NASA Headquarters Oral
History Project
Edited Oral History Transcript
Courtney
A. Stadd
Interviewed by Rebecca Wright
Chevy Chase, Maryland – 19 November 2003
Wright: Today
is November 19th, 2003. This oral history with Courtney Stadd is being
conducted for the NASA Headquarters History Office, Administrators
Oral History Project. The interviewer is Rebecca Wright, assisted
by Sandra Johnson.
This oral history with Mr. Stadd began in January 2003, and focused
on his involvement in the commercialization of space in both the commercial
and government sectors, ranging from the mid-1970s until 1972, when
he left NASA to return to private business. During those sessions
and earlier this year, he was the Chief of Staff for NASA. Today we
find him in his office in Chevy Chase, Maryland, where he once again
is working on the commercial side.
Thank you for finding time to continue this oral history. As we spoke
earlier, so much has happened since the last time that we’ve
met, including, again, your departure from NASA, but probably the
most significant event affecting the agency and so many people within
the agency during the past ten months has been the loss of the STS-107
crew and the Orbiter, Columbia.
So we’d like to start today with remembering February 1st, 2003,
and if you’ll share with us where you were that morning when
you heard the news.
Stadd: That
morning I was getting ready to come into NASA Headquarters [Washington,
D.C.] to work with the Administrator [Sean O’Keefe] on a rehearsal
for the release of the NASA budget that coming Monday, and I got word
from Bill [William F.] Readdy, the Associate Administrator for Space
Flight, who was with the Administrator down at the Cape [Canaveral,
Florida] awaiting the landing of the STS-107. I got word from him
at roughly 9:20 A.M. that it appeared that the Shuttle was a total
loss and the crew had died. At that point, I scrambled to get to the
office as quickly as possible to support the Contingency Action Team
that had been set up.
Wright: Can
you walk us through those first few hours at NASA Headquarters and
what your involvement was in helping to do whatever had to be done
at that point in time?
Stadd: Actually,
my involvement started within minutes, within seconds of the call
from Bill Readdy. We have a contingency plan that has been in operation
ever since Challenger, and each of us in the front office has a role
in terms of crisis management. My first role, vis-à-vis that
plan, was to call the White House, and so I scrambled to get in touch
with the National Security Advisor [Condoleezza Rice] and her team,
with the Cabinet Affairs Office, and inform them of the loss of the
[Columbia].
As I was driving to work, I was fumbling with my list of phone numbers
and my cell phone, and I recall trying to flag down a police officer,
because I was concerned about my ability—I was actually concerned
about being impeded by some traffic that morning and by traffic lights,
and I was trying to get some escort to help me get to the Headquarters
as soon as possible. But as the cliché goes, when you want
a policeman, they’re not around. So I made my way as quickly
as I could.
But meanwhile, I was multitasking and did get in touch with one of
the senior representatives for Dr. Rice, the President’s National
Security Advisor. She was with the President [George W. Bush] at Camp
David [Maryland], if memory serves, and her aide got on the phone
with me. He requested phone numbers for Administrator O’Keefe.
The President was interested in, obviously, getting updated by the
Administrator.
I believe that Sean was also contacting the President through other
means. Then I gave them the information where I could be contacted
on a 24/7 basis.
They also had the contingency plan, but in these situations, you know,
you’re operating in a crisis mode real time, and so I was making
sure that I knew how to get to them and they knew how to get to me.
I arrived at Headquarters about ten o’clock, if memory serves,
and when I came into the garage, there were other people beginning
to converge. It’s a blur now, but I remember running into the
lobby and running up to the ninth floor, where I was informed that
we had already established the Contingency Action Team on the seventh
floor, and I scrambled down to that office, where I found Fred [Frederick
D.] Gregory, our Deputy Administrator, and the other members of the
team already at their workstations getting updated from the [relevant
Space Flight] Centers. I remember thinking, when I walked into the
room, watching Fred on the phone that no human being should ever have
to live through this type of disaster, these [Columbia] astronauts
were friends [and dear colleagues of] Fred and the other people on
that Contingency Action Team [making the loss ever more profound].
Fred was the CapCom [Capsule Communicator] on Challenger, and my point
is that, one tragedy is too much, and I thought, as I walked in, how
unfortunate that Fred Gregory and some of the other veterans have
to live through this horror once again. But I also realized immediately
why Fred had such an extraordinary record as a commander of previous
Shuttle flights, had flown successfully 550 combat missions in Vietnam,
mostly in helicopters. He was a sea of calm, of extraordinary professionalism.
And by the way, everyone in that room exemplified the best in terms
of professionalism.
Wright: At
what point that day did you have an opportunity to talk to Administrator
O’Keefe?
Stadd: Not
until late that afternoon. Obviously, all of us watched Sean when
he came out for the first press conference and confirmed the worst,
the total loss of the crew and Shuttle. In fact, that image of us
watching Sean has been memorialized in a picture in Time magazine
that appeared that week. Recently, when I was going through some material,
I looked at that picture once again, and you could see on everybody’s
faces just the utter tragedy that this disaster represented for everyone.
I saw Sean when he arrived [later] that afternoon and the senior staff
was gathered into ACR-1, the conference room that adjoins the Administrator’s
suite, and we immediately got down to business in terms of understanding
what the issues were and dealing with [all aspects of the] recovery
operation, with Sean assuring that priority number one was the proper
and dignified recovery of the [human] remains. That was number one,
ensuring that the families and their concerns and their sensitivities
were treated as our [top] priority. Then, obviously, [we were focused
on] ensuring that the recovery of the forensics operations associated
with the loss of the Orbiter were going as effectively as possible.
And we had constant updates. We met every couple of hours through
the late hours and that went on for days.
By chance, that day I was wearing a pedometer, which is a little meter
that measures your distance as a walker [or jogger]. It was the first
time I actually was wearing it. That morning I was hoping to do a
little bit of a jog before I went into the office. And I guess it
must have been about midnight or so, I looked at it and I had clocked
about six and a half miles between the ninth floor and the seventh
floor, running back and forth so many times to ensure that everyone’s
needs on the Contingency Action Team were being properly addressed.
I wouldn’t wish that experience [of dealing with this terrible
tragedy]—I know I speak for every single person in the agency—I
wouldn’t wish that on anyone.
One thing I do tell people about the experience is that it’s
almost as if the very physics of time and space change in a traumatic
environment like that. Decisions that sometimes might have taken days,
weeks to make are made literally in minutes. Conversations that might
be dragged out with your colleagues, you end up speaking very succinctly
and very much to the point, and you end up having to multitask because
you’re being bombarded by all sorts of events simultaneously.
But as I say, everyone, without exception, stood up to the challenge.
I want to also tell you that the whole concept of a federal family
really came to the fore. I used to refer to it, before the Columbia
accident, in speeches, but I really felt it and all of us felt it
literally in the hours [and days] after the disaster was confirmed.
Agencies stepped up, in many cases without us asking them, to offer
support. The Office of Personnel Management [OPM], under the directorship
of Kay Coles James, literally within, it seemed minutes, but I’m
sure it was maybe a couple of hours after confirmation of the disaster,
was offering to provide benefits, offering to provide all sorts of
support. And the same went for FEMA [Federal Emergency Management
Agency] and other agencies [such as] the FAA [Federal Aviation Administration].
Among my other priority jobs, per the Administrator’s request,
which was relayed to me by Paul [G.] Pastorek [NASA Chief Counsel],
who was also with the Administrator and Bill Readdy, waiting for the
landing of [STS-] 107, Paul Pastorek said the Administrator was going
to stand up an investigation committee, and wanted to have the chairman
and the members both identified, sworn in, and available to begin
the work within twenty-four hours. Part of my job was to try to locate
some of the candidates that the Administrator wanted to talk to, starting
first and foremost [with who was going to be the designated] chairman,
as well as I had to track down some of the other recommended members.
Then I had to work directly with the Office of Personnel Management
to put the paperwork in place to have these people sworn in [as soon
as possible]. OPM people came in at one or two o’clock in the
morning [to their offices to complete the necessary documents and
ensure that the first group of Committee members, including Admiral
Gehman who was named chairman by the Administrator, could be sworn
in on] Sunday to begin work on the investigation. That’s a very
small example of the type of stepping up to the plate and doing what
was ever required. And so it went, as I say, with other agencies as
well.
Wright: Those
first few days, I would have to imagine they were so much of a blur
and yet so much got accomplished. At what point do you feel that there
was a definite plan implemented? Was it from the very beginning, on
how these steps would be taken?
Stadd: NASA
is world renowned for its contingency planning, so I have no doubt
that there are contingency plans going back to Alan [B.] Shepard’s
flight, and after [the] Challenger [disaster], as you might expect,
we had pretty involved and pretty detailed contingency plans. So literally
within minutes of confirmation of the loss of 107, those contingency
steps were set in motion. We had a plan, we had a road map, we had
a baseline that shaped and drove our actions immediately thereafter.
In addition to the notifications to the appropriate administration
officials and other agencies, obviously there was a very involved
engineering contingency plan that was immediately executed, starting
first and foremost with mission control locking down all the telemetry
and ensuring that everybody at the workstation had preserved and protected
the relevant data. I think that that demonstrated the utility of the
plan and the utility of our having constantly rehearsed it.
In fact, just the previous month or two, or couple of months prior
to the accident, there had been a rehearsal, not involving the front
office, but involving many of the people in the Operational Engineering
Directorates who had gone through a rehearsal involving the contingency
plan, and that was something that was done on a fairly regular basis.
[Unfortunately, the Columbia tragedy on] February 1st proved the merits
of people being at the top of their game in terms of implementing
that plan.
Wright: What
were your next tasks after those first few days? Of course, the recovery
efforts started from the very beginning, as you mentioned, with the
number one priority of the dignified recovery of the human remains
as well as the pieces of the Shuttle. Can you tell us about your involvement
in that and how that progressed?
Stadd: A lot
of what I was involved with had to do with ensuring that people in
the agency were getting the type of support and assistance they needed
from the front office. So, first and foremost, my job was to make
myself available to everybody to call, day or night, come visit, with
whatever issue, whatever need they had, and be sure that if I could
handle it at my level, terrific; if I needed to bring it up to the
Administrator or Deputy Administrator level, I would do that, and
that went on constantly.
Secondly, I was constantly involved in helping resolve potential conflicts
or issues that needed clarification between the agencies. I do want
to stress that the coordination amongst these many, many agencies—there
were many at the federal, state, local level—went amazingly
well, but given the complexity of the recovery effort, one of the
most complex in U.S. history, as you might imagine, there were occasional
jurisdictional problems. For example, [we had] to figure out who would
pay for the recovery operation, I was involved in the first few days
of talking to my counterpart at FEMA to ensure that we understood
where NASA’s obligations began and ended and where FEMA’s
began and ended, and so it went with some other agencies as well.
In every instance, we arrived very quickly at a resolution and moved
forward.
So part of my job was to ensure that any potential problems were identified,
trapped, fixed, and we moved on. And as I mentioned at the beginning
of this conversation, it was very interesting to see how certain problems
that in an interagency context normally might have taken weeks, were
resolved sometimes within minutes, sometimes within a few hours; all
of that a function of the desire of our colleagues in the government
to ensure that the priority of recovering the remains, of assuring
that the operation went as smoothly as possible, as quickly as possible,
was carried out as effectively as possible.
I accompanied the Administrator on some visits early on down to Lufkin
[Texas], where we had sort of the key operations center, and I visited
the military base where the preliminary collection of the 107 remains
were beginning to be catalogued and prepared for delivery to the Kennedy
Space Center for more detailed forensics investigation. I also was
very much involved in working with the people at Johnson Space Center
in terms of the memorial service that was conducted at the Johnson
Space Center the following Tuesday.
I want to take a moment to give special tribute to the Director of
Johnson Space Center, Jefferson Davis Howell, and to my former Deputy
Chief of Staff, who is currently a senior official at Johnson Space
Center, who works closely with Jefferson Howell, Sue [Susan H.] Garman.
She and her team at Johnson Space Center pulled off a real miracle.
Literally within seventy-two hours, they were able to organize the
memorial service with the President of the United States.
Keeping in mind that all of us were emotionally affected by the loss
of 107, the people at Johnson Space Center were particularly hit hard.
After all, these were neighbors, these were friends, these were colleagues
of long standing, so Sue Garman and her colleagues, in the context
of profound mourning, had to go to work and pull off, by anybody’s
standard, [what] was a world-class event on that following Tuesday.
Of course, I stayed in very close contact with Sue and her colleagues
in coordinating the arrival of the President, keeping in mind that
my other job was White House liaison.
Interesting anecdote. The night before the memorial service, I got
a call from the head of Cabinet Affairs on behalf of the President.
The President was interested in inviting Neil [A.] Armstrong to accompany
him on Air Force One. When I got the request, it was roughly about
five or six o’clock. Neil Armstrong is well known for his privacy,
so contacting Armstrong is a nontrivial task, even on behalf of the
President of the United States. It took some doing to obtain his private
contact information, but I went to one of the astronauts from his
generation, Gene [Eugene A.] Cernan, and Gene Cernan’s wife
was very helpful in contacting Armstrong. I recall I couldn’t
reach Gene. He was in transit somewhere, so I called Mrs. [Jan Nanna]
Cernan, and when I made the request, there was a bit of silence on
the phone and she said, “You know, Armstrong does protect his
privacy, but,” she said, “since this is a request from
the President, and given the extraordinary occasion we’re talking
about,” she said, “let me see what I can do.”
