Working to transform nasa. I had previous to that worked for Grassroots Organization that was really interested in returning human spaceflight to more than just a handful of astronauts and nasa had sort of lost its way i think after the shuttle accidents when they didnt have the ability to get more people into space for lower costs more reliably. That was the goal of the shuttle. So coming back to nasa as the deputy administrator in the Obama Administration i thought it was a very natural goal to want to continue that transformation process, and president elect obama happen to agree. So it says my quest because its a memoir but its a lot of peoples quest for decades and thats why what the book. Host lets open that up for a minute. He said nasa had lost its way and thats a big statement. What do you mean by that and how did that happen . Guest we are talking primarily about human aspaceflight at nasa. Many, many things that nasa go very well and, in fact, human spaceflight has in some sense been hugely important and transformational even since apollo but the shuttle was supposed to reduce the cost and increase reliability of human space transportation. And it had not. We had only flown a couple hundred astronauts since apollo in the 30 years since and we had lost two crews, 14 people, in a system that was clearly never going to bee reliable because is its design. And it was never going to be cheap. So when i got out of college we were going to be sending people back to the moon and on to mars within decades at the end of apollo they said we could land on mars in 1984. Now that now that may have not ever been possible, but i think most people agree that human spaceflight post 1972 with our last steps on the room had not created the advancement and progress that most people envisioned and certainly that the agency had intended to. Host what were the main problems . Is it that the wasnt like him during apollo sort of cold war adversary like the soviet union, is a congress, militaryindustrial complex . What were the Problems Holding nasa back . Guest those are all parts it. We know that we went to the men to beat the russians and because of that we established a crash program. So we set things up in a race type of format and that meant we were pouring money and to do things one time and that didnt build a sustainable program. Not a fault of nasas because they were asked to win the race and the achieve that amazing accomplishment, but it did not create an environment where you could doy things in a way that left a more sustainable, less program. And, in fact, it gave us three verse incentives. Companies and congress who had developedd capabilities, people in their districts, infrastructure needed to or were incentivized to use those very facilities which were much overbilled for the mission of the shuttle which was to reduce the cost of space transportation. Nasa wanted to employ their contractors. They wanted to employ that people who work in these institutions, and just kept going. That made the future programs expensive by design, instead of doing things like we had in aviation where the private sector really drove the innovation and the government did assist withdv both technoloy advancements as well as the sort of anchor tenancy as we know today which we ultimately had been doing in human spaceflight by the early days it was called the celtic airmail act. The government paid the airlines to carry the mail, and that allowed the airlines to invest in the capability because they had a customer. And once they had that customer they could go find more. Space transportation launch is a lot more than justt government payloads and people, and yet we have not found a way to really leverage the governments investment to expand the market him and thats the transformation that is allowing us i think to make that change today. Host we will get into the dynamic of the Publicprivate Partnerships but when we talk about programs like apollo in this Space Shuttle, people forget that after apollo people kind of lost interest in space and may be the shuttle was dynamic at first but then people kind of lost interest in that. Your excellent book is coming out at a time where there are a lot of competing interests. Retheres a war in europe, thers inflation, the paint to make a still gone. What you tell people about why they should care about space and why we should care about this era, this history and space policy which was crucial and transformative in so many ways, but why is that in your view important . Guest the unique vantage of space has given us unbelievable returns as a society as humans. We first went to space in the 50s, but what we gained as faroo as instantaneous communications and even looking back at our home planet has allowed us to completely change our perspective and our new knowledge. When we sent humans we went to beat the russians but we recognized by doing that we were opening up potentially space for more purposes. I think the real problem for the Government Space Program and why maybe between apollo and the shuttle there is less public support was less public support is people didnt understand the purpose. Po we knew in apollo the purpose but after that we say the cost doesnt seem like a very great purpose and, of course, nasa has triedd to recreate the purpose of sort of the cold war with china today. I think we are really struggling for the value. In my view andnd escaping graviy title comes from this, we were able to escape gravity, launch things and people from the earth, because we had a unified goal. Its really hard to beat gravity. Smart people who have