Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams finally returned to Earth earlier this week after their problem-plagued Boeing Starliner departed the International Space Station empty last year. The pair of NASA astronauts only received an extra $1,430 for the nine-month ordeal, but at least a pod of dolphins gave them a warm welcome home. The paltry sum is a reminder that they are still government employees despite how high-profile and harrowing their occupation is.
Understandably, NASA doesn’t give overtime, weekend or holiday pay to its astronauts on the ISS. It’s not like the space agency can operate a weekly or daily commute to low Earth orbit so spacefarers can spend the weekend lounging at home on the couch. However, NASA pays a $5 per diem for incidental expenses. As a result, Wilmore and Williams received an extra $1,430 for their extra 286 days in space, according to the New York Times. Now, there isn’t any way to have incidentals on the ISS. There isn’t a mini-bar, and astronauts don’t have to pay for meals. They did have to pay for laundry because there’s no way to clean clothes on the ISS.
The astronaut spirit will never die
While Wilmore and Williams were rationing their clothes, engineers were attempting to figure out how to make the Boeing Starliner safe to return crewed. The spacecraft suffered from failing thrusters that could cause a loss of control in orbit. The worst case scenario had the Starliner tumbling into the space station, a catastrophe that would have destroyed the ISS and sent everyone onboard scrambling to escape on the other spacecraft docked to the outpost. The wait drastically lengthened the eight-day mission.
The underwhelming per diem has an annual salary to match. NASA astronauts are paid $152,258 a year, compensation that doesn’t quite match the position of someone who could step foot on the Moon. For comparison, the salary of a member of Congress is $174,000. At the current rate, every astronaut will do more for the country than any given Congressmember over the next four years despite the potential cancellation of the Artemis program.
Wilmore, Williams and everyone else in the Astronaut Corps knew what they signed up for when they applied to join NASA. The space agency might be five decades removed from the Apollo era, but astronauts are still thrilled to live in space. The experience alone makes up for the hardships and lackluster pay. The Starliner crew enthusiastically did their duties to help keep the ISS running, like cleaning toilets, despite the predicament. They were willing to make sacrifices that engineers on the ground weren’t to get their Boeing spacecraft fully functional. The Trump administration’s indiscriminate cuts might kill NASA’s return to the Moon, but the astronaut spirit will never die.