We hung up at that point, and a moment or two later I was sitting
with the Administrator, discussing the Columbia situation as well
as the upcoming memorial event and other issues, and roughly maybe
forty-five minutes after that conversation, maybe a little longer,
the Administrator’s assistant came into the office and informed
me that Neil Armstrong was holding on the phone for me. I went out,
I picked up the phone. He could not have been more gracious when I
explained the reason for the call. Without missing a beat, he said,
“Absolutely.” He said, “I will do whatever is necessary
to attend the service.”
He asked if he could bring his wife. I said, “Of course.”
It turned out that logistically, getting him from Ohio, where he lives,
to Andrews Air Force Base [Maryland] to accompany the President on
Air Force One, was next to impossible, given the [lateness of the]
hour. So I asked Armstrong if he wouldn’t mind if I contacted
the White House to see if we could work an alternative transportation
strategy. I then called the White House Cabinet Affairs [Office and]
they put me in touch with National Security Council. To make a long
story short, an aircraft was made available for Armstrong and he did
accompany the President as he walked to the dais at the memorial service
[at the Johnson Space Center]. That was really an example of the type
of logistical challenges that I got, although trying to reach [the
legendary Neil] Armstrong [stands out as a pretty memorable challenge].
Wright: Those
first couple of weeks there were a number of memorial services and
events. You attended many of those.
Stadd: I did.
Wright: Could
you share with us those times?
Stadd: I did,
and I know I speak for everyone, starting with the Administrator,
that I hope never to witness another Missing Man Formation. They are
emotionally trying enough, but to witness seven of them, or close
to seven of them was really quite traumatic. I really am awed by the
Administrator’s stamina in attending all the funerals, all the
memorial services. I went to just about every one of them, with the
exception of a couple, when my job required me to handle some things
in his absence as he was attending the other services. One of the
more poignant—and they all were poignant, they all were emotionally
[tough]. At the same time, they also were a tremendous catharsis.
I want to also give tribute to Arlington [National] Cemetery [Arlington,
Virginia], the wonderful public servants at the cemetery who managed
to carry off these services under extraordinary circumstances with
the utmost dignity and the utmost sensitivity to the families. Knowing
that they unfortunately do this, of course, in the midst of the Iraq
war on an all-too-often basis is quite a remarkable tribute.
Among the other poignant memories that I have was in Lufkin, Texas,
attending a memorial service at the local church, and sitting near
the front, there was a large picture of the 107 crew. There was a
church choir. Sitting behind me were many of the astronauts who were
actively involved in the recovery. And what stands out were America’s
heroes and heroines sitting behind me crying, and that made it particularly
tough to know that some of the bravest people that we have to offer
the country were sitting there, and knowing that they were showing
their human vulnerability and that they had lost friends and colleagues.
The town of Lufkin could not have been more hospitable, more generous,
or opening of their hearts to NASA and the other agencies that were
involved in the recovery effort. There are innumerable examples of
the East Texas people opening up their houses. There were [countless]
examples of citizens, both in Texas, Louisiana, and other parts of
the country, but particularly in Texas, who, unprompted, would stand
guard over a piece of Shuttle debris in their backyard until the appropriate
authorities showed up. There was very little—there was some,
but there was very little pilfering. Ninety-nine percent of the population,
99.9 percent were exactly what you would hope for from your fellow
citizens in terms of generosity and [helping to support this huge
and complex recovery effort].
The other poignant memory that comes immediately to mind [is that]
I was given the honor of accompanying Colonel Ilan Ramon’s remains
to Israel. I went with Steve [Steven G.] MacLean, Scott [E.] Parazynski,
and several of the other astronauts who were very close to Colonel
Ramon and the family, and I represented the agency in transferring
officially the remains to Prime Minister [Ariel] Sharon in that memorial
service, and then also was part of the group that attended the funeral
service. They, too, have a Missing Man Formation, which was incredibly
[emotional]. They played over the loudspeaker system a soundtrack
that one of the astronaut’s had edited, that had the music that
Colonel Ramon had chosen to be awakened by mission control. As you
know, each of the astronauts are able to choose their special music
that they would prefer to be awakened by in the morning, or whenever
their sleep cycle was scheduled, and they played the music for Colonel
Ramon and you also heard his voice. You’d have to be made out
of stone at that point not to emotionally respond to that.
Steve MacLean represented the astronauts, the agency, in his eulogy
and provided a very compelling, a very eloquent eulogy regarding Colonel
Ramon. I was struck by the strength of Mrs. [Rona] Ramon; frankly,
struck by the strength of all the families.
If I may, I’d like to provide one anecdote about the families
and about the President. At the Houston memorial, when the President
had a private moment with the families, he offered to meet with them
when they were in Washington [D.C.]. This was more than simply a glib
offer by the President. One of the things that I appreciated in serving
this President is that he cares deeply about people and doing right
by people, particularly in these sorts of circumstances.
Well, a few weeks after that offer, I became aware that all the families
would be in town for the burial of one of the astronauts, and I had
about twenty-four hours between that funeral service Friday afternoon
and the departure of a couple of the families Saturday, to see whether
the President might be available to meet with all the families. So
I called the White House. I said, “I realize this is short notice;
I realize that we’re dealing with the logistics demands of the
Commander-in-Chief, but here’s an opportunity for the President
to fulfill his offer to the families and meet with all of them.”
The people I spoke to said, “Let us get back to you.”
They did shortly thereafter, and we arranged for all the families
to come to the White House. The meeting was scheduled for roughly
thirty minutes. If memory serves, I think the families were with the
President for about two, two and a half hours. The First Lady [Laura
Bush] was there [as well].
There are strict limitations on the size of the group that normally
is allowed into the Oval Office. I suggested that the families very
much would want to be accompanied by those astronauts that were assigned
to the families and had been with them from the beginning of this
tragedy, and the White House, without skipping a beat, said, “Absolutely.”
[This visit] turned out, I think, [into] one of the largest gatherings
[that] ever took place, [in the Oval office] because [so many] other
people also were allowed in from the NASA family to accompany the
families.
The President opened up the doors to the South Lawn and he allowed
the kids to enjoy the South Lawn. He brought in his dog, Barney; they
played with Barney. And for about twenty, twenty-five minutes, he
literally signed anything that the kids gave him. And at some point,
the White House staff allowed the President the opportunity to gracefully
exit by telling him, “Mr. President, it is now time for the
tour.”
And the President said, “I know this White House. I can give
the tour as good as anybody,” and he led them on a tour from
the West to the East Wing. Anytime any of the family members showed
any sense of depression or being low, he or the First Lady would sweep
in and hold their hand and console them. By the end of that visit,
families were in as good a spirit as you could imagine, given the
fact they’d just buried one of the astronauts a few hours prior.
[For me, the] interesting thing about that visit [was the total absence
of the] media. The President did this for the families, and, to me,
that was an example of a real class act. That stands out as one of
the more interesting anecdotes for me about the type of support that
the families got from the President. But I also want to say [something
about] the support the families also gave the President and the NASA
Administrator and the rest of us. The President was very much struck
by the strength of the families when he first met them and talked
to them the day of the accident and at the memorial service [at JSC].
The White House staff told me that the President, in the days following
his encounter with the families, relayed to other people that he met,
how impressed he was with the strength of the families.
On the day of the accident when [the families spoke] with the President,
they said, if I could paraphrase, “Find the problem, fix it,
but you must continue exploration. [The] only way to honor the legacy
for [our] loved ones is to ensure that the agency continues on with
the exploration that our wives, our husbands had pursued their lives
for.”
Wright: Has
there been discussion between you [and the families], since you’re
the liaison to the White House, regarding this request that they had
made of the President? Has there been a lot of discussion about what
can be done? And the White House offering or giving information to
get NASA back to flight?
Stadd: Administrator
O’Keefe recognized that assuring that the families were kept
informed was paramount. Obviously, the families are the ones to ask
whether they feel that we fulfilled that expectation or not. But I
do know the Administrator made it a priority for him personally and
for all of us on the senior staff to make sure they were properly
coordinated with. I do know the White House was very sensitive in
ensuring that any information regarding the investigation was properly
vetted with the families and their guardians to assure that they were
at no time put in an awkward position in terms of information being
released to the public.
Shortly after the accident, sometime in February, I was directed by
the Administrator to stand up a Tiger Team called the Columbia’s
Families First, and it was my job to populate the Columbia’s
Families First team with the appropriate people from Legal, from our
Budget Office, from the Astronaut Office and so forth to ensure several
things; one, that the front office at Headquarters was effectively
lashed up with the Astronaut Office at Johnson Space Center to ensure
that all the needs of the families were properly met. My mandate was
to ensure that there was no “air gap” between the family
needs, the astronaut needs, and what Headquarters could provide.
The second direction I was given was to ensure that no stone was left
unturned in terms of ensuring that all the benefits that were deserved
by this crew came their way, both in terms of compensation and in
terms of recognition in the form of medals and so forth, as well as
to ensure that in terms of the memorial services and so forth, that
all the logistical needs were met.
If memory serves, I think this [group] was stood up within a week
or so of the accident. I have to give tribute to people like Sue Garman,
to Andy [Andrew S.] Thomas, who was the liaison between the Astronaut
Office and all the CACOs [Contingency Action Controls Officer]—the
astronaut—the guardians, as I call them, for the families. Bob
[Robert D.] Cabana, the wonderful head of the Astronaut Office, and
the Center Director, Jefferson Howell; “Beak,” as he prefers
to be called. Our general counsel, Paul Pastorek, and Bernie [Bernard]
Roan, who is the newly appointed chief counsel at Johnson Space Center,
but at the time of the accident was on the legal staff at NASA Headquarters,
played really a critical role in helping us address the legal issues.
Gwen [Gwendolyn] Brown, who was recently confirmed as the Chief Financial
Officer, at that time was the Deputy Chief Financial Officer, played
a real critical role in helping to ensure that all the financial-related
issues were properly supported. I’m sure I’m forgetting
[other key] people, but [others who come to mind include] Vicki [A.]
Novak from HR [Human Resources] and her wonderful team, people from
External Relations to help us [provide] liaison with the Pentagon,
were all assembled and we met every day, often with the Johnson Space
Center people on a telecon [teleconference].
When we first stood up the team, I sensed, and later on, months later,
in conversations with some of the people at Johnson Space Center confirmed,
that [they initially viewed this] team at Headquarters [with some
skepticism]. The concern was that Headquarters would be an impediment—an
additional layer of decision-making that was extraneous and unneeded.
I made every effort to ensure that we weren’t perceived as a
“boarding party,” that we were perceived from the first
minute on as a partner, as a facilitator. One of the artifacts that
I treasure on my office wall is from the Astronaut Office, which was
a gift at my farewell, their way of thanking me for the support that
the team provided the Astronaut Office, and I accepted that with great
pride on behalf of an exceptional team that I was honored to work
with.
We worked on everything from making sure that airplanes and vans and
buses were immediately at the disposal of the astronauts and the families
in terms of memorial and funeral services. We worked on issues regarding
compensation. We worked on issues regarding medals. I was very pleased
that the Administrator wanted to ensure that there was symmetry with
the Challenger astronauts, but there were some medals that the Columbia
astronauts were [uniquely qualified to receive]. I understand that
since my departure [the group has] been continuing my efforts to ensure
that the [Challenger] crew was properly recognized as well.
It’s no slight regarding our colleagues at NASA during the Challenger
episode [that they perhaps had missed an opportunity to recognize
the Challenger crew with certain categories of medals]. That previous
tragedy actually gave us a frame of reference and allowed us to [benefit
from] some lessons learned, such as ensuring that there were certain
medals and certain recognitions that our colleagues probably weren’t,
understandably [aware could be provided] for the crew.
One of my [other] priorities was to stand up an assistance fund that
would allow all the employees at NASA and the contractors to contribute
to a fund for the families, to ensure that the education for the children
were taken care of, and whatever other appropriate needs could be
addressed through contributions by the NASA family and the extended
family through our contractors.
I remember that originally we were focusing on a fund that would be
set up exclusively to help the astronauts and their families. As we
were deliberating on that proposal, the Administrator called for an
off-site [meeting] with our senior managers to address a number of
topics. One of the topics had to do with the Family Assistance Fund,
and when Gwen Brown, who had primary responsibility for helping set
up that fund as part of my team, when she notified the senior managers
that we were focusing [exclusively] on the astronauts, Dr. Shannon
[W.] Lucid, former astronaut and our chief scientist at the time,
in typical generous fashion—one of the great pleasures of my
tenure at NASA was meeting Dr. Lucid. She’s one of the great
class acts. By the way, she’s well loved by the astronauts for
many, many reasons, one of them being that, as a grandmother, she
has a little bit more flexibility and she is known for volunteering
to do the graveyard shifts in mission control. But that’s only
one of many reasons why she’s really treasured by her colleagues.
Anyway, when she heard that we were focusing on the astronauts, both
she and former astronaut Bryan [D.] O’Connor objected. They
felt strongly that the astronauts should not be treated as an elite,
isolated group; that astronauts recognize that the success of their
missions are fundamentally based on the [support of the entire] NASA
family. So it was really through their arguments that the Administrator
agreed that we should broaden the scope and ensure that the Family
Assistance Fund covered everyone in the NASA [community], and sure
enough, today we have a fund that any individual can contribute to,
and that means any member of the public can contribute to, and it
benefits any NASA person who loses their life in the pursuit of a
NASA-related mission.
