Glitchy Starliner Returns Without Its Crew; Foreign Policy in The Elections
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Boeing's Starliner capsule has landed in New Mexico after a problematic test flight. But it came back without its crew, who were left behind at the International Space Station. I'm Scott Simon. I'm Ayesha Roscoe, and this is Up First from NPR News. ♪

NASA couldn't trust that the Starliner's thrusters would not malfunction. We'll tell you what's next with the beleaguered spacecraft. Also competition with China, the southern U.S. border, war in the Middle East. Where do former President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris stand on these major issues? We'll hear from NPR correspondents covering those policy hotspots on what to listen for during Tuesday's debate. So please stay with us. We've got the news you need to start your weekend. ♪

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Boeing's Starliner space capsule parachuted back to Earth early today in New Mexico's White Sands Space Harbor. The gumdrop-shaped capsule was supposed to work like a space taxi for NASA astronauts. But a slew of mechanical issues plagued its test flight, and NASA officials ultimately decided to bring the spacecraft back home with everything.

its crew, leaving the astronauts on the International Space Station. And Pierce Nell Greenfield-Boyce has been following the story. Nell, thanks for being with us. Hey, Scott. Thanks. The story of these two astronauts caught out in orbit has captured a lot of attention. Remind us why they couldn't come home aboard the Starliner they took into orbit.

Well, basically, NASA was worried about the spacecraft's thrusters. So, you know, thrusters are kind of important. They're how a spacecraft moves around. And on the way to the station, some of them malfunctioned, although Starliner did dock, as it was supposed to. And NASA and Boeing spent about two months analyzing data, testing hardware on the ground, trying to figure out what was going on. And NASA officials just couldn't get comfortable sending astronauts home in it. They were worried the thrusters might fail at some critical time.

Yeah, exactly. I mean, clearly that did not happen. I mean, Starliner got back without a hitch. Their landing seemed to be almost flawless. But NASA has lost crews in the past. Remember Columbia and Challenger? And so, you know, when push came to shove, officials just did not want to take what could be seen as needless risks. Having Starliner back on the ground has got to be a relief for Boeing, who's been somewhat chagrined over what's happened.

Yeah, I mean, it's somewhat of a vindication. I mean, apparently things got pretty tense when NASA was trying to decide what to do about the return and the astronauts. But even though Starliner had this great landing, Boeing is still going to have to watch its crew, its first crew, going home in a rival company's capsule, a spacecraft built by SpaceX. And the astronauts are still stuck there for several months, aren't they?

Next year. February. They're stuck there till February. But NASA keeps saying they're not stranded. Don't say they're stranded because in an emergency, they could get home. I mean, the station's crew has kind of jerry-rigged a couple of extra seats in a capsule that's docked there now. So they could evacuate if they needed to. Absolutely.

And I happen to know, because it's been reported, they didn't pack for such a long stay, did they? No, no. Although, you know, NASA says the station has plenty of food and clothes and other supplies. There's sort of automated cargo flights. So, you know,

You know, they're okay. And I mean, Butch Wilmore and Sonny Williams are experienced astronauts. This is just kind of part of the job. I mean, they knew it was a test flight. And they're also already helping out with the station chores and science experiments. They've both spent, you know, long missions in space before. Yeah.

What happens next with Starliner? Do we know? So NASA and Boeing will keep looking at the thrusters. They'll take the spacecraft back, look it over. They'll analyze how the thrusters performed on the return trip. And, you know, NASA officials have been asked by reporters, what would you want to see before letting people go up in Starliner again? And they've just said it's too soon to know. They got to look at everything and think about it.

What are the implications for NASA if Boeing is having these problems with what was supposed to be a reliable vehicle? Well, the whole point of NASA's commercial crew program was to have, you know, the industry take over routine trips to space. And so basically they funded both Boeing and SpaceX to develop what are effectively space taxis. And SpaceX vehicles have been operating for several years now. And so NASA has that. And besides that,

You know, it's unclear how long the space station is even going to be there. NASA has plans to keep it open until, for how long? Till 2030. They've committed until 2030. I mean, NASA is really focused on the moon. The agency wants to put the first woman and the first person of color on the moon, and that's their focus. And Paris Nell Greenfield-Boyce, thanks so much for being with us. Thank you.

There's been a lot of focus on domestic issues so far in this election. Access to abortion, inflation, gun laws. You get the point. But both Vice President Harris and former President Trump will have to make their positions on some pretty major foreign policy issues clear. That's right. And in the debate on Tuesday, voters couldn't...

to hear from them on how they'd respond to things like China's increasing economic and military strength. We're joined by NPR correspondents who cover those regions and the consequences of U.S. policies there. Eder Peralta in Mexico City. Eder, thanks for being with us. Hey, Scott. Eya Batraoui in Dubai. Good to have you here. Thank you, Scott. And John Ruich, who covers China. Good morning, John. Good morning.

