennedy Space Center. (You can find my exclusive interview with Robert Pappalardo, the mission’s project scientist, here at Supercluster, and my coverage of the launch at The New Yorker.) I didn’t bother getting a press pass for the event. This means I was able to have the “tourist experience” on the bus from the visitor center at Kennedy to the viewing area. 

During the ride, which lasted fifteen minutes or so, a television explained NASA’s big plans for the moon (“…and on to Mars!”), including how SLS is the most powerful rocket ever built, and how many cows it could launch into space, or whatever, and how astronauts will ride in Orion to Gateway, and so on. It was generally inane, though slickly produced. It occurred to me that about two million people visit Kennedy every year, and about 1,999,900 of those people know virtually nothing about NASA, and so they are probably pretty thrilled about the way things are going. 

Which means those first images of taikonauts waving a Chinese flag on the moon while NASA remains stuck in low-Earth orbit will hit Americans like a freight train. They’re going to demand answers about what the hell happened. It is only a slight exaggeration to say that NASA is a P.R. agency that happens to have space robots, and reality is about to come into harsh conflict with the story they’re selling.

Bill Nelson, the current NASA administrator, hasn’t exactly revolutionized the agency, but he has been steadfast and correct on China’s lunar aspirations. It’s not a race, and there is plenty of moon for everyone, but the fact that NASA is unable even to fly Artemis II — the easy one, relatively speaking — is a damning indictment of the way NASA has spent its money so far. Will China beating Artemis to the moon inspire a For All Mankind-like commitment to space, or will Congress pull funding for a failing enterprise? 

The vice president of the United States generally leads the National Space Council, a group of advisors who help an administration develop space policy, but which does not have any direct operational or executive power. Not every administration has one, and fewer still take the council’s advice into account. Any prediction, however informed, of what Tim Walz or J.D. Vance would do as head of the group will have as much accuracy as a deck of tarot cards. 

Vance has only been in political office for two years. He represents Ohio in the Senate, which is home to Glenn Research Center, but aside from a brief jeremiad last year against wokeism at NASA, the agency just hasn’t seemed to be that important to him, and as a senator, he hasn’t had time to affect NASA in any meaningful way. If I had to guess, I would expect that Vance, coming from the venture capital world, is philosophically aligned with Elon Musk’s Silicon Valley-informed way of doing business, but it’s the Trump administration that put SLS and Orion on the Artemis critical path in the first place.

Walz, meanwhile, is a blank slate, as NASA has virtually no presence in Minnesota. Aside from a general sort of pride that most Americans have in NASA as an institution, he probably hasn’t put much thought into the agency one way or another. He (and Vance as well) will probably have smart advisors, will probably give a couple great speeches from Marshall Space Flight Center or Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and the status quo will remain secure. One of them will say proudly that NASA is doing great, and we are only twenty years away from Mars, as every administration has said since the Apollo program.

With respect to the National Space Council under Harris, Homer Hickam, an acclaimed author and former NASA engineer, described on his website his frustrating experience after the Biden administration moved into the White House. He seemed ultimately disappointed by both administrations, but the final line in the piece was a damning indictment of the incumbents: “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.”

We should probably talk about Elon Musk. On July 13, he endorsed Donald Trump for president. Which is fine. If I had to guess, I’d say most aerospace CEOs are Republicans or right-leaning. But it would only be a guess. Musk did what he always does: he went all-in, and very publicly, speaking at Trump rally, MAGA hat and all.

I believe that Musk is less political than he is an opportunist.

Sooner or later, there will be a reckoning between Southern senators and Elon Musk. Presently, the whole of the Gulf Coast is a rocket assembly line. Old Space builds the core stage of SLS in Louisiana, assembles and tests the rocket engines in Mississippi, runs the operation from Alabama, and launches the rocket from Florida. Each of those states is represented on the Senate Committee on Appropriations. Those senators have used their influence to subsidize a world that no longer exists.

If Trump wins, Musk will get just about everything he wants: an easily-manipulated president he has on speed dial, and a shorter pathway from Earth to Mars. (Recall Trump’s 2019 tweet after his own administration announced the Artemis program: “For all of the money we are spending, NASA should NOT be talking about going to the Moon - We did that 50 years ago.”)

But if Harris wins, Musk is still well-positioned because by going all-in on Trump, he is now squarely aligned, politically, with the senator appropriators who most stand to lose in a post-Boeing, post-Lockheed space program. And because SpaceX is the only game in town by an immeasurably wide margin, it’s not like a Harris-run NASA can turn to another company to achieve, well, much of anything at all, for a very long time.

Whether or not Musk is playing four dimensional chess personally, I wish he would hire someone to post to X on his behalf, and spend more time doing literally anything else. 

Space exploration is becoming increasingly partisan, and individuals — particularly Musk — now personify the American space program in a way that we’ve never seen before.

I don’t know what will happen in November, and I don’t know what NASA in 2025 will look like — mostly because I don’t think Harris or Trump do, either. Given what we’ve seen from Artemis, however, I do know this: If Harris wins, we’ll probably have a better State Department.

Maybe they can negotiate permission for the Artemis III astronauts to visit China’s city on the moon.

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David W. Brown is the author of THE MISSION, or: How a Disciple of Carl Sagan , an Ex-Motocross Racer, a Texas Tea Party Congressman, the World's Worst Typewriter Saleswoman, California Mountain People, and an Anonymous NASA Functionary Went to War with Mars, Survived an Insurgency at Saturn, Traded Blows with Washington, and Stole a Ride on an Alabama Moon Rocket to Send a Space Robot to Jupiter in Search of the Second Garden of Eden at the Bottom of an Alien Ocean Inside of an Ice World Called Europa (A True Story). He lives in New Orleans.