Wright: That’s
interesting. There have been a number of ideas proposed for memorials.
Have you been involved in researching those?
Stadd: Our
Columbia Families First team was very much involved in helping to
vet some of the [preliminary] ideas. The Administrator made it quite
clear that the families would be the ultimate decision makers, so
we played the role of facilitating between Arlington Cemetery, which,
of course, is where one of the memorials will be placed. There are
other venues in Texas and elsewhere that are under consideration.
But we got involved to the extent that we ensured that the ideas and
concepts were provided to Johnson Space Center, who, in turn, ensured
that the families were given the information and could make decisions
accordingly.
Before I left in July 2003, my sense was that the families were closing
in pretty quickly on a memorial design at Arlington Cemetery, but
decisions as to placement and design for memorials in these other
locations along the debris trail were still under consideration, and
since leaving the agency, I, frankly, don’t know where things
stand.
Wright: The
recovery efforts for the Columbia lasted to the first part of May
and during that entire period, from February through May, these agencies,
federal, state, local agencies, continued to work closely together
to accomplish as much as they could. What was your continual involvement
with that part of the recovery process?
Stadd: Really,
after the first several weeks, month or so, much of the liaisoning
with the community of federal, state, local agencies migrated elsewhere.
Dave [David A.] King, who’s the current Director of the Marshall
Space [Flight] Center [Huntsville, Alabama], was one of the key NASA
liaisons early on in the process. And I should tell you that people
like Dave King and others from Johnson Space Center, Kennedy Space
Center, Marshall, were in the field, very much [involved in shaping
and] leading the recovery effort. At Headquarters, we were in the
mode of trying to assist people like Dave King with resource needs,
logistical needs; [for example], if they needed airplanes, if they
needed additional personnel. But the vast bulk of the hard and sometimes
very dirty work was done [from the initial] hours [after the accident],
by people like Dave King.
I also want to give credit to part of the agency that for whatever
reason tends to not get the appropriate credit, and that is our Office
of Security, our Code X at Headquarters, led by the very able Dave
[David A.] Saleeba. I was on the team that hired Dave Saleeba, during
my first year at the agency, in 2001. He’s a former Secret Service
agent, brings a wealth of experience in the security realm to this
job. It’s the first office set up at the agency dedicated exclusively
to security. His people, within a very few hours of the accident,
were activated and were out in the field, helping to recover remains,
and played a really critical role in coordinating with the local law
enforcement officials. Our NASA IG, Inspector General [Robert W. Cobb],
and his people also played a very commendable role, a very important
role as well.
But for whatever reason, I find that people tend to overlook the role
of Code X. I think it’s because, starting with Dave Saleeba,
Dave doesn’t look for attention; he simply does the job. And
if I’ve done nothing else in this oral history, I want to ensure
that certain people, such as Dave Saleeba, get appropriate attention.
He and his people did a remarkable job. At some point, we may talk
about 9/11 [September 11, 2001], but I will tell you at this point
in the interview that I was very grateful to have someone of Dave
Saleeba’s caliber as we dealt with the aftermath of 9/11.
Wright: One
other question I have on Columbia before we move on. Almost immediately,
President Bush named FEMA as the lead agency, and it was right during
the time [the Department of] Homeland Security was starting to take
some form. Did NASA at any point in time have a concern of turning
over or working with a new office and one that wasn’t quite
where it needed to be?
Stadd: To
the contrary. We were very grateful for the FEMA people, who are experts
at both human disaster and natural disasters, so we welcomed, with
open arms, their expertise. And of course, their budget is also structured
to deal with unexpected disasters, so the working relationship with
FEMA from the get-go was quite good. We did have some issues of clarification,
but those were very, very quickly resolved, and you could not ask
for people who, at all levels of the command chain at FEMA, who [could
be more] cooperative, very professional, and, frankly, brought a tremendous
amount of value added to the recovery effort.
Wright: Before
Columbia, one of the major projects that you were working on was the
Freedom to Manage Task Force.
Stadd: May
I make one point about the recovery effort?
Wright: Please.
Stadd: When
I did [accompany] the Administrator [to] the operations center at
Lufkin, [we] went into the civic auditorium, which is normally used
for exhibitions and Chamber of Commerce-related events. As an example
of the generosity of the town, [in the hours after the Columbia tragedy],
they immediately opened up the civic auditorium, disrupted, preempted
whatever other plans they had, to allow this multitude [of various
agency officials], almost the equivalent of the cast of Ben Hur, to
suddenly show up at their doorstep. Remember, this is a small East
Texas town that had to accommodate an extraordinary number of people.
I’ll never forget one of our NASA colleagues, Dr. Bruce Davis
[Stennis Space Center], who’s an expert in remote sensing, who
brought his expertise and that of other NASA people in the geospatial
realm, to [use geospatial] maps [to] help the recovery experts identify
where the debris was located. [He told] me that when he showed up
[at this center], the first day after the accident, and the [technicians]
were wiring the different workstations [so rapidly], [that at] one
point, the NASA workstation and the other workstations were wired
into the world, vis-à-vis the Internet, [but] they didn’t
have [a simple] telephone linkup to [allow them to] communicate with
their neighbor [who] was a [mere] few feet away. That always stood
out for me as a very compelling example of the speed with which this
recovery effort was stood up.
It was a remarkable sight to go in and see T-shirts and windbreakers
with an unbelievable range of agency names, from the FBI [Federal
Bureau of Investigation] to people from the Department of Interior,
to NASA, to DoD [Department of Defense], local police agencies, and
to [witness] the spirit of cooperation. [It] was [really] remarkable.
One of the astronauts told me about one of the unsung heroes—a
[local] Christian group [composed mostly of teens]. As extraordinarily
helpful as the wildlife agencies were in tracking and identifying
the debris (the foliage and the landscape in East Texas is very tough
going, full of snakes and a very tough area to navigate your way through
in terms of trees and bushes), it turned out that members of this
Christian [teen] group were quite adept at navigating through the
underbrush and the forest because of their fishing and their hunting.
[For example, this same] astronauts told me [a story about how] it
was getting very dark [one late afternoon early in the recovery process]
and a piece of Shuttle debris was identified. Like many of the sightings,
no one really knew if it was real debris or a false read. As the sun
was setting, the astronaut said to one of these teenagers, “I
think we’d better wait until the morning.”
The teenager said, “Come with me. I’ll take you.”
And as the sun was quickly setting, they got to the edge of this quite
daunting forest, and he said the young man took him into the forest—at
that point it was total darkness—and was able to somehow locate
the debris. It turned out to be a false read, but [the young man]
was able to find [his] way back [safely] to their car. He said that
[sort of courage and commitment to getting the job done] went on constantly.
I know that the Administrator and others from Headquarters who visited
with the recovery crews were just mesmerized by the fact that, literally,
no matter how miserable the weather conditions, and [it] got really
very, very bad in terms of rain, swamplike conditions, none of that
kept the recovery crew from recovering as much as they could of the
remains and the debris. May there never be another comparable recovery
effort, but if there is, I have no doubt that this will stand as a
benchmark.
Wright: Are
there any other thoughts or aspects of those months that were so focused
on Columbia that you’d like to offer before we do move on?
Stadd: Well,
it reinforces the fact that in this very dangerous business of launching
human beings into space, a premium that has to be placed on contingency
planning, on lessons learned. You can never do enough rehearsal to
plan for such a disaster. I think that, if anything, it also demonstrated
that people really do rise to the occasion when called on, which gave
me a renewed sense of confidence and faith in the people that make
up the NASA community.
My hope is that the Office of the Administrator will continue to stay
engaged with the contingency planning and the [disaster] rehearsal
[process], because there is a tendency over time for people to get
a little bit more relaxed. I think Admiral [Harold W.] Gehman very
effectively brought that in his report, [The Columbia Accident Investigation
Board Report].
So if I have any caution for my former colleagues at Headquarters,
particularly in the front office, it is to assure that your eye is
never taken off that ball. I don’t believe that will be the
case with the current individuals who went through this experience,
but I certainly hope that future front offices pay very particular
attention to this experience and assure that they continue to give
the people associated with the Space Station and Space Shuttle Programs
the appropriate support so that [in the event a] disasters happens
again, that we’re properly prepared.
Wright: What
did you find to be the most challenging part of this whole ordeal
for you?
Stadd: I speak
for just about everybody involved with this [when I say that] it’s
really having the stamina to deal with all the incoming information
in this crisis mode. I think that that probably was the toughest part
of it, staying on top of your game, making sure that you were representing
the Administrator, the agency, the President, as effectively as possible,
that you didn’t let anything fall between the cracks, because
the consequences were pretty profound if you did. In your normal course
of events, occasionally if you allow something to slip between the
cracks, you can make up for it, but in this instance, you had to make
sure your decisions were properly implemented and that you were making
good judgment calls the first time, every time. [Especially] in my
job as Chief of Staff, [I needed to] ensure that everyone was getting
the level of support that they required.
You know, in these circumstances, you can constantly second-guess
yourself. In my case, I probably would like a bit more time to pass
between that trauma and thinking about what we might have done better.
I know that there are people who are appropriately reviewing the overall
response and ensuring that we [effectively understood and implemented
all the] lessons learned. But, if I had one thing I would do differently,
I probably would have set up, within hours, a Crisis Management Team,
just within the front office, and do it with just a couple of people.
We eventually did set up such a team with a couple of people, involving
people like Steve [Steven C.] Miley, who’s now in the Office
of Space Flight. One had to be careful in setting that up because
you didn’t want to do anything that added an additional bureaucratic
layer that contributed to inefficiency. But I must say that overall
I think things actually, in retrospect, went amazingly well, and I
think, overall, I can’t really think of any major thing that
I would have done differently.
Another thing that I was involved in that I should add—and I
have to be careful; this does involve some classified information—but
it is well known that the agency had a relationship with a defense
agency that was involved with activities that could help us, when
need be, image our assets in space. That was made publicly available.
That information was discussed somewhat in the Gehman report. And
there was some criticism that the Office of Space Flight had rejected
the offer by this agency to take images and determine to what extent
there was damage on the leading edge of the wing. And my job was to
help facilitate meetings with the senior leadership of that agency
and help establish a new set of terms and conditions that would ensure
that there was a standing requirement and [that] never again would
we have different sorts of criteria and gates that we’d have
to consider before allowing that sort of thing to happen.
Paul Pastorek, the general counsel, Bill Readdy, and Bryan O’Connor
were instrumental in negotiating those terms. But I must tell you,
and I don’t mind putting this on the public record, that I for
one, and I believe many others join me in this, I for one will go
to my grave never understanding why Bill Readdy and his team rejected
[the original] offer. I’ve listened to the [official] explanations.
I must say it still baffles me. [After the accident, fixing the decision-making
process associated with this imaging issue] was one of the things
that I was involved in [at an initial stage]. I then handed the baton
over to these other gentlemen to resolve the situation so that in
the future, a future Bill Readdy won’t be in a position to make
what in retrospect turned out to be a very, very poor judgment call.
I must say, again, without getting into the classified area, that
it is arguable to what extent that imagery would have had any practical
value. But nonetheless, in those circumstances, one has a fundamental
obligation to assure that you did everything humanly possibly to ensure
that the astronauts were properly protected and so forth. I think
history will, properly, not look kindly on that particular judgment
call.
Wright: Why
don’t we take a break about now, and we’ll regroup and
start again.
Stadd: Great.
[Tape change]
Wright: Courtney,
you were selected by President George Bush to lead the transition
team for NASA, after Dan [Daniel S.] Goldin announced his retirement
or resignation from NASA. Tell us how you were selected for this job,
and then also about those months and how you put that plan together
to find the right person to lead the agency.
Stadd: Let
me first clarify that when I was appointed to head the transition
in December 2000. Dan Goldin [was still some months] from announcing
his retirement. Dan was still very much in a “running NASA”
mode. So we can get back to Dan and his situation, if you don’t
mind, in a moment. I just want to clarify that Dan had not announced
plans to leave at that point.
Wright: No,
I’m glad you did.
Stadd: As
you recall, by the time the election was decided by the [U.S. Supreme]
Court, there wasn’t a whole lot of time left for transition.
Normally, transitions have a couple months, at the least, to prepare.
We only had a couple of weeks. NASA transition teams in the past have
had as many as thirty, a dozen. This team had me [and I was it]. And
it was only at my insistence that we ended up with one other full-time
individual, and he is a dear friend and colleague, Dr. Scott Pace.
When I was given this assignment, at that point the transition Headquarters
was in McLean, Virginia, before it moved over to 1800 G Street, which
is the traditional place that’s set aside by the General Services
Administration for transition teams for incoming administrations.
When I walked out on that day, I remember [it was cloudy with] some
snow flurries, [and I was] thinking, “Oh, boy. How do I do this
job? It’s [huge and they’ve given me a very] little bit
of time [to get the job done].” I immediately thought of Scott
Pace. I said [to myself], “Who would have the bandwidth, the
passion, the energy level, and be willing to give up his weekends,
the nights, the holidays?” I called Scott [and he] immediately
said yes and we went into action.
It was one of the most intense experiences of my life, until Columbia.
We had extraordinarily short deadlines, with a staggering amount of
information, and there were only [the two] of us [working] full-time.