Eder, let's begin with you because, of course, the region you cover is so directly tied into what's a key domestic issue in this election, immigration. What are you going to be listening for on Tuesday? Yeah, I mean, if you listen to the last debate, former President Trump and President Biden, the only way that Latin America came up was through immigration and drug trafficking. And I would bet...

we'll hear the same this time around. We'll hear a fairly shallow debate that focuses on immigration enforcement, who's tough, who's not tough. But I bet what we won't hear is a discussion of root causes. And the reason so many people are on the move here in this hemisphere is because in many ways, Latin America is on fire. We have all out chaos in Haiti, a political crisis in Venezuela, a collapsed economy in Cuba. In Nicaragua, we have a state that

keeps banishing all of its opponents. And in El Salvador, we have the rise of this new age authoritarian leader. Like in Europe, the post-Cold War order is shifting and it's causing chaos and migration is just a symptom. I would like to hear a diagnosis from former President Trump and Vice President Harris.

Aya, let me get you to take a look at the Middle East. What do the countries in the region think of as the real current policy differences between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump? I think it really depends who you ask. So if you look obviously at the biggest issue right now in the region, which is the war in Gaza.

many Israelis really do see a partner and a friend in President Joe Biden who has stood by Israel throughout this war. And that continues through, you can hear it in Harris's words, but also President Trump is seen as a staunch ally of Israel. You know, he moved the U.S. embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. He recognized the Golden Heights as Israeli territory. So there's not much seen as so different when it comes to Israel, though, when you look at what the Arab countries view, what the Middle Eastern countries view, like the Egypt or the Gulf countries, they

there are some differences in policies, but overall, especially when you ask the Palestinians, they see more of the same, which is staunch, unequivocal support for Israel. What about the increased military presence in the Middle East? How's that being viewed in the Gulf states and Iran? Well, if you recall, like at the beginning of Biden's presidency, he had really wanted to pivot towards China and sort of disengage the U.S. a bit from the Middle East, from Afghanistan and Iraq and all these wars that the U.S. had been mired in.

And this war has really dragged the U.S. back in. And so here I am in the Gulf. You know, there's a lot of concern about the attacks that are happening on ships in the Red Sea by the Houthis. There's a lot of concern about Iran and how it might respond to the assassination of Hamas's leader when he was there by Israel. There's a lot of concern about what could come next.

because no one can really control right now. No one has control over the levers of where this is headed, and we still don't see a ceasefire happening. And so things can really, really deteriorate quickly, whether that's before the elections or after. John Ruh, what's your sense of what China sees as being at stake in this election? Well, for Beijing, this election is being seen in the context of the broader relationship and the trends in that relationship. And the China-U.S. relationship has been increasingly competitive, increasingly adversarial in recent years.

And Beijing believes that there is this sort of broad support in the U.S. for a tough on China approach. To the extent that China comes up in the debate, it seems pretty likely that it'll be in a sort of muscle flexing, almost chest thumping type of way. I asked Ryan Haas about this. He's with the Brookings Institution. The leadership in Beijing views both as

problematic to China's long-term interests and ambitions. And I think they assume that America's domestic politics will provide a constraint upon the decision-making space of any president in the current context. That said, he thinks there are differences that Beijing's parsing between these two candidates.

Trump has been talking about imposing new and sweeping tariffs on Chinese goods. Harris has said a lot less about China and is less well known, although her foreign policy positions, including on China, appear to be pretty consistent with the Biden administration's policies. Either way, Beijing's planning for all kinds of possible post-election scenarios, the least likely of which is that relations are going to miraculously improve under a new president.

John, what do you think Beijing's listening for when it comes to the issue of Taiwan? The U.S. came to the defense of Ukraine, after all. Yeah, you know, Taiwan's interesting. There does seem to be some daylight between Harris and Trump on this. As far as Trump's concerned, he seems to be pretty transactional on Taiwan. And he has said in the past that Taiwan is quite far from the U.S. and very close to China. He's also questioned why the U.S. would help Taiwan defend itself at all, given that it's so far away, and suggested that Taiwan should be paying for it. Harris,

again, hasn't said a ton on Taiwan. And what she has said over the years has been quite close to Biden administration policy on Taiwan. She's met Xi Jinping once. And actually, a group of Democratic congresswomen visited Taiwan in August and said that she's likely to continue with Biden's policies towards Taiwan, which is interesting because Biden has explicitly said the U.S. would help defend Taiwan.