the c same vision can do it and we havent had that with human spaceflight that United Vision to be able to see why the government should put in the publics money for that purpose. Private sector as it gets lower costs we are seeing people have their own reasons to go to space. But for the government the unique purpose in my view is benefiting society. So beyond just the things we get from robotics spacecraft, humans going to space is transformational. We know that the first photograph from the far side of the moon that was taken by astronauts called earthrise started the environmental movement. Lots of pictures having taken from space of the earth but not by a human. We go with our astronauts when they go to space and i believe there is plenty of wonderful robotic things to doll as well, but for civilization humanity as the species there is l no doubt that over the long term if we want to survive we need to be a multiplanetary in beyond species. So the very early beginnings of that are under way today. Host lets jump into the deep end of the narrative and one of the main tension points, when you are coming into nasa as the deputy administrator, the Space Shuttle is sort of on its last legs. Theres this program called constellation thats way over budget behind schedule, talks about canceling it. What was the situation you are walking into nasa when you became the deputy administrator . Guest yeah, that was a unique time in the space program. Program. I had left nasa in 2001 and now in 2008 ive been asked before even being deputy to leave the Transportation Team for the incoming Obama Administration and the humanht Spaceflight Program was in disarray, i should say. Not only, we were retiring the shuttle which i felt was the right decision. There was a really a lot of political difference of opinion on that. The former george w. Bush president had deemed that necessary if we were not able to recertify the shuttle which wouldve been very expensive. As you said the program constellation replaced it, we found was offtrack. It had in its first four years spent over 8 billion but had been delayed five years. If you were going to keep it going it was currently going to launch only after within their budget profile the space station wouldve had to have been the orbited. Their plan was only able to be paid for if they d orbited the space station. We knew they were not really going to do that. They were trying to go just trick the next administration into giving more money. You come into administration, at least i did, not wanting to lie to the president. That just didnt strike me something i should probably do. What he uncovered i had is uncovering it or lie, and i found a workaround which was get a Blue Ribbon Committee to look at the human Spaceflight Program, populate it with bright minds who didnt have been asked to cry. We had a couple of wonderful astronauts, the ceo former ceo of Lockheed Martin shared it and they came at up the same sceo we did. They uncovered the problem with the program and gave us some options for how we could move forward. When we made a decision to go forward that was unpopular and as i outlined in the book i took a lot of the blame, but the truth is so many people really did agree that we were at it and ask him something had to be done. Host explained to him what was constellation and what did it consist of and why was it so badly managed . I mean, what was going on there . Guest the constellation was a government owned and operated program along the lines of apollo. They called at the time nasa on steroids and was to do all things. It was supposed to start with the capsule called orion which was to left and iraq are called ares one that we take astronauts to the space station after this shuttle retired. The space station wouldnt be 30 more in less he got a lot of money but its longerterm goal was to build an even larger rocket called the ares five that we take us back to the moon. Astronauts on the moon again. Real threethe only elements along with ground systems and only the first two were funded but the review showed we would never get to the moon and again what it needed the money from the space station, and the fault is really no different than what we are experiencing today. It was a costplus program, really initiated to continue the shallow contracts to keep money flowing to the congressional districts and at three to 5 billion y a year you would kp going at that rate without making a a lot of progress. We did have women in apollo the ability to build up right away and when you can come in and do that you can succeed. At budgets today thats not really possible and plus its not really what we should be doing given the goal is to sustain progress. So here we are constellation has to carry the infrastructure of apollo. Its no ones fault. Its just w the system was set p against doing those kinds of programs unless you get really, really large amounts of money. Host so emblematic of what youre talking about why nasa need to be transformed a lot of money going in but not a lot of progress so you stand up this commission, norm augustine former ceo of Lockheed Martin endorses your view. You bring this but with different options to the president and he supported the cancellation. Did that surprise you . Well, what did you make of that in that moment and once you knew thats what youre going forward, how did you prepare for that . You knew that was going to set off a firestorm. Guest yes. We had on the Transition Team our report had pretty much aligned with what the Augustine Committee later came up with. So having the Augustine Committee at our