We were assigned a little cubicle at 1800 G Street, and we were surrounded
by other agencies with handwritten signs on their cubicles that said
National Security Council, State Department, Department of Commerce,
and so forth. I want to add that not all agencies had a transition
team assigned to it, given the brevity of the time available. So to
those who ask the level of the White House’s interest, the level
of the President’s interest, I always make the point that [at
least] we had a transition team, so that indicated some level of interest
by both the President and the Vice President.
When I sat down at the desk the first day, I was handed a piece of
paper that identified some areas of interest in space science and
Space Shuttle and Space Station that we were asked to begin to focus
on. [As a footnote, I was certainly mindful of the irony of my situation.]
It is worth remembering that in January ’93, I was a [President
George H. W.] Bush appointee working at NASA, and it fell to Administrator
Dan Goldin to give me my pink slip, so it was ironic that I was returning
[in a leadership position vis-à-vis the agency]. I should say
that Dan Goldin and the team really received us warmly and were very
cooperative from the first moment on.
Ed Heffernan, who was the [NASA] Chief of Staff at the time, could
not have been more cooperative, more supportive, and so it went for
the other senior managers. In fact, at transition headquarters, there
was a white board where we would score how cooperative the agencies
were being, and NASA got, from day one, a top score. Other agencies
got a top score, too, but the point is that NASA never dropped from
getting a top score, at least from our standpoint, in terms of cooperation.
[Not surprisingly], NASA had reams of material that they had prepared
for the incoming administration, so Scott Pace and I were confronted
by a number of rather large volumes of data that went into some detail
explaining each of the NASA programs, talked about the personnel issues,
budget and so forth, as well as [providing] insight into the proposed
budget that was part of the outgoing [William J.] Clinton administration’s
initiatives.
It also fell to [us] to be the individuals who were informed, in December,
of the $4.8 billion overrun with the Space Station. Armed with that
information, [we] came back to transition Headquarters and informed
the senior leadership that one of the challenges in the “in”
box at NASA, confronting us from day one, would be resolving this
significant budget overrun.
So it fell to us to sift through this [agency’s] voluminous
information. We did so, both at transition Headquarters and at NASA.
NASA set up a little transition office for us on the fifth floor.
I say little; it actually could have been [as big as wanted—but]
we didn’t need a lot of space. The agency was very generous
in offering us whatever support we needed. So Scott and I would commute
between Headquarters and 1800 G Street. We interviewed and met with
a number of NASA officials. We spent many, many, many hours with Administrator
Goldin, both in his office as well as in his townhouse on Capitol
Hill. He held nothing back in terms of giving us very candid, very
useful insights into the issues, challenges, into personnel-related
issues. Again, he could not have been more supportive.
Armed with the inputs from the Administrator, from our interviews,
from our sifting through the data that was provided by the agency,
Scott and I drafted a transition book, and this book was intended
to really spell out the facts. It was not intended to be prescriptive;
it was intended to be an empirical documentation of what we believed
to be the major issues confronting an incoming administrator, and
an analysis of the programs and so forth, so that hopefully you’d
have a one-stop shop, user-friendly manual that would very quickly
and succinctly as possible summarize the state of the agency at the
programmatic, budgetary, and personnel levels.
That book was shaped under the supervision of Gary [R.] Edson, who
is currently a senior White House official. He’s an extraordinary
public servant; he’s very demanding, but was also a master at
getting the best out of all of us in a breathtakingly short period
of time. There were a few times when he was a very tough taskmaster,
where Scott and I were rather anxiously awaiting Mr. Edson’s
appraisal of our product, and, fortunately, he seemed to like what
we did.
One of the things that I treasure is a letter from Gary Edson, in
which he thanked me and Scott for the team, and I framed it and put
it on the wall [in my NASA office], and every day when I went to work
at NASA, I’d look at it as a reminder that it is possible to
survive what can be sometimes very demanding and tough circumstances.
We could not have survived without the support that we got from NASA,
and I certainly, for one, could not have survived without my extraordinary
co-pilot, Scott Pace, who has unbelievable intellectual bandwidth
and was able to digest the material, synthesize, and analyze it with
me.
[Among other recommendations], we proposed that perhaps it was opportune
to focus on a different sort of Administrator. In this case, we felt
that given the Space Station overrun, given other organizational challenges,
perhaps it was time to focus on someone with a lot of background in
management, preferably a CEO [Chief Executive Officer], a corporate
CEO, who didn’t necessarily have to be an engineer. I had worked
for the late Secretary Malcolm Baldrige at the Commerce Department,
who was a nonengineer, who ran a technical company very successfully.
So I had seen examples where nontechnical people can run technical
operations. By the way, I’m sure that many university presidents
would agree with me that sometimes doctors make the worst administrators
of university hospitals. James [E.] Webb, the legendary Administrator,
was, of course, a nonengineer and to this day is regarded as the benchmark
manager of the agency.
However, our model also required, in order for it to be effective,
that the deputy administrator be technical and have detailed knowledge
of NASA as an institution and have a working knowledge of the programs
both at the Headquarters [and] at the Center level. My benchmark was
George [M.] Low, one of my heroes, a former Deputy Administrator.
And by the way, I should add that to make this responsibility [as
transition head] even more daunting, when I first sat down at my desk
[on] the first day, I was given a transition paper written by one
of my predecessors, and it was written by none other than George Low.
[Knowing] that George Low was my predecessor was a very humbling experience.
It was interesting, [and] somewhat depressing, in reading Low’s
analysis, to see that many of the [challenges] that he had [described
as facing NASA] were [many] of the very same [challenges] that were
beginning to emerge from our own work..
Once it was approved by Gary Edson and his colleagues, [we provided
the final transition book] to the senior White House people, the Vice
President and others, and that book, because it was done for the incoming
administration, and as long as we kept the book out of NASA, it was
not “FOIA-ible” (Freedom of Information Act). So only
very [select group of] people have ever seen it. [And] only a very
few people will ever see it, unless the President and his people decide
to make it available in the National Archives. But Sean O’Keefe
obviously reviewed it.
[I can certainly] tell you that not only did we propose this executive
management model [that I described earlier], but we also called out
the necessity of tackling the Space Station’s [financial management
issues] up front. [We felt strongly] that the agency, [especially
Headquarters], really needed a hands-on manager to deal with some
morale issues, and there were a lot of budget and accounting performance
issues that needed addressing.
[It is worth noting that] everyone we spoke to in the agency, people
on the Hill, people in the contractor community, [as well as] unsolicited
comments, all focused on the fact that the agency needed to have a
new vision, and we tried to capture that in the document.
We also frankly talked about the risks associated with the Space Shuttle
and the fact that the focus on safety that had been [a priority of
the] previous administrators, certainly by Dan Goldin, needed constant
vigilance. We also made reference to the Chinese beginning to develop
inroads into human spaceflight and, of course, they just recently
had their first successful human spaceflight in Earth orbit. We tried
our best to identify the challenges that would be facing an incoming
administrator.
We also felt it was important to have an administrator that was politically
connected into the White House and into the Congress. It was our sense
that NASA, as a sub-Cabinet agency, tended to be a bit of an orphan,
and really needed the attention at the senior levels in order to deal
with a lot of these outstanding issues.
I should add that it was my intent, after handing in the transition
report, to go back to the private sector. I had no intent of going
into the government in a formal fashion. But it became clear to me
that part of the method in the transition office was that if you headed
up the transition, that meant you [also had the relevant] corporate
expertise and memory. I was encouraged, if you will, to consider going
to the agency for some limited period of time. They were very gracious
about it, and, frankly, the more I discussed it with Scott Pace, talked
to my wife about it and so forth, I recognized that I [had] an obligation,
frankly, to go over and help the new Administrator—[including
helping] the current Administrator make an effective transition to
[his successor]. So I went over wearing two hats, as Chief of Staff
and White House Liaison.
I don’t recall whether I mentioned this in the last interview,
but at the first senior staff meeting, when Dan Goldin introduced
me, I started off by saying that “Before I was rudely interrupted
eight years ago, I’m very happy to rejoin the NASA family.”
I really did enjoy the year with Dan. [Of course], it was very stressful.
Working with Dan is a unique experience. He is on 24/7. There was
not a day—I include Saturdays and Sundays—where we were
not in communication. Dan was constantly strobing the system, to use
his phrase, and certainly my job was to ensure that he was getting
the support he needed from the White House, while at the same time
we were also looking for a successor.
I committed to Dan and his family that to the best of my ability,
there would be as dignified a transition as possible, and Dan has
thanked me on numerous occasions since for honoring that commitment.
I was able, at [Dan’s retirement] dinner, to read a letter from
the President that I think demonstrated the President’s, mine,
and others’ appreciation for his sacrifice and willingness to
stay on for that period of time, which was almost an additional year.
He left, of course, in November 2001.
By the way, that farewell dinner that was given for Dan, as I recall,
was on the day of the STS-108 launch, and it was only because it was
delayed that I was able, with Dan [Daniel R.] Mulville, who was the
Acting Administrator, to get back and participate in that dinner for
Dan [Goldin]. Dan Mulville was the Acting Administrator. I identified
Dan as the Administrator. Dan Goldin thought he was a great candidate.
Dan also felt it important to identify a couple of other candidates.
Frankly, I didn’t hesitate to go over to the White House and
say, “This is the perfect guy.” Dan Mulville is a man
of tremendous integrity. He’s one of the most gracious people
I’ve ever worked with. Over his sixteen or seventeen-year tenure
at NASA, he had held a number of critical positions, including Chief
Engineer. He was a gentleman that I felt could oversee the bridge
between the departure of one Administrator, [including being a source
of leadership stability] during [the upcoming Shuttle] launch, and
provide the type of stability that an incoming Administrator should
expect.
[This period of transition between Goldin leaving and the arrival
of a new Administrator], was [frankly], a little anxious for people,
because some people recall, not with particularly fond memories in
some quarters, Acting Administrator [William R.] Graham, during the
Challenger experience. I think at some visceral level, at a gut level,
a number of people were concerned about an Acting Administrator as
we went through this launch. But very quickly Dan Mulville’s
demeanor and command, I think, put everybody at ease and you couldn’t
have asked for a better person for that transition. He and I worked
hand in glove to ensure that the incoming Administrator [was provided
as much support as possible. This included our not doing] anything
that would preempt or otherwise co-opt key decisions, but, rather,
ensured that there was continuity of operations at the agency. As
I mentioned, we were launching Shuttles. We didn’t delay anything
because of the interim period waiting for a new administrator; that
whatever personnel decisions, whatever programmatic decisions we made,
we did so with an eye to ensuring, again, that whoever came in—I
mean, at that point, we knew it would be Sean O’Keefe—that
there was nothing we did that would unfairly constrain him in one
form or another.
Wright: What
can you share with us about the candidate selection process?
Stadd: Well,
I was part of that selection process from the get-go, even while I
was still at transition headquarters, and I always try to tell people
that there were no shortage of candidates interested in running NASA.
There were some rumors at the time, some reports in the media, that
there was a dearth of candidates. Instead, there was a challenge of
finding the right individual, right background, to fit the circumstances
that were facing NASA. So the White House actually relied to a large
extent on my judgment call, and I worked with White House Personnel,
with the Political Office.
Obviously, the White House was doing its own outreach as well, but
they would bring names to me, have me vet them. I had my own names
that I would bring to their attention. Stuart Holiday, Darren Bearson,
[who worked in the White House Personnel Office] were critical to
the selection process, [as well as, of course, Clay Johnson], the
head of the White House Personnel at the time.
I felt it was very important that we try to make an effort to find
individuals that could bring some diversity to the front office. Frankly,
I was stunned that in its forty-five-year history the agency had never
had a woman running the agency or a deputy woman run the agency; we’d
never had an African American; we’d never had an Hispanic; we’d
never had an Asian. We’d had these white males, you know, for
forty-five years. And although I’m not one of those who believes
that you should artificially look to sacrifice getting world-class
talent in the name of doing something “politically correct”
in terms of diversification, I’ve been around the community
long enough to know that there were plenty of talented people of various
diverse backgrounds.
So we pushed hard for either an Administrator or Deputy Administrator
to represent a diverse background, for a couple of reasons. One was
that if you looked at demographics, it was very clear that the women
and minorities, like the Hispanics, are becoming a majority in the
population, and this is a public institution, after all. And along
with that, the fact that there simply weren’t enough white males
alone to satisfy the need for engineers and scientists. So without
women, without minorities, we could not attract, frankly, the generation
of engineers and scientist that were fundamentally required in the
out years. So there was “It’s the right thing to do”
motivation and then there was the self-preservation motivation.
Also, I accompanied Dan Goldin to a number of speaking engagements
where he would be talking to minority students, for example, and with
genuine passion he would talk about encouraging them to pursue the
hard sciences and engineering and perhaps pursue a career at NASA.
It struck me that if I was sitting in that audience and I was a minority
and I was watching a white male tell me that, I couldn’t exactly
resonate to it as effectively as someone from my own background. So
that was another reason that we felt it was important. So that was
always in the back certainly of my mind, I believe the White House
as well, as we were sifting through and finding the right person with
the right management skills.
Frankly, finding the right person with the right management skills
is very tough. It takes a form of masochism to take these jobs and
go through Senate confirmation. They’re very brutal. The paperwork
that you have to fill out is excruciating in terms of opening up your
life and disclosing everything; tracking all your travel, all your
contact information. Every speech, every word that you’ve ever
uttered in the public realm has to be documented. And, of course,
in the confirmation process, more and more, it has become an arena
for the political opposition to score points. So not only do you have
to go through the challenge of disclosing everything in your life,
and [incurring] the transaction costs of getting that information
as accurate as possible, because if anything is inaccurate, that opens
you up to additional scrutiny. But then you have the additional “entertainment”
of finding yourself—you, who have now probably given up your
lucrative practice in private sector, have sacrificed vis-à-vis
your family, because these jobs are all-consuming—on full public
view and you’re open to any member to take potshots at you,
whatever the gratuitous reason.