Let me ask each of you, are there issues in the region you cover that are just not getting the attention that they might merit right now? Let's begin with you, Eda Peralta, in Mexico City. Mexico, I mean, it just doesn't get enough attention. And right now, this country is on the cusp of amending its constitution. Critics say that it's going to mean the end of judicial independence.

And Mexico is not just a neighbor to the United States. It is also its biggest trading partner. These decisions could have huge economic consequences for the free trade agreement between Canada, the U.S., and Mexico, which is also, by the way, the biggest market in the world. So beyond democracy, we should be hearing about Mexico because of economic ties with the United States and what this constitutional amendment could mean to those ties.

Aya Petraoui in Dubai? You know, the number one issue that has constantly come up, especially with a democratic president, with regional leaders here, and one that the U.S. was proud to bring up, was human rights. And I think that that has completely taken a back seat now with this war. You know, we don't hear any more about human rights concerns with Saudi Arabia. We hear about normalization. We don't hear any more about human rights concerns in Egypt. We hear about Egypt as a mediator and its importance here.

And these human rights crackdowns are continuing. They haven't slowed down. There are people serving decades in prison over tweets and social media posts and journalists being jailed. And the thing is, the U.S. also has lost a lot of credibility in the eyes of so many of these human rights activists who may have looked to the U.S. to advocate for their cause and to speak out because of the huge civilian death toll in the Gaza Strip, much of that by U.S. weapons.

John Rulwich, what's the view in Beijing? I think something that's very interesting to watch is going to be Chinese influence operations. You know, there's new research out over the past week or so by an intelligence company called Grafica that says there's a Chinese state-backed social media influence operation that's impersonating U.S. voters. But get this, they're not out to influence the election one way or another for Harris or Trump. They don't have a preferred candidate, apparently. They're just trying to

to sow discord, to discredit the candidates on both sides, to portray the U.S. as a declining power with weak leaders and a failing system of government. And this is linked to that broader competition between the U.S. and China that is going to outlast the next president and probably the president after that.

Let me ask you all the way in. Does U.S. opinion and power have the same weight that it used to? I mean, Scott, in Latin America, the U.S. used to run Latin America. They orchestrated coups and installed puppet governments. And I think today the U.S. looks paralyzed in this region. In a lot of ways, they have been unable to effect change in Venezuela. President Nicolás Maduro, who the U.S. has called illegitimate for years, is still president. And in Haiti,

where the U.S. has been an occupying force in the past, they have been ineffectual. First at organizing an international force to go into the country, and now they have been unable to get that force to actually do something to change what's happening, the chaos in Haiti on the ground. Yeah, but Troy?

The U.S. is still the main supplier of weapons to this region, and it continues to be the superpower here in the Middle East. However, you have seen Saudi Arabia and the UAE buck the U.S. on several policy issues and turn to China and turn increasingly to Russia and keep their business open and their doors open to Russia, not engage in sanctions as the U.S. would have liked them to do. And also with China, China, don't forget, brokered the rapprochement between Saudi Arabia and Iran. It wasn't the U.S. that did that.

Yeah. And John Rewertz, that feeds into the China you cover, doesn't it? Yeah, it does. In Asia, the U.S. has absolutely been a force for security and stability over the past X number of decades. The competition with China, though, makes a lot of other countries in the region nervous, right? They want the U.S. there for security, which China doesn't.

wants less of, but they want to continue to trade with China and have China be their biggest trade partner. The friction between China and the U.S. these days, this idea of forcing countries, partners, allies, others to choose one or the other, makes a lot of countries in the region nervous. NPR's Ada Peralta in Mexico City, Aya Batraoui in Dubai, and China correspondent John Rewich, thank you all so much for being with us. Thank you, Scott. Thanks so much, Scott. You bet, Scott.

And that's up first for Saturday, September 7th. I'm Aisha Roscoe. And I'm Scott Simon. Fernando Naro and Martin Patience produced today's podcast. Andrew Gregg directed. Our editors were Dee Parvaz, Shannon Rhodes, and Rebecca Davis.

Hannah Glovda is our technical director with engineering support from Nisha Hynas, Arthur Laurent, and Ted Meebay. Evie Stone is our senior supervising editor. Sarah Oliver is our executive producer. And Jim Kane is our deputy managing editor. Tomorrow on the podcast, designated wilderness areas are usually intended to be free from human habitation and intervention. But climate change and the catastrophes it brings might be changing that.

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