transition report both say this program constellation is that something you should keep investing in and away to get humans back to space is through the private sector. I was very confident that that not only was the only way to go forward, the best way to go forward, but the president agreed. I had talked to him enough. He agreed plus it just made sense and leisure getting money, billions, from the people who feel they might not be as competitive. So we were all ready to announce this actually in october of that year but the white house was very concerned about keeping every vote for health care. We had a really close margin to have our 60 votes in the senate with the democratic leadership and they decided to incorporate the decision with the budget process. Well, that meant we had to involve many more people which in a way was a good thing because it meant the National Economic council got involved and certainly the office of science and technology policy, omb. But nasa didnt want to do it and the budget process has to go through the administration but the agency prepares the budget. The budget the agency prepared kept constellation. It didnt at commercial crew. I try to get them to change. My boss at the time the head of nasa Charlie Bolden was just ready to do what the nasa people wanted to do and wasnt really listening in meetings at the white house. Last meeting with the president which are outlined in a book he came away and told how it went. It was very clearho to me what e president which use that we got the answer couple weeks after prthat and it surprised charlie. It did not surprise me. Host this is a memoir and as you are going through that experience of trying to cancel a major Government Program worth billions of dollars to some of the most entrenched interests of washington, you can under attack. This became personal. You opened a book with a scene of being threatened where you received, or a letterte was sent to nasa with some white powdery substance. Can you talk about that experience and what you endured going through all this . Guest sure. It was surprising and, of course, disheartening that i was attacked for putting something forward that i i thought was y well studied, that again in the 1990s the nasa administrator of the time had supported. Indeed we were already planning toar launch cargo with the prive sector through a program started by the previous administration. But i think because the administrator of nasa didnt agree and he was an astronaut and revered marine general, having a woman, i was young, 48 at the time that it went there, i didnt have a technical degree, i was the one to attack. And being physically threatened as the sort of prelude outlines was very surprising and scary, and i was strengthened by it in some ways because it made me realize these are notot good people who are fighting. They are fighting and ethically, illegally in some instances and, of course, the system is corrupt in many ways beyond nasa. Just this status quo well, ill scratch your back you scratch mine. Thats not what a country should be doing. Host at the point where you had security. Guest nasa security was alerted a few times to threats that some somehow they wour tell m me details that somehow a credible enough that i would have a s security detail even wk into my cart in the nasa garage. That was the hardest because shorter like the call is coming from inside the house. Theseepl were people i hope to o lead to a Better Future and who i knew had been frustrated by the also were very thought into the current programs and lots of lies and ugliness were spread and, therefore, people considered maybe if they got rid of me they could get rid of the problem and come back to how things were where we spent a lot of money and didnt go anywhere. Host you mention Charlie Bolden during this time with the nasa administrator, former astronaut, marine corps general, sort of beloved in the Space Community, the Aerospace Community and just sort of generally. You all had some significant differences and youic write abot in the book at times going around him in a lack of trust. So i i wonder if you can talk a little bit about that relationship with him . Guest yeah, i wouldve tried to not talk about much of this if the story could be told without it because charlie is a person who, you know, we were very friendly certainly especially at the beginning, revered andnd understandably and deservedly so for many accomplishments hes made. He was someone who the administration firstf of all hadnt selected to be nasa administrator at first. Senator bill nelson and he had flown on the Space Shuttle years before together and bonded, and senator nelson fought as outlined in a book to have charlie be administrator. That was after i had already been not named publicly but asked toep serve as deputy f administrator and after the Transition Team had already really formulated the policy and the augustine report was underway. So charlie came in late and didnt agree with the president s plan which you like to consider my plan, but i kept saying unit, really the president will all work for who should be a line. In fact, i understand he asked rahm emanuel during his interview for head of nasa could he take his own deputy . Rahm emanuel said no. No, weve got lori garver to be deputy and charlie said what if we dont agree on things . He said you both work for the president. So we dont expect any problems. I know that i am seeing as the outlier but it wasnt the outlier. And my choice as a deputy of a federal agency and be senate confirm, do you follow your immediate boss, or the president , and i was nominated by the president. Charlie couldnt fire me. Im told he tried a few times and that wasnt approved by the white house. So i did when it became clear charlie was working behind the scenes against the president not share everything i was doing with him. And as aeg sand about my biggest regret is not being able to develop a trusting relationship with charlie and i really dont think hes bad. I think he was listening to the people, the wrong people who are self invested in the status quo. And hes such k a nice person, h well, they know. He really doesnt question their motives. Host so you come , perhm a different background than the sort of traditional nasa astronaut in you have a name for them c in the book, the space pirates. I wonder if you could talk about that. What are the space pirates . What do they represent . Whats their philosophy . Who are the . Guest the book was even called space pirates by the at one point because i prefer to them as people who raised me. When i first came into space commuting i work at a small nonprofit called the National Space society and the goal was to create a space faring civilization against postapolln thinking without space was going to be open to more of us than handful of astronauts and a way to do that is expand beyond just government owned and operateded program. Seemed very logical to me but it didnt seem logical to the people giving the billions. I refer to them as pirates because they are controversial. They are depicted the route sciencefiction in many ways sometimes as those who are mining asteroids or may be the property are not exactly known yet, like piratesht might. And it just so happened that a couple of years ago when the Trump Administration started the space force, senator ted crews in the hearing said we need a space force j because just liken the high seas you can run into pirates. We might run into pirates in space. Elon musk immediately tweeted a pirate flag and a sort of stuck with a lot of us and you have to have something book cannot keep describing them every time so they dont really call themselves space pirates identified as such. And so far i think they like it. Host at the time of the book theres somewhat maybe on the fringes picky think they become more mainstream now . Guest most people now who are looking at this feel that i am referring to elon musk and jeff bezos as a space pirates. Well sure they are latecomers but the early space pirates i think are very much, they are starting companies, being successful. They were doing this in the 80s and 90s but the technologies have not advanced yet. The market, the money all the things you need along with the policies which i did help drive, those space i pirates i think we merging the lines now in a lot of ways between traditionalists and sometimes they like to call themselves new space. I dont like to call them new space because then you have old space and no one wants to be old space. So we really have i think in front of us a future that nearly everyone knows requires it off. Host you mention this earlier. Lets a talk about the commercil crew program and what that was. This is a controversial at the time even considered maybe radical program that started with trusting the private sector okay, you can fly cargo and supplies to the interNational Space station but nasa was going to say you are not going to fly our most precious resource, our astronauts. And now allowing the private sector to fly nasas astronauts. I mean, that is a big deal. So talk about how that sort of the history of that the reluctance to move forward with it and how you ultimately overcame that. Guest the commercial crew program is certainly the thing that i am most known for and probably most proud of as well, but it didnt start with me. It started as i mentioned in the 1990s with dan golden hind replace the shuttle with private sector. That ended the and the next two nasa administrator develop programs for government owned and operated systems. That made this very difficult for the status quo to accept what was called commercial cargo could have just easily been expanded. In in fact, whenid they accepted bs for commercial cargo, nasa had a section they called d if you want to bid to launch people. Spacex was the onlyy one who bid on it. This is right before i arrived on the Transition Team so we were putting together the stimulus budget at the time. We were in a recession in in 20082009 and we were asked to put forward shovelready projects that could really help stimulate the economy. And i called up spacex asked iff they would hold to their bid. It was just over 300 million and i requested i requested that money in stimulus from the administration. I didnt get it all. At about half, 150 million and that was very controversial on capitol hill because people start to realize an industry who were getting billions of dollars to build systems to do that, or spacex were successful there wouldnt have had the opportunity anymore or at least couldnt charge what they were. I think we get caught up in have battle became about safety and are thehat in reality lines personality but in reality it was that unlike a lot of other things. It was the existing developers of these programs for fighting for the future trend what it has always gone smoothly. The Space Shuttle retired in 2011. Spacex is now finally flying crews but it took almost ten years for that to happen meaning there was a gap of a decade when there were no cruder launch of them useful and we had to depend on russia to do it and the second provider boeing still hasnt flown crew. So i wonder under this model where