So, finding people willing to open themselves up to that is not easy.
Finding people, who at their prime, willing to leave their career
track and to make that sacrifice, makes it even more difficult. So
we spent months trying to find the right people.
I recall going to an embassy event, the French Embassy, with Dan Goldin,
where he was given special recognition by the Ambassador. Around that
time, Dan had announced that he was leaving, and the French wanted
to give him special recognition. It was a wonderful dinner at the
embassy. I had gotten to know Sean O’Keefe in his position as
the Deputy OMB [Office of Management and Budget] Director in the previous
months because we were working together, along with Dan Goldin, on
the Space Station funding issues. And O’Keefe came to that dinner.
At the end of the dinner, I remember going back to the NASA office—it
must have been about eight o’clock—and I called White
House Personnel and I said, “You’re going to think I’m
crazy, but I think the person that ought to be the Administrator is
actually right in front of us.”
And there was a pause on the line and they said, “Well, keep
this quiet, but the President’s ahead of you.” The decision
had already been made. And I, of course, was absolutely delighted,
because Sean certainly met the criteria in terms of connectivity to
the Oval Office. He’d worked in the Senate for eight years,
so he was on a first-name basis with some of the critical members
of both the House and Senate. He was a little too much of an academic
for my taste. I mean, I would have preferred to have somebody from
the corporate world with a lot more operating experience than he’d
had. He’d only been Secretary of the Navy for a few months.
He had been Comptroller; he had, of course, worked at OMB, so he brought
an important, as he would call it, important bean-counter skill.
But I was overjoyed that we finally had someone identified for the
job, after almost a year [of searching for a candidate]. Also, the
agency needed, in terms of continuity, to know that the President
had identified someone. And having someone of that senior status sent
a very powerful signal to the workforce of the concern and the focus
it was getting from the White House. I’d been telling the workforce
in the previous months that this White House cared, but now I had
additional tangible evidence for them to see.
And I will tell you, during that year with Dan, I turned down just
about every public speaking engagement [I was offered]. And to the
great frustration of the media, I turned down just about every interview
[request]. The reason was that I’d made the personal commitment
that my priority ought to be on the workforce. I knew that there were
some morale issues. I knew that from a leadership standpoint, communication
with the people, the men and women of NASA was critical during this
transition period. So I never turned down, to my knowledge, any invitation
to go speak to a group of NASA civil servants.
I set up meetings to go to as many of the program offices as possible,
and, of course, the workforce was voracious for information, and I
gave them as much as I could. I tried to enter into what I would call
a moral covenant, both with the workforce at large and with all the
senior leaders. I said, “I’m going to be as honest, as
forthcoming as possible. My quid pro quo, my moral covenant, is that
when I ask that you treat information in a sensitive fashion, please
respect that.” And I’m pleased to tell you that, probably
to the chagrin of Keith Cowling, who coordinated the NASA Watch, that
I really can’t recall anything that ended up on NASA Watch of
any particular sensitive nature. [The] relationship that I had with
the men and women at NASA [was] based on [mutual] trust [and so] those
things that really were sensitive and still were being thought through
and weren’t ready for prime time, people respected [the need
for confidentiality] and held back.
Of course, I was subject to more rumors than I care to remember. I
think I was supposed to be Administrator or Deputy Administrator on
several occasions. But [I was] in [a] good position when Sean became
Administrator [to] provide him [important] insights [into the agency
based on] the level of trust with the workforce that is so critical
to providing the type of support an Administrator needs from his or
her Chief of Staff.
Wright: When
Mr. O’Keefe came on board, how did your duties change and what
were some of your major focuses that you wanted to help [with to ensure]
a smooth transition?
Stadd: Well,
of course, Sean had such excellent working relations with the White
House, that a lot of the interference work I was doing between Dan
Goldin, who was a holdover from the Clinton administration, and the
White House was no longer needed as much. Sean had walk-in rights
into the Oval Office; I mean, within constraints. Like everybody else,
he had to make appointments and so forth, but he did not need me to
make appointments to go in and see the Vice President and see the
Director of OMB and other staff people in the West Wing.
So my White House liaison became a bit more classical, which was to
focus primarily on personnel matters, [such as] recruiting, in coordination
with the Administrator, our political appointees. I was responsible
for ensuring that whatever events that we did in coordination with
the White House, [such as visits by the astronauts to the Oval Office,
were] effectively supported.
And I must say that this President really enjoys meeting with the
astronauts. I don’t mean this to be a partisan observation,
I think it’s a statement of fact, but I found from speaking
to some of the astronauts that the previous Administration, when there
were photo ops [opportunities] in the Oval Office, they were a very
quick in and out [operation]. With this President, [however], he spends
quality time [with the astronauts]. I remember the first crew that
I brought in—I think it was the Ken [Kenneth D.] Cockrell crew,
if I remember correctly—I think they were scheduled for fifteen
minutes, and for a President who prides himself on being punctual,
I think we were in there for about thirty, thirty-five minutes. He
was very, very interested in the crew and the mission and so forth.
But Sean was able to handle a lot of the heavy-lifting [involving]
White House interaction, which, by the way, is what an agency head
is expected to do. So my White House liaison function really migrated
more, as I said, to more of a classical White House liaison model.
Then as Chief of Staff, my job fell to [assisting O’Keefe who
was] new to the space area. [When] he was on the Senate appropriations
[committee, O’Keefe] had some involvement in helping provide
the funds for the replacement vehicle for Challenger, so he’d
had some [exposure to space issues] but he was certainly brand new
to NASA and brand new to the space community. And I’d been in
the community for some decades, so I was able to bring him insight
into the people, into the issues. And, of course, at that point I’d
spent a year at the agency, so I had the working knowledge of the
people and the issues that I was able to pass on to him.
Speaking of [personnel issues], frankly, one of the major events I
was involved in was facilitating, shall we say, the departure of the
previous Johnson Space Center Director, George [W.S.] Abbey, who had
been there during a lengthy period of time. Mr. Abbey had worked very
closely with the previous Administrator. Johnson Space Center is very
critical, played a very critical role vis-à-vis the Space Station,
Space Shuttle, both of which represented huge impacts on the budget.
[My involvement] in putting new management down at Johnson Space Center
was a great assist [to] Mr. O’Keefe in terms of relieving him
of what could have been one major personnel challenge down there.
So I helped on that and basically acted as the connective tissue to
assure there was effective transition between [that of his predecessor
and O’Keefe’s tenure].
I assured all the AAs, all the Assistant and the Associate Administrators,
that they would have their opportunity to make their case, for their
program and for their continuing on, to the Administrator, and I hope
and I believe that I delivered on that promise that I made to the
AAs.
Wright: You
also assisted in bringing Fred Gregory in as Deputy Administrator.
Stadd: I did.
Let me clarify on that front. I had recommended to [Acting Administrator]
Dan Mulville that Fred Gregory be a placeholder AA for Space Flight.
By no means did we envision Fred continuing on in that position. [In
fact, I understood that he was actively considering retiring from
the agency. Of course, making such an appointment was the] prerogative
of the new Administrator [but] I [for one] did not in any shape or
form envision Fred as the Deputy Administrator. [With that said],
he’s a very fine individual; he’s a hero; he’s a
patriot, [and we had recommended strongly that the Office of the Administrator
urgently needed to recruit more minorities as role models for young
people. It is certainly the right of an Administrator to pursue a
personnel strategy that fits his or her particular agenda.]
Wright: During
your first year, back at NASA, the tragic events of 9/11/2001 occurred,
and government agencies throughout the country had their security
measures impacted. Can you tell us how NASA reacted and responded
to these new events in the country?
Stadd: [On
the day of 9/11] I was standing in the Administrator’s office,
and you have a view of the Pentagon in the distance, and I was standing
with [Administrator Goldin]. CNN [Cable News Network] was showing
the imagery of the World Trade Center’s having been attacked
by the airplanes, and while I was standing with Dan, we felt the ground
vibrate. Now, remember, we’re at least a mile and a half to
two miles away from the Pentagon. And then we began to see a little
bit of smoke curling up from the [other side of the] Pentagon. We
had no idea, of course, what had happened. A few minutes later, CNN
reported that a commercial airliner had gone into the Pentagon.
The Administrator and myself, Rich [Richard] Williams, the Chief Medical
Officer, literally walked to every office at Headquarters to ensure
that people knew what the situation. [We informed them that if they
wanted to leave, they were free to do so; otherwise, they were welcome
to stay in the building, which was probably the safest place to be
given the traffic gridlock that was quickly emerging in the D.C. area.]
I thought Goldin demonstrated tremendous leadership [on that day].
Our biggest job that day was to ensure that people knew that the front
office was providing the support that they needed.
Now, again, in typical NASA fashion, we had quickly, on the spot,
working with Dave Saleeba, [our head of security], determined that
we would let certain floors out in [a given] order, so that there
would not be chaos in the garage. At the same time, I was on the phone
with the Office of Personnel Management, and while I was [discussing
this situation with] OPM, which was one of the critical [agency] nodes
in terms of dealing with emergency situations, I was informed that
the local Council of Governments had indicated that the government
was closing down and that personnel were free to leave. So suddenly,
we were confronted with chaos and people were leaving; [in an] orderly
[manner], I might add, but nonetheless, people were leaving in droves
from all the floors, resulting in some chaos in the garage. Dave Saleeba
had the presence of mind to go downstairs to the garage and have people
turn their cars off so we didn’t have the added problem of [potential]
carbon monoxide poisoning.
I must say that I can only think of one individual who came close
to being anywhere near panicked and demonstrating close to a semi-hysterical
behavior. Everybody that I dealt with in the agency, with that one
exception, were very professional and very deliberate.
We learned some [valuable lessons]. We learned that the public address
system in the building was useless. It turned out that our public
address system had been put in by Boston Properties that owned the
building at the time, and it really was intended [primarily] for fire
alarm[-related] emergencies. The only way to access the public address
system was to go down into the lobby. So I brought the Administrator
down, but when we activated the public address system, the siren went
off. So we shut that down quickly, because we realized that that would
simply exacerbate the sense of crisis and emergency in the building,
and that’s why we ended up walking to every office.
[So] one lesson learned [that day] was the need to install ways for
the Administrator and the front office to communicate to everyone.
Eventually, I stood up, under the auspices of the Deputy Administrator,
managed by Jim [James] Frelk, who’s the Director of Headquarters
Operations, a plan that was intended to put in place communication
technologies to allow the Administrator to communicate with everyone
in the building. That was still a work in progress when I left the
agency, but—fingers crossed—they have that in place. So
that was one major lesson learned from that experience.
Wright: After
Mr. O’Keefe took his position and a new normalcy—if that
can be a word used for that office—began, one of the tasks that
you assumed in April 2002 was to be in charge of the task force involved
with Freedom to [Manage]—tell us about this program and how
you became involved and what were some of your goals that you wanted
to accomplish.
Stadd: I will,
but, again, if I may, make one other comment. I also had to deal with
the anthrax threat in the weeks following 9/11, and I want to take
a moment to give tribute to Rich Williams. We really were blessed.
Rich Williams was the one individual that I encouraged the [incoming]
Administrator to allow me to hire sight unseen. Rich was a flight
surgeon from the Air Force and was immensely qualified to be our Chief
Medical Officer. [He] had another job offer and was in a situation
where he really needed to get a commitment from the agency, even before
Sean came over. Sean said [to me], “Based on your description,
run, don’t walk; hire this guy.”
Rich really proved his mettle in this anthrax situation. He had been
through [Operation] Desert Storm, so he had actually been in the field,
under the threat of biological attack, so he brought immense credibility
to the podium when we held town meetings with the Headquarters personnel.
We actually had a spore found, a couple of spores, I think, in our
correspondence unit, as I recall, so he was there to allay people’s
fears, provide a bedside manner that was very calming, and to very
carefully explain what anthrax was all about and the symptoms and
how to deal with it.
So as I think about my two and a half years at NASA, that wedge of
time really did coincide with some extraordinary events. Although
they were events that all of us in this nation could have done without,
it really did bring the best out of people.
F2M, or Freedom to Manage, is a derivative of an initiative that was
coined by the President himself. There’s a pending piece of
legislation in Congress that was introduced the first year of the
administration that refers to flexibility in management. I forget
the exact nomenclature. But it was the President’s view that
so much of government is encumbered by rules, regulations, laws that
probably warrant going back to and reviewing whether, in fact, they’re
still needed. Some of them go back decades, and in many cases, people
probably don’t even remember why they put them in place to begin
with….
Well, for whatever reason, the legislation hasn’t gotten a lot
of standing on the Hill. It does, I guess, represent a bit of a threat
to some of the rice bowls on the Hill and so forth. But nonetheless,
it didn’t prevent those of us in the executive branch from proceeding
with our own variation of that theme, and at NASA we did so in the
form of Freedom to Manage.
[W.] Brian Keegan, who was the former Chief Engineer, was appointed
by Sean to head up the first Freedom to Manage, did a commendable
job until he retired. I think he [managed F2M] for a [few] months.
Then Sean came to me and asked me to replace Brian.
As was typical of my conversations with Sean, we talked no more than
maybe ten minutes, fifteen minutes. We understood one another, and
I had a good sense of where he wanted to go with this. Basically,
his charge to me was, “Stand this thing up, be aggressive, be
proactive, and I want to give license to every person at NASA to go
back and feel free to come forward with a policy, a regulation, even
a law, they regard as impeding their ability to do their job. Then
you have this group review it on its merits, and if you find that
there are regulations, rules, and laws that need revisiting, we’ll
do it. Okay?”
So I went about restructuring the group. I purposely named myself
co-chair and didn’t set it up with a chairman and a vice chairman.
I wanted my co-chair to be a senior career civil servant. Then I went
about purposely populating the team—I kept a number of the people
that Brian Keegan had staffed up, but I brought in others as well,
all of whom represented senior civil servants, career people, from
HR, Procurement, the Budget Office, External Relations. People like
me come and go as a political appointee but [I wanted to the convey
to the workforce that] their colleagues in the career workforce take
this seriously, and to the extent to which I could make the civil
servants on the team believe that this was a serious long-term effort,
I believe that would make my job a lot easier in convincing the rest
of the workforce.
I also was sensitive to the fact that Headquarters has a much-deserved
reputation—I’m talking about “Headquarters”
over the decades—for engaging in “flavor of the month”
and [thereby] driving [the Field] Centers [to distraction]. So just
as Centers drive Headquarters crazy sometimes, I am very sympathetic
[to the perception at] the field Center level that some of the initiatives
that come out of Headquarters don’t seem to make a lot of sense
or have a half-life sometimes measured in months. [For example, there
are situations where] Headquarters would ask a field Center or all
the Centers to turn the world upside down to execute a given Headquarters
initiative, and after the Centers have saluted and reorganized their
resources accordingly, then right in the middle of it, Headquarters
tend to stop things and reverse course. So I knew I had a bit of an
uphill challenge in convincing the field Centers that this [latest
Headquarters’ initiative] was serious.
We rolled up our sleeves. We immediately went to work to address some
of the issues that had been addressed by Brian’s group. They
had sent a survey out and so forth. It was my sense, frankly, for
the reasons I just alluded to, I didn’t think the field Centers
really took this Freedom to Manage very seriously. I think putting
me in as a direct report—well, Brian was, but I think putting
me in as the [Chairman, given my other responsibilities as] White
House Liaison [and] Chief of Staff, probably helped give this a little
more prominence, if you will. Therefore, I think people took it a
little more seriously, I think.
I also believed in what [the Administrator and I] called the power
of small examples. That is, one way to build credibility is to do
something, no matter how modest, that would demonstrably improve the
quality of an employee’s environment. [For example], we would
talk about trying to act as a one NASA community and yet, up until
recently, if you showed up with a badge from another field Center
to Headquarters, you had to sign in as if you were a complete outsider.
So it sent a very negative message. Working with Dave Saleeba, under
Freedom to Manage, we changed that so that now your NASA badge, be
it from Johnson Space Center, Marshall, Langley [Research Center,
Hampton, Virginia], any of the Centers, it is treated the same as
a Headquarters badge.
There was another [situation] that a rather larger issue that we tackled
in order to demonstrate credibility. It had been a source of great
frustration to officials around the agency that they could not easily
reprogram travel funds. That is, after you ran through your travel
budget, you were prevented, without going through a lot of “Mother,
may I?’s” and incurring a lot of transaction costs, to
reprogram your money for travel and so forth.
Well, we, under Freedom to Manage, did some excavation and found out
that that [impediment] went back to a law that was [pushed] many,
many years ago by a very disgruntled staff person and a member [of
Congress] who [had a bone to pick with] NASA. We were the only agency
that was under that constraint. That staff person, that member, they
[are now] long gone. And we so changed it. We went up and we actually,
in the last legislative cycle managed to successfully turn that around.
[After] a few months had passed and we had actually changed, reformed
some things, some small, some big, and I felt we had gathered enough
credible evidence of how serious we were, [I felt we now needed to
go out] and face the workers at the field Centers [in the form of]
town meetings. We put together a very short video that had an excerpt
from the Administrator talking about the importance of Freedom to
Manage, [as well as] an excerpt from the President talking about Freedom
to Manage, and then I brought [out] my colleagues on the team. We
spent about forty minutes under each of the categories, of HR, Procurement,
etc., showing what concrete things we had done. Each time, I asked
the Director to introduce us, sit with us.
At the first Center we went to, we had a very large crowd. I found
out later on that all the workers were directed to come. It was done
with the best of intentions by the Director’s office. From then
forward, I said, no. [I made the point that even] if I only had [one
or] two people in the audience [who came voluntarily], that [would]
tell me I got one person [who] really believe in what we’re
trying to do, because if I can convince that one person in the audience,
they will go back and, around the [proverbial] water cooler, convert
six people. I’d rather have six people who are genuinely committed
than three or four hundred people in an auditorium who are there under
duress. [I am proud to say that] we had standing room in almost every
town meeting we went to.
When I got to the podium after the directors—and the directors
were wonderful, to a person, in their support they gave this—I
would always tell the workforce that people like me, [that is, political
appointees], are a dime a dozen; we come and go. “I’m
going to ask you, please, to give me forty minutes, try to make a
case why I think you ought to take this seriously and then we’ll
open up the mikes [microphones], and take whatever questions you have.”
And they gave me that forty minutes. So by the time we got to open
mike, I think people really were convinced that “These people
aren’t kidding around; they are serious.”
Then I remember also one of the first town meetings, somebody got
up, reminded me that there’s a Whistleblower Protection Act,
and I was somewhat [taken aback]. I said, “Well, I’m familiar
with that, but you don’t have to worry about it.” It gave
me some inkling how tentative people really were, how concerned they
were about stepping out and really expressing their true feelings.
So I tried to create an atmosphere where they all felt comfortable
saying whatever they wanted to say, however critical.
We also had, after that session, which usually lasted about an hour—I
tried to be sensitive to people having their other jobs that we were
competing with—each of the issue experts on my team [would]
moderate a [special side] panel later in the day with whoever was
interested in showing up. And often those were crowded as well.
We ended up, as a result of visiting all these Centers, with a little
under a thousand inputs. [The F2M team would also] have video cons
[conferences] once a week. They’d go for a couple of hours.
We [also] set up a website that was user-friendly. It took us a while
to get there, but we did. People like Sue Garman, Lynda L. Haines,
Greg [W.] Hayes, Jim [James W.] Kennedy, who’s now at Kennedy
Space Center were [invaluable to our team’s success].
What I also would tell the workforce at the town meetings is that
“If you ever allow me back, when I’m a civilian, [and]
give me the privilege of visiting your Centers, if I see that [F2M
has] become a coffee mug or a key chain, I know we will have failed.
But if I come here and whatever [label] a future [NASA] administration
[puts on F2M], if the janitor, the executive assistant, the chief
engineer, the Center Director, feels that they are free to say [that]
something is dumb, question it, and go to this Freedom to Manage-type
forum and seek action [to fix it], that to me will be the greatest
legacy of all.”
And I’m proud to tell you that through the leadership of Lynda
Haines and Sue Garman and company, it does continue. And, in fact,
occasionally I get e-mails—and I got one just two days ago—that
the Freedom to Manage was able to turn around a regulation that prevented
NASA employees from taking a government car to their house, even though
it might be a more efficient use of their time in order to get to
a meeting or whatever. This is of particular relevance to people who
work at our more remote sites—Wallops [Flight Facility, Wallops
Island, Virginia], Dryden [Flight Research Center, Edwards, California],
White Sands [Test Facility, Las Cruces, New Mexico], to name three
examples. We had people driving unbelievable hours in order simply—they
went to their house, they’d have to double back to the Center,
pick up a car, go back again. And I think any commonsensical taxpayer
would be aghast because actually, at the end of the day, [this nonsensical
regulation was generating additional] costs. So we put the regulation
out for comment and I was informed that, as of now, we’ve changed
it.
We probably have made hundreds of changes, some small, some big. As
a result of Freedom to Manage, Center Directors no longer have to
do a “Mother, may I?” with Headquarters in terms of making
organizational changes. Obviously, if they [involve] serious and significant
changes, they would do well to inform the Associate Administrator
of these changes, but it’d gotten to a point where they were
being so micromanaged that it really was reaching absurd levels.
We encountered a lot of silly stuff that was encumbering people’s
ability to do their job. I knew we were making progress when in places
like Stennis [Space Center, Mississippi], where we do a lot of our
engine testing, that the gentleman out there who heads that test stand,
where you have the engineers and technicians out there, would hand
in inputs over things they thought were silly and could be changed.
He said this was marvelous because it really rejuvenated a lot of
his folks. It’s probably the one initiative that I’m the
proudest of, frankly, because I know it will live on through the good
efforts of the civil servants.
The other thing that I did was encourage, not direct, but just encourage
the Center Directors to consider whether perhaps maybe it might make
sense to have a local Freedom to Manage group, but only if it made
sense. And sure enough, these little [F2M] groups began to crop up,
at Glenn [Research Center, Cleveland, Ohio], at Ames [Research Center,
Moffett Field, California], at Marshall, Johnson Space Center, Langley
and others. [The Center leadership realized that] there are a number
of issues that are local, don’t need to be brought up to the
Headquarters, federal level, and that’s been a wonderful thing
to watch as well.
I remember one Center Director told me that some of his most cynical
employees came up to him after [one of] our town meetings and said,
“You know, I think this is one Headquarters initiative that
we actually believe might actually be working.”
Wright: How
was the Freedom to Manage initiative affected by the Columbia accident?
Stadd: Well,
as you might expect, our energy went into the recovery effort, and
it was my feeling that given the fact that that was our priority,
I did not want to divert—as important as Freedom to Manage is,
I did not want to divert people’s time into that effort. [I
felt it was better to] free them up to focus on the most important
item at that time, which was the Columbia recovery.
I also thought, frankly, it might be a bit inappropriate [to pursue
F2M] in the weeks and months after this disaster. The Columbia was
very much an open wound within the agency, and focusing on reorgs
[reorganizations] and streamlining regulations and policies seemed
a bit unseemly to me. I asked my colleagues, the civil servants, to
“Please keep your ear to the ground for me, so I don’t
have a tin ear, and let me know when you think the timing is okay
to resurrect the group.”
There were still Freedom to Manage efforts ongoing but in a more low
key manner. [I understand that some of the] local [F2M] groups at
the Centers still were doing their thing. I’d be remiss if I
didn’t say that Greg Reck was my co-chair. I’d known Greg
for many, many years. He just retired last year. And he just did really
a masterful job of trying to keep [F2M] afoot. I did not have time,
personally, to focus on it for a couple of months. But when we did
finally come together, people were ready and able to reengage and,
as I said a few moments ago, as I sit here, after having left the
agency, it’s still continuing in earnest; still having impact,
from what I’m told.
Wright: You
did make that decision to leave the agency and return to private business.
Can you tell us why you felt this was a good time for you to leave
the agency?
Stadd: Well,
to begin with, when I headed up the transition, as I said earlier
in the interview, I anticipated only staying with the transition for
about a month and going back to my other job. I then decided that
it would be a great honor and made a lot of sense to go in and help
ensure that the transition book was properly executed and that I could
provide a role, hopefully, in providing a smooth transition in the
role as [both] Chief of Staff [and] White House Liaison. [Again, I
thought that my tenure at NASA Headquarters] would be measured in
a few months. [I] never expected that it would take until November
2001 [before the White House would name a successor to Dan Goldin].
Because of my checkered entrepreneurial background, I do not have
a lot of [financial] resources [to fall back on. Further], I was looking
at the prospect of my oldest daughter heading to college, [with] the
youngest one not too far behind. Money was really a paramount issue
so it was constantly on my mind about when the timing would be best.
[I was also] frustrated by the fact that I absolutely loved working
in the agency and working with the people. The challenges and so forth
were tremendous. And I knew, as I said in my farewell remarks, it
was one of those jobs where you know that it will never get better,
that you will look back and be nostalgic. I just love the people at
the agency. It’s a remarkable group of people. I’ve never
worked with such a group of people. I never will again. It’s
just the nature of the types of people that come to work at NASA.
So I’m caught. If I was a millionaire, I’d still be there,
but I wasn’t, and I was caught between the burn rate [affecting
my financial resources] and [that] I really liked working at the agency.
[We] did not have a new Administrator announced until November. I
remember telling my wife, “Good news, bad news. The good news
is, there’s a new Administrator who’s been announced.
The bad news is that he’s asked me to stay, and that we actually
get along [well] with one another.” So we talked about it and
agreed that it probably made sense for me to stay on longer [while
we tried to make our savings stretch a bit longer].
I want to say at this point in the interview that I really cherish
the friendship that I was able to develop with Dan Goldin. I became
really very impressed with his technical prowess. Intellectually,
he’s quite a brilliant guy and there were aspects of his personality
that I feel really bad that a number of people never saw. He loved
kids, and he was very strong on education. I really learned a lot
of things working with him, and we did develop a friendship and it’s
one that continues to this day.
When Sean asked me to stay on, I said, “I’ll be the easiest
person you’ve ever had on staff in the sense of I will leave
at a moment’s notice. I’m here as long as you think, and
as I think, I’m providing value added. Short of that, I’m
out the door.” So he came in knowing my situation, but that
I would make every effort to stay as long as I could.