you lucky because your spacex . It seems like like is a part of this. Guest there is no question, that without spacex this would not have worked as well. And as for the long time in between we always knew there was going to be a gap because we should have much earlier been starting programs and competitions to follow on the Space Shuttle. When we got there in 09 efficiently the shuttle was supposed to in the next year. We were able to add two more shuttles get you through 211 d the program that we propose a commercial crew was supposed to cost 6 billion over five years and and i would be divided between two competitors. We knew we wanted competition. We didnt get 6 billion in five years from congress. Congress cut the program by 40 over thet first five years. So im not saying we could have done it that much sooner but i, and i get do not want to take anything from spacex f because they are the only ones who have made it so far but there were other bidders. It is very possible that some of the other bidders have gotten their money, have spacex not been there couldve made it. I think there is now with a comparison of the large costplus programs that nasa is still doing its very clear, its not a decade can we simply say its a decade can almost nine years, eight years. Nine months of the gap and it wouldve been not just a gap in launches from u. S. Soil, it wouldve been a gap in human spaceflight if we wouldve had to deorbit the shuttle and wait for the government systems. So im often blamed for ending human spaceflight and so i am a little sensitive it. We were in a bad spot. We were in a very bad spot and we should of beenm. Funding this program, everyone should of been thrilled to come up with this, these matching funds for the private sector on schedule so that we give it our best shot, and we didnt do that. Host lets talk about spacex for a minute because they are so central to the book. One of my favorite anecdotes in the book is one that actually use in my book that you told me about when spacex is approaching the station and they have a problem as theyre getting close, and you have so much riding on this company. This is before they were flying humans but it was a version of the dragon spacecraft that would ultimately be evolved into a crewed spacecraft. Recount that story because itss such a great story. Guest so because we had this commercial Cargo Program first it was ahead of crew, and it was very much going to be a situation where spacex needed to succeed so we could trust them carry a very precious astronauts. Spacex had of course failures delays and hasnt their competitor northrop grumman. This launch was supposed to be talking to the space station, the dragon capsule lost a couple of thrusters after successful launch and wasnt going to be able to dock. I was at the cape, happened to be getting together with the president a spacex after the launch. We had planned Gwynne Shotwell but with his pub she said im in the op center. We have to work this. We have less than an hour i believe to work the system or the dockingne was not going to e successful. Each one of these t wouldve ben i thought a pretty big delay to the crew being allowed to dock. And i went over to wait for her and found the two heads of nasas human Spaceflight Program understandably there. Standing in the back of the room not have a console and i want to get out of the way, have nothing to contribute technically and asked what youre doing in the back and they were just watching spacex work through this problem and trying to solve the problem. They were talking to jeff and i could overhear them. Well, i would try this and that. And im saying maybe i will mention that to them. These gentlemen are just know, we think they should work this out themselves. What happened was spacex figured it out in the nick of time and what i believe this as a moment when iva really saw nasa embrace spacex, private sector, thein sweeping business all important things and these were two of the guys who had been somewhat oppose to having astronauts be transported commercially. Theyey were already well into te cargo mission. So i say it was like watching the grandparent with a child may be fishing where as a parent, i will say a dad, might show them how to put the world on the hook, help then cast, but if they got Something Big they would grab a hold of the fishing rod and reel it in. These guys are like a grin. You know, lets just watching lets just see how they do. And they were really proud when they reeled them in. So i do love that moment. Host and its moments like that i i think build up over tie and their experience builds the trust between nasa and the commercial sector over time and as resultha of that there has bn a cultural shift i believe that nasa that gives much more trust to the commercial sector. I mean, white i wonder if yoe could talk a little bit about that. It seems like you believed that from the very beginning that you kind of need to prove it. What we are talking that is a huge sort of cultural change so happy that ultimately happen . Guest i again me coming with a different perspective and wanting to make progress over the longer term t that was sustainable, this was so clearly the only way to do it. So if you believed that building a big rocket is the goal and you want to do that in the government but i didnt believe that wasnt the goal. I believe the goal was leaving our economy better off, leaving our National Secret he better off, Society Better off. And ifou those are your goals tn you need to go about it, the how really is driven by the why. And so for my a wife and i think for