Some months prior to Columbia I came to see him and I said, “Sean,
my rubber band, [in terms of my money situation], has broken. I have
got to look at an exit and work with you to try to ensure that I get
a successor in place,” and so forth.
He said, “Okay.” He was very kind, encouraged me [situation].
As a university professor, he also doesn’t have a lot of resources
to work with and empathized with my situation.
So we went through the holidays, and around the time of the Columbia
accident, I was in the midst of thinking through, okay, here’s
my exit strategy, and planning [accordingly]. And [then] Columbia
happened. Of course [all my exit planning] went out the window, and
it wasn’t really until May that I really felt that things were
sufficiently in hand, that Sean had his feet firmly planted in terms
of what he wanted to do with the agency, and that we at that point
had built up the team sufficiently that I could walk out the door
with my head held up high, feeling that I had done what I was asked
to do. So it was May when the announcement was made.
It was unfortunate. You have sometimes limited control over timing,
but it was around the time [my departure] was announced, that Art
[Arthur G.] Stephenson, the Director of Marshall, also announced that
he was leaving. But I think enough people knew around Washington that
[I] had been thinking about leaving some time prior [to the Columbia
tragedy and so therefore my leaving] was not [in any way associated
with the Columbia investigation]. I want to add that Art really had
been at Marshall for about, I think, five, six years at that point,
and really had been thinking about a departure [for some period of
time as well. From his standpoint, in the wake of the tragedy], it
just made sense, for a new director to be named.
These are very difficult decisions. The press always tries to come
up with these conspiracy-related [motivations] and so forth, but,
as I said to one of the NPR [National Public Radio] reporters, sometimes
the facts are as boringly straightforward as they appear. [Former
Shuttle program manager] Ron [Ronald D.] Dittemore [is another example
of an official who] had been talking about leaving long before Columbia.
People [like Art and Ron] stayed to a certain critical point in the
recovery period and then very smoothly handed the baton—at least,
I feel they did—to their successors. So I think that went as
well as it did.
I hated leaving. There were a lot of things I still would have loved
to have done, but it was time for me. I think if there’s any
pattern in my career, I’m somebody that likes to go in, troubleshoot,
get something in place, and then once I see it more or less working,
I then have to move on.
This doesn’t suggest that this agency is not confronted by some
extraordinarily profound challenges and that there aren’t some
other fundamental personnel and other programmatic changes that have
to take place, but life is short. I’ve got other obligations,
too, that I owe the family. I’ve spent almost over a decade
in public service in one way or another, which means at least a decade
of barely seeing the family. A lot of people are in that boat and
a lot of people have different levels of tolerances for it, and I
admire the sacrifice that I see, but Courtney Stadd had reached his
level of tolerance. I’m actually pleased that I made the decision
when I did.
I also want to say that the farewell that I was given, and I had the
honor of sharing my farewell event with the great Dr. Jerry [Jeremiah
F.] Creedon, former Director of Langley Research Center, [who], at
that time of the farewell event, was the Associate Administrator for
Technology. [Jerry’s an] unbelievable person [who] worked forty
years at NASA. And the [positive audience] reaction we got from the
NASA community [at the farewell ceremony] was extraordinary. I [now]
understand why, once you’re with NASA, be it two and a half
years or forty years, you’re always with NASA. So, with great
pride, I was initiated into the NASA Alumni League and I carry the
card with great pride.
Wright: Unfortunately,
we’ve reached the time limit for today. Are there any other
thoughts that you want to add before we close this session out?
Stadd: Sure,
and if—I’m just looking at the time—if you want
to go a little further on the commercial stuff, but that’s up
to you, but if you have run out of your energy, because I made a little
bit of change over there, so I’ve got a little more time, half
an hour, forty-five minutes, if you have the energy level.
Wright: We’re
going to stop for just a minute, though.
[Tape recorder
turned off.]
Wright: Before
we close today, let’s talk some about NASA and the commercialization
of space. While you were at the agency, share with us what ventures,
or not ventures, that occurred during that time period.
Stadd: During
Dan Goldin’s tenure, given my commercial [space] background,
the Administrator asked me if I would form a team and ensure that
the commercial practices and policies at NASA were properly aligned
with the congressional laws and with the philosophical spirit behind
the incoming administration’s views on commercialization. And
so I did that, working with people like George [D.] Baker and others
at Headquarters, [as well as] Scott Pace, who at that point, as I
recall, had gone to OSTP [Office of Science and Technology Policy].
He was Director of [Aeronautics and] Astronautics. So I was still
working with Scott, even though he was over at the White House. [After
about a year], I finally got him back as my Deputy Chief of Staff
at NASA Headquarters. Scott played a very important role in supporting
my efforts in commercialization. [We] put together an internal document
that ensured the type of alignment that the Administrator was looking
for.
I [also recall being] approached by a private-sector company called
Team Encounter. Team Encounter was financed in part by a gentleman
who paid one of my first paychecks in commercial space back in the
seventies. His name is David Hannah. David Hannah is in his eighties.
He is one of the great pioneers in commercial space. He’s a
lifelong friend of the Bush family. He was also the chairman and the
financier behind Space Services, which launched the Conestoga private
rocket off Texas back in ’82, as I recall. I was working with
the competing commercial rocket company, [located in California].
We take great pride in having launched the first completely privately
built rocket. David Hannah and his team, with Deke [Donald K.] Slayton,
the late astronaut, who was leading that effort, launched a refurbished
Minuteman government rocket, but they did so on a privately financed
basis and certainly deserve their place in history.
[Anyway], when [Hannah] and his people approached me, they were financing,
developing something called Team Encounter, which is a solar sail
venture that is slated for launch in the next two years; I think 2005,
if my memory serves. I believe it will launch on an Ariane rocket.
They came wondering if there might be some experiments that we might
be willing to put on the rocket. It was very intriguing, and I said
to the representatives of the company that I’d be very pleased
to introduce them to Ed [Edward J.] Weiler, who I happen to be personally
a great fan of. He’s Associate Administrator for Space Science.
Ed is one of our best managers at NASA. He’s also one of our
toughest. And I told them that if you can get past Ed Weiler, then
you stand a very good chance of perhaps finding an experiment where
the agency might be willing to fund it and have it put on their venture.
There was a gentleman that was involved with the effort in a senior
capacity who I’d known over the years, who I did not trust.
So I had one condition, which was that that individual would never
enter the building associated with this project as long as I was in
the job, and they held to that. I said, “I want to see your
engineers; I don’t want to see the marketing guy,” the
one I had in mind. And they held to their promise. They brought in
some very good engineers. I put them in touch with Ed Weiler. His
[technical people] sent them through the wringer. They passed with
flying colors, and within the past two months, the agency announced
that they were going to be putting a space science experiment on Team
Encounter, paying about $6 million for it, and it’s a wonderful
example of partnership with the private sector.
[Now] this is a [NASA] experiment [where] the odds are it would probably
not have launched because of the cost of getting to orbit. It’s
an interesting experiment; it’s an important experiment, but
it wasn’t exactly a priority experiment, and this was really
an opportunity, a target of convenience [involving] this Team Encounter,
because they were building a space vehicle on their own dime, and
for minimal cost. I just think it’s a great example.
It’s one of the first times that the Office of Space Science
has ever partnered with the commercial sector, so I’m hoping
it’ll establish a useful precedent, because I’m sure all
corners of NASA were rather stunned to see Space Science, of all things,
entering into this commercial arrangement with the private sector.
So I take great pride in helping facilitate and support that.
The other area of involvement had to do with something we called the
Enterprise Engine. It was my feeling and it was Scott Pace’s
feeling that the agency needed to think out of the box about how we
could more effectively align [NASA’s] future requirements with
innovation from the private sector, so we suggested something we called
the Enterprise Engine. [The idea was that it] would take a modest
amount of money, a few million dollars, and would identify some promising
ventures and see whether, through some rigorous selection criteria,
in order to avoid conflicts of interest and be sure this was done
in an open and fair fashion, identify potential technologies that
the agency could leverage and therefore save the agency money and
also inject innovation into the process.
My understanding is that the Enterprise Engine did get some funding
on the order of, I think, about four or five million….
We ran into great resistance within the bureaucracy. The tech [technical]
transfer people felt this was a bit of a threat; didn’t really
understand it. There was a lot of resistance. But the agency needs
to do more of these out-of-the box experiments, in the case of dealing
with commercialization. The problem is that there’s a dearth
of people [in NASA] who [have] come from the private sector [and]
who have [relevant] business experience. [The absence of such expertise]
is a real impediment to dealing with commercialization.
The current Administrator, Sean O’Keefe, it became clear to
me in discussions with him, doesn’t really have an extensive
commercial background. I mean, he sat on some corporate boards. He’s
a conservative Republican and he certainly believes in the private
sector, but he, I think, really believed that the agency should focus
more on research development and leave it to the private sector to
take what they consider to be technology that they can productize
and let them go off and deploy the magic of the marketplace.
I tend to be a bit more proactive, largely because my background is
mostly entrepreneurial/commercial, and I know how frustrating it is
to deal with the agency in commercial areas. It’s gotten better.
It still can be frustrating. But he was Administrator and, frankly,
you know, he by no means discourages commercialization. I mean, he’s
a big supporter of it. But in his defense, he did have a lot of challenges,
had a lot of challenges, to deal with pre-Columbia, let alone post
the Columbia accident. So I [suppose it is] understand[able] that
commercialization simply didn’t get the priority standing that
it might have under a different type of leadership.
Wright: Your
interest in space commercialization lasted for, well, more than three
decades. Tell us why your interest continues and where your energy
and enthusiasm is going to go now.
Stadd: Well,
there are days when, if I’d had any inkling of the tribulations,
the frustrations, and the lack of robustness in the commercial space
market in the year 2003, I’m not so sure I would have pursued
it. But perhaps it was a blessing that I didn’t know, because
those three decades have given me adventures and experiences and relationships
with an extraordinary group of people that would be rare, I suspect,
to find in any other industry sector.
I’m forty-nine so [when I saw] 2001[: A Space] Odyssey [when
it first came out it] had a big impact on me. And if you look at a
lot of men and women of my age and peel back their interest in space,
Stanley Kubrick [and] Arthur C. Clarke, played a [big] role [in shaping
our vision of space]—coming [as it did] in the wake [of] Mercury,
Gemini, and Apollo [heroes]. So if you can do more than fog a mirror
and you had interest in the future, space was the place to go.
We all agreed, believed—I believed—that in the year 2003,
the question would be, “Do I vacation with the family in Key
West [Florida] or do I spend a few more years, save up the money,
and take that excursion to the Moon that Uncle Harry and family just
took and was just bragging about?” We really thought—I
thought—in the year 2003, that we would have not only commercial
hotels and things of that sort in Earth orbit, at least at some preliminary
level, but mining of asteroids and so forth would be if not a common
occurrence, at least, again, we’d be at the beginning stages
of mining the resources of space.
I guess what’s astounding to me is that the cost to orbit [has
remained as] dramatically high and expensive as it has been for the
past thirty years. [We’ve] seen very little change in the cost
[of access to space]. Given the dearth of [truly] successful commercial
space enterprises, [beyond space communications], it is amazing to
me that any of us still continue [in this business]. [Laughs] But
what keeps me going and keeps other people I’m aware of is really
a belief, a very strong belief that space does offer a couple of fundamental
benefits.
Number one, I’m very much a believer in the survival argument.
This planet has seen global species terminated by—depending
on what theory you believe—by asteroids and so forth from outer
space. We have no protective mechanism today to prevent something
like that from happening. We’ve also proven as a species to
be pretty talented at doing considerable damage to our own god-given
environments, and, of course, there’s, unfortunately, no end
to humankind’s imagination when it comes to warring on one another
and representing lethal threats on a global basis. So I am a charter
member of the club that believes that space does offer an opportunity
for our species to establish ourselves on other surfaces beyond the
Earth. So, if nothing else, as an insurance policy to continue our
species, I think exploring space is critical.
Secondly, I do believe that we don’t have an inkling as to what
the opportunities are commercially. Yes, we have spent decades doing
microgravity experiments, finding that in most cases we can do them
more effectively on Earth, [especially] given the costs. But I think
that demonstrates a lack of imagination by the critics. Again, Arthur
Clarke had it right, I think, fifty years ago, when he was writing
about the medicinal benefits of Earth orbit, of being in an environment
where you’re in a low-G environment and you [are liberated from]
this tremendous gravity factor that presses in our cardiovascular
system. So he enumerated a whole number of human diseases that would
be relieved in a zero-G or low-G environment. We haven’t even
scratched the surface in terms of medical therapies that would benefit
from space, let alone scratch the surface in terms of using the low-G
environment for insight into different diseases, like cancer and so
forth.
I mentioned mining asteroids. It’s very clear to our scientists
that the asteroids are the source of valuable minerals, and there’s
no question that we will see space mining at some point.
I must tell you that I also have no question in my mind that there
is intelligence somewhere in the universe. I think that, as one of
my NASA colleagues says, “The last crumb of human arrogance
is to think that we’re alone.” Our telescopes are discovering
on a monthly basis, planets with atmospheres. When I was growing up,
the idea that you would find other solar systems, other planets with
atmospheres that might perhaps support life, was considered fantasy.
We have, as the late Carl Sagan would say, billions and billions of
galaxies, [that represent potential sources of life].
It’s rather interesting to live in an [age] where so many people
think perhaps we’re the only source of intelligence, because
it gives me some insight into the world that [Nicolas] Copernicus
and Galileo [Galilei] lived [in]. [I mean we] can’t imagine
how people would think the Earth was flat [or was the center of the
universe]. We can’t imagine why Galileo could conceivably be
so persecuted for what today we take for granted. And yet think about
it. Today we walk around absolutely convinced—many people do—that
we’re the only life available in the universe. And I’d
like to be as prepared as possible for what I think might be an inevitable
contact. It may take centuries, it may take millennia. I don’t
know. It may happen tomorrow.
You know, I disagree with many of my colleagues who say that exploration
is something that’s sort of built into societies, that you need
to explore; [that is part of] our DNA. There are many societies that
have opted not to [explore beyond their borders] and done okay, but
I think great societies, over the long period of time, need to explore.
I must tell you that although I do believe [the] Apollo landing on
the Moon will achieve recognition in history in generations, centuries
to come, I don’t think it will be the only [exploration for
which we will be known].
We obviously have explored the oceans. [But we are also on the cusp
of exploring the extraordinary potential of the nanoworld. We also]
spent a good part of the twentieth century plumbing the depths of
the human psyche. [In the world of] art, [we] went from representational
landscaping in the nineteenth century, portrait art, to plumbing the
symbolic depths of the human psyche. We’ve channeled our exploration
in lots of different ways, but I personally believe, from the standpoint
of maintaining a vital society and culture, that we need to reach
out [into the space frontier]. I also believe that it’s going
to take the entrepreneur [has a vital role to play in ensuring that
the space frontier is permanently settled].
I have left an agency that has many, many great facets. In Earth science,
we’re [responsible for] almost 85, 90 percent of global-change
research through our aircraft and our satellites. We’re at the
cutting edge of a lot of aeronautical technology, although personally
I’d like to see us double that budget. But nonetheless, we do
phenomenal work in aeronautics. In space science, we rewrite the textbooks
on a regular basis in terms of our knowledge of cosmology. Spaceflight
needs a lot of work and it’s going to take what we’ve
seen in the aeronautics and other sectors, real pathfinders, the Howard
Hughes of the world, [as well as NASA leadership, to introduce true
innovation into space transportation].
I’m involved in a number of commercial activities, but one of
them is something called Bigelow Aerospace. A gentleman by the name
of Robert [T.] Bigelow is a self-made billionaire in Nevada, who made
his money from the construction boom in Las Vegas. He’s also
a president [and] co-founder of the Budget Suite Hotels. Since his
teen years, he has wanted to pursue space. He decided in his fifties
that he’d made enough money to cover [his] family [and] cover
other things that he cared about. He’s taken a significant portion
of his wealth and devoted it to space commercialization. After a few
years of exploring different ventures, he fell onto one of my favorite
ventures at NASA, called TransHab. I’ve been a great believer
in inflatable technology since I was briefed on it by Dr. Lowell Wood,
when I was at the White House Space Council over a decade ago.
We terminated TransHab due to its—actually, my predecessors
terminated it just before I got to NASA, due to budget [and Congressional
concerns about the diversion of resources], not because of technical
reasons. But this gentleman, Mr. Bigelow, now has a Space Act agreement,
[as well as] an exclusive licensing agreement for the use of the TransHab
technology and is very aggressively developing these modules.
He called me shortly after I left NASA, [and he offered a job with
his company]. At first I was very reluctant. He explained his vision
to me [and] I was quite enamored with it. I said, “I’m
going to use my own tattered credit card and I’m going to go
out [to see your facility in Las Vegas] on my own nickel. I want to,
first of all, see what you’ve done, but I want to watch how
you interact with your engineering team.” [During my visit,
I was] very impressed [with what I saw].
I walked into this 40,000-square-[foot] facility and there were these
[test article] modules sitting in his plant. He intends to deploy
them by 2008 [or 2009. They have an extensive amount of volume] and
they represent low-cost technology. He has a formidable engineering
team that he’s building at a rapid pace. We’re not sure
who the [actual] customer base is yet—[although we have been
approached by various agencies with potential interest in placing
payloads on these modules].
The other thing that impressed me about him is that he’s a pragmatist.
He listens. He struck me as a very effective CEO, and he doesn’t
have unrealistic expectations. He’s in this for the rest of
his life. [And] he doesn’t walk around with artificial return-on-investment
horizons of three to five years.
So he’s asked me, [in my consulting capacity], to help him develop
the user base—universities, industry, including everything from
biotechnology to microgravity, Earth observation, agriculture, hotels,
space tourism. You name it. [It’s a] very exciting [opportunity].
It’ll have to be launched on the biggest expendable launch vehicles,
[such as the] Proton [or the] Atlas. Unfortunately, due to some very
poor decision making that we made in this government, we’re
captive in terms of humans going up and returning from the module
on the Russian Soyuz and the Progress. History will also not look
kindly on people who, some time ago, allowed this nation to end up
with the Shuttle as a single-point failure [with] our contingency
[being a vehicle owned by] a foreign country. Whether it be Russia,
France, or any other country, the point is that putting [one] self
in a position where [you find yourself reliant on] another government
[involving] something as critical as [transporting] people [to and]
from space is foolhardy.
I think people like me hopefully are a bit more realistic about [the
many challenges associated with developing the space frontier]. As
I’ve said before in the interview, translating theory into practice
in the space arena is formidable, but I believe that NASA plays an
important role, but I believe that, in my heart of hearts, particularly
after working at the agency, that when it comes to commercialization,
it’s going to take pathfinders like the Robert Bigelows, the
Elon Musks, and others out there who are the ones who are really going
to push the envelope.
The interesting point about commercialization of space is that we’re
actually approaching it much differently than we had anticipated thirty
years ago. A lot of us had anticipated more of a quantum leap in terms
of space factories and space transportation. But I almost see us crab-walk-wise
backing into developing a market place.
What do I mean by that? When you go back to the [Wilbur and Orville]
Wright brother era, [it] was followed by the barnstorming era, and
the barnstorming era was critical to educating and developing an informed
consumer base, [which] ultimately [supported a robust] commercial
aviation industry. [In the case of space commercialization, we skipped
that crucial consumer education step.] So [companies] like the zero-G
commercial enterprise that former astronaut Byron [K.] Lichtenberg,
former NASA official Alan Ladwig, the X-Prize promoter Peter [H.]
Diamandis, have formed, and I believe will be becoming operational
[sometime in the near future], will provide zero-G opportunities for
people to go fly in an airplane—I think it’s an L-1011—and
give them twenty-some-odd seconds of zero-G. I don’t know their
business plan, but I understand they may be reaching out to executives
and others. But that’s an important contribution to getting
people acclimated [to ultimately going into space].
One of the great honors I had at NASA was flying on a KC-135 and experiencing
the zero-G, and I can tell you that once you have that experience,
it’s pretty addictive. It’s another reason why I have
no doubt that the promise of space will be fulfilled at some point.
What motivates me also, to go back to your earlier question, is that
I’d like to be part of the generation that helped democratize
the opportunity for enjoying space. I may not live to see it, but
I’d at least like to be able to contribute to it. I’ve
yet to meet an astronaut who’s not frustrated by the fact that
he or she cannot share the experience with everybody else. Commercialization
offers that opportunity over time. Commercialization offers innovation,
because if you have commercialization, you’re going to have
competition, and if you’re going to have competition, you’re
going to have product differentiation. And one of the problems with
the civil space program today, the lack of competition means that
we end up with single-point failure access to space. We end up with
no contingencies, [for example], other than relying, in this case,
on the Russians.
There are people like Robert Bigelow out there who came to the conclusion
that they can’t wait; they can’t afford to be captive
to the government timeline. They’ve got to create their own
[space initiative]. And it is my hope that in working with him on
this, that we may create an opportunity, an interest in the marketplace,
that will encourage other people, like Elon Musk and other entrepreneurs,
and perhaps even the government, as appropriate, to provide the transportation
access and so forth that is required to assure we have the type of
robust commercial activity that a lot of us are convinced we will
see at some point.
But after thirty years, I must tell you that I can’t say with
the same level of confidence what I’ve said in my twenties,
that I necessarily will live to see it. But notwithstanding all the
challenges I’ve lived through the last three decades in the
business, my confidence has not been dampened. I still believe absolutely
that it will happen and I believe that strategically it is critical
that the United States be in the lead.
I must make another comment, which is that the U.S. aerospace industrial
capability is atrophying in the civil space. We’re increasingly
finding ourselves dependent on foreign sources. I believe that the
political system is in denial, because we’ve had no shortage
of commissions and studies that have documented this dire state of
affairs. I believe that the recent Chinese launch, which was an extraordinary
achievement by the Chinese. [I know that there are] people who think
[this exploit was equivalent to] going back to the future and [that]
it’s nothing [compared to what] we’re capable of doing.
Sure, but from the standpoint of what the Chinese invested and did
to get to achieve that successful orbit of that astronaut, it’s
really formidable.
New people, new countries, are taking the promise of space quite seriously.
History is replete with nations—[e.g.], Portugal, [and] Spain—[including]
China, [who had at one point in their history] led [world class] exploration
[expeditions] and [then] decided for their own peculiar, idiosyncratic
reasons to step back, [leaving] the vacuum [to be] filled by other
countries. How ironic [would it be for the] the United States, which,
in fact, [historically] filled the exploration vacuum left by other
countries would in turn [step back from space exploration—an]
area that we, along with the Russians, helped pioneer.
But as I have this discussion with you in November 2003, that is a
fear of mine, that if we don’t make very smart decisions that
help support our commercial people, that future [Americans] could
end up in a second-class situation vis-à-vis other space faring
powers.
But we’ve got the talent, and I believe that we do have the
leadership, if it’s properly harnessed, to ensure that doesn’t
happen. But [we’re at] a very critical decision point, [or]
window of opportunity, to determine what path we [ultimately] decide
to take.
Wright: It’s
like a very exciting time in your life, and we look forward to keeping
up with all that you’re going to be able to do the next decade.
Are there any other areas or thoughts you would like to offer at this
time before we close out the session?
Stadd: I would
say that, overall, that it was a great honor working at the agency,
that I thoroughly enjoyed working with the Administrators that I worked
with, the people at the agency, the Center Directors. I have lifelong
friends. [I] walked in convinced NASA plays a critical role; [and
I] walked away convinced that it plays a very critical role for society
in terms of investing in our future.
I do feel that it’s an agency that, as I said before, is confronting
a lot of serious challenges, and I am concerned that there is a need
for the political system to converge on a common path and give the
agency the support it needs. You know, agencies, like people, have
DNA, and NASA’s been living off a certain DNA structure for
many decades, and it is time to reengineer that DNA. The problem is
the political system has a noise-signal ratio today in terms of dealing
with the war on terrorism; the Iraq war; dealing with homeland security,
of course; dealing with economic issues, and NASA doesn’t get
quite the attention that I believe it really warrants. But I believe
this President, if provided with the appropriate road map by my former
colleagues will, I’m absolutely convinced, [provide he needed
vision and resources].
I believe we’ve got some very good members of Congress, Democrat
and Republican, willing to do it, but it’s going to take a real
active leadership, starting first and foremost with the current Administrator.
I certainly have him and have my former colleagues in my thoughts
and prayers.
But it’s been a great ride and, as you say, I look forward to
continuing my efforts in the space community in the years to come.
Wright: It
sounds like you have many adventures planned and, I’m sure,
many surprises around the corner.
Stadd: We
do. If I may have one more moment, one other project I’m working
on of great pride. I was called shortly before I left NASA, by a former
news producer at the local NBC-TV affiliate, who wants to do a documentary
on the Torah that Colonel Ramon took to space, and I immediately said,
“Absolutely. I’ll do whatever I can to help you.”
And since leaving NASA, I have been working with him as an associate
producer [and technical advisor] on the documentary. It’s been
a great adventure for me, because this little Torah that Ramon took
to space is [truly] a symbol of the triumph of the human spirit.
It’s a Torah that went from the depths of hell at Bergen-Belsen
[concentration camp in WWII], where the principal investigator on
one of the experiments for Ramon was given this Torah by a rabbi [while
has imprisoned as a little boy]. He was actually bar mitzvahed and
learned Hebrew, this little boy, from this Torah, [in the midst of
unimaginable misery]. And the rabbi, of course, perished. The little
boy survived and became a chief researcher on this mission. The image
of this Torah and the unimaginable circumstances of [the] Bergen-Belsen
[concentration camp from where the torah came], floating in space
during Colonel Ramon’s press conference, joined by KC [Kalpana
Chawla], joined by Dr. [Laurel B.] Clark, joined by Commander [Rick
D.] Husband—the other crew members were either sleeping or doing
other things—was mind-boggling [for me].
As we work on this story, it’s a reminder that this isn’t
an Israeli story or a Jewish story; it [just] happened to involve
a Torah and happened to have been brought up by an Israeli citizen,
but every time I get engaged on this project, I’m reminded of
what keeps me going in the space program, because space really does
provide that unique place where the impossible things happen and people
can join in and share it on a global basis. With all due respect to
all the other pioneering sectors, it’s one area that really
gives me that feeling that there’s just no other place like
it.
Wright: This
sounds like a very worthwhile opportunity. I hope that we’ll
have a chance to view that soon, and you’ll be able to share
that.
Stadd: Yes,
we hope to have it finished within the year. We intend for it to be
an educational documentary and intend to share it with as many people
as possible.
Wright: We
look forward to seeing it.
Stadd: Thank
you.
Wright: Thank
you so much for all of your time today and in January [2003].
Stadd: Thank
you.
[End
of interview]