within the nasa space act of 1958 why we need to go about doing this in a way that left its better world behind. I truly believe that nasa is on that path that i dont believe every Single Program needs to be done this way. It should be based on again the purpose and for Something Like oneofakind unique say going to a moon of jupiter you probably are not going to get commercial Companies Bidding to do that in a fixed cost way. The question right now is when to use what sort of procurement mechanismre to maximize the vale for the taxpayer, the ones who are paying. Host so this paradigm of the Publicprivate Partnership gets to the second part of your subtitle, and this is the launching of a new space age which is a different paradigm that there is the and private sector working together maybe with an International Component but theres a lot of talk about heading toward a recession. Theres a lot more faith from investors in this space economy commercial space this cool thing. Theres a lotf of money thats been flowing into it but is it at the point where there is sort of a selfsustaining space economy . What happens if theres a, downturn in the economy, how will that affect the new space age . Guest there is a new space age in much of the sector and that is largely driven by the fact that spacex has lowered launch cost so much. We have now i think more than 100 companies vying to be launching satellites at different sizes and for less money but lets face it its really driven by spacex steel. When you can get things into space cheaper if youre going to come up with more and more important things to do and that is indeed whats happened. So the investments around space, the returns and the space markets interest is largely to do with nonhuman spaceflight. Humans based flight gets a lot of attention. We have sub orbital launches with jeff bezos and Richard Branson both having gone to space themselves last year with their companies. And, ofon course, you have in te astronauts now going with spacex and hopefully soon to be going with boeing. That is a new space age. Theres just no question. We considered the first space age and lots of things differentiate it, it was about the cold war. It was very Much Associated with the military. It was all white men. So this new space age is about a lot of things. For me it is about getting sort of back to our roots of space is another amazing resource that we can use to help society. Host lets talk about that. Particularly the Space Tourism aspect because it has its roots in shuttle. The Space Shuttle was supposed to be flying private citizens all the time. It was going to fly so frequently that nasa could not fill all the seat with professionally trained astronauts and, of course, Christa Mcauliffe the teacher from New Hampshire was on the challenger 1986 when it exploded in that program. Basically went away and now it is being resurrected by the private industry theres a lot of criticism of this because its a lot of rich white men who are going up. As a first space tourist were seeing some of that change but i think you talk about that in the book. You talk about of the benefits of that so what if you can just sort of open that up for us here now . Guest sure. T i doo equate it to get to days f aviation. And get that something thats risky. Something that the private sector and aviation got into right away and we are maybe in the barnstorming era now for space. In which people paid to go on there although i know were not all rich because planes didnt cost that much to fly but a lot of them died and it did start charging money and, of course, that created a Huge Industry that the u. S. Captured a huge part of that market and has benefited from. So economically the returns to new businesses that really could grow to be important is something that nations want to do and we shouldnt miss out on this one. I question whether we want, i know we dont agree with all the personal policies of these billionaires but they could just owbe spending their money on thr own personal gains if they wanted and they are working in an industry where there is already in the case of spacex a huge economic return to our nation because we are launching satellites. Now the u. S. Has the largest market share for satellite launches worth billions. And in the late 1990s we were launching no commercial satellites. The chinese, the french and the russians were launching them all. I so theres economic gain and theres also over the longer term a society goes out and eventually if we survive long enough are able to expand outward. What kind of values do we want when we go out . And i think for a long time the group of space pirates that raised me part of this had been wanting to makesu sure there are modern policies that are equitable, that expand outward along with humanity as a species can you talk about the economic benefits of it. Are there not also some social aspects to it . Have only been about 600 or so people who have been to space. You have talked to a lot of astronauts. Iv they talk about the transformative t experience. Do you think there are any benefits of having more people from different backgrounds go to space . Guest we talk about that a lot and within the Space Community as you know theres a thing called the overview effect that Frank Lloyd Wright wrote about many years ago. I know frank and its a fabulous bank and is always surprised me how astronauts were overwhelmed upon the return of that scene the earth from space and they have changed their perspective about the environment and the networking across borders tested were no lines on the map. So its a little weird. Have you ever not so in an airplane . No lines. But it is a value the more people who get to see it and the more people who experience that from different backgrounds and can convey it. I dont know about you but when William Shatner returned from his brief launch last year, i thought he was eloquent about his reaction to having spent a few minutes so far in the view and that perspective from space that we dont select astronauts for their vision or their ability to communicate the importance and value of all of this. We select them for the reasons of being able to withstand the technical rigor and so forth of being in space, and so more people going, poets, artists, journalists perhaps, teachers. I mean, it is ironic that nasa sort of drove early on this recognition that there were people not astronauts who could contribute like going to space but really hunkered down. I mean the challenger accident with the teacher in space on board, a deep, deep wound at the agency and then columbia coming again just made it clear we were not going to be flying many more astronauts much less not astronauts. But the russians had taken over Space Tourism and a dozen or so people have flown on the soyuz launch a vehicle from baikonur kazakhstan to the Russian Program and, of course, that ultimate place a huge part in the book because we had to count on the soyuz after the columbia large and because we had to count on it after the shuttle retired. Host i want to talk about the diversity of expenses that we should note after challenger theyre going to since the teacher first and then a journalist. They were next and they were down to off finalists. We talk about the threats that you face but theres also just sort of on a daytoday basis i think the misogyny and being a woman and an industry dominated by men at nasa and in the Aerospace Industry in general. You have worked hard to combat that with the fellowship that you found. I wonder if you can talk a little bit about that at also hasnt been a shift, is a landscape changing since you are at nasa when you were sort of growing up in the Aerospace Industry . Guest growing up in the Aerospace Industry in the 80s and 90s therehe were very few women but i felt i was fairly treated. I was on the Nasa Advisory Council under dan golden in the mid1990s. I think i was at least a decade younger than the next oldest person and i was certainly the only woman. But, of course, there was a lot of old school objectification, sexual harassment, and just both micro and macro inequities that we experience. Ew and they were few of us but we bonded and we started groups, and it was really when i got to be more senior in my career and i was responsible for making decisions that got the most push back because i think men and all of us really are not accustomed to taking directions from women. Men always come back with my wife. Thats a dynamic. The fact that youre a woman, i love my wife, i love my secretary. Yeah, but why dont we had a woman president . Why do we have very many female ceos . We dont associate power and assertiveness and strength with female characteristics and so as i was comingio in and making decisions that were not going to be popular because of how the system was structured and my boss who was a man didnt couldnt really explain it or what to support it, i believe that being vilified had a lot to do with the fact that i was a woman and i was attacked with a lot of gender language. You could always tell when somebody is, you know, she this, she doesnt deserve this, you must be on your period. Oh, my gosh, many horrible things. I dont believe it was actually about that sense that they were really just didnt want to change but it was easy. I was an easy target and i cared enough about the fact that more peoples opinions come in thatar were different than what had been contributing toward our leadership and our vision in space was so important that it did start disfellowshipped about seven years ago when its your friend and minty of mine died at the age of 36 of cancer. The brooke always fellowship now has 50,000 iu with internshipsps in the Aerospace Community. AeroSpace Community has embraced this program and i we followed t on with another one called the patti grace smith fellowship which is for black collegiate students who are wanting their careers and aerospace. So together i think we seeing a shift but the important thing for me will be when their ideas even if they dont conform to the status quo are considered equally when they get in leadership positions. Thats what i think t we all hae some work to do. Host returning to the attention of going up against the status quo. When you were fighting this fight over constellation and the president backs it and says were going to cancel it and yet theres of this compromise which produces a rocket thats note as the space launch system, which as we are talking right now is on the padr. At the kennedy spae center, i wonder if you can talk about what happened there . Guest the real debate was between human spaceflight, are we going to turn everything over to the private sector, or can nasa keepra its share . And the administration because theyyo were wanting to put the focus on things like Getting Health Care reform passed, totally understandable, didnt really fight for the nasa budget as proposed once the president selected it. It was hard without a nasa administrator really. It was hard with without ky democrats on the hill carrying theer president s water and so e folded. I say in the book we had a full house, they had a pair of twos and we walked away from the table, thats my view. What the status quo wanted to do was build a b big rocket and dot with a government contract in with existing contractors. And the Obama Administration decided if we could carveout commercial crew some Technology Programs some earth sciences, everyone wanted to protect the telescope, we would agree that the government could have a big launch program and the orion capsule could continue. Those programs have cost us together with their ground systems around 40 billion since we made that deal. They were supposed to be launched by the l end of 2016 ad they havent launched yet here in 2022. As you said they are currently on thehe pad hoping for a successful test. They will then go back to the hangar come back out for launch first test flight no people on board august at the earliest. Comparison after ch 40 billion to commercial crew which we have low now five crews to the space station and spacex got 2. 5 billion. Host private citizens. Guest and they have flown private citizens on dedicated missions. I mean, it is oneh, of these things where yeah, it took a while but we came out at the gates screaming fast because of the success of spacex and now hes hopefully boeing soon and the suborbital launch with blue origin and virgin galactic. But if you look at the comparison between the costplus contracts and what we call commercial crew, the return on investment for the public, is not comparable. Since then the private sector spacex and blue origin have launched have invested their own money in big launch vehicles. So those are not comparable vehicles. Ss orion much bigger would be able to take more payload farther away but spacex and blue originlu have vehicles spacex flying one of them the falcon heavy that can go almost as heavy a payload to lowearth orbit as will be in this vehicle that costs 40 billion. That is very frustrating for me because we didnt have to do it. That was something that in 20102011 when this deal was made it was obvious, it was obvious that wasnt what we should be doing with that money. And its a hurtful because tensf thousands of people have dedicated d their lives and careers to doing it and its not their fault. Of course its exciting. We have built i a big rocket but it doesnt leave you behind anything that is sustainable. The nasa ig says each launch will cost 4 billion. Thats in addition to the 40 we have already invested. If taking aside the sunk costs, you can launch on a falcon heavy for around 150 million. Not human rated but if we have put a program together to follow on commercial crew that about the private sector to partner to build bigger heavier vehicles, no doubt that wouldve been more successful. Nasasa could have taken those tx dollars and invested in the things that we really need to be expanding the horizons of people and leading like we did in the 1960s. Host so theres a lot in this book. Theres far for space fans f great adventure and space stuff in space policy. It is a glimpse into how washington works entrenchednc interests, politics and i think they could be taught in the Business School as well and, of course, its your story, its a memoir. You know, a finding your way or combating all those entrenched interest in a maledominated sphere but what you want people to take away from your book . Guest i think the take away and the reason i i wrotet is because wee have the ability and right now i am very as nearly everyone on the planet is aware that our own past inventions are creating a situation that can make the earth uninhabitable in the future. And with Climate Change about 80 80 of what we know about whats happening to our planet has come from the space program. There are incredibly valuable things to do with our space program. Oftentimes we see the billionaire saying well, were doing this to get people off the planet to save earth. There are enough but im not sure that timeline is going to work. So to me we have the unique opportunity to use what has been a brilliant history of Space Exploration and development to save ourselves and to do it in a way that can leave the planet better off. We have an ability to use the technologies we have and new ways of setting goals and utilizing government to achieve things we simply must do now. We simply must peer and we wouldnt even know we were having these problems if we hadnt gone to space so we might as well use space to help solve these problems. And nasa came across commercial crew at a time in the technologies were there and i think the technologies can be there if we put the right incentives in to help the planet and people on it, just a couple more minutes. I just want to ask two quick questions. Why did you leave nasa . Guest i have been a nasa almost five years after t beingn the Transition Team. I had told me they would be replacing the head of nasa if the president was reelected but a few months and it became clear they were not going to. Charlie and i again we got along but it wasnt very fair of me to be there continually, being seen at least as opposing his policies. I wasnt looking but i got a cold call from headhunters looking for a game changer to run a Major Aerospace association. I knew i wouldnt leave nasa go to industry or anything like that. This was the Airline Pilots union and they made me unauthorized, i just loved it, i worked there for five years and i put a lot of what i learned about running a Major Organization and making progress into that for a while, so last question. Again going back to the subtitle that you wantedte to transform nasa. That was your request. Digi succeed . Did you transform nasa . Guest well, i try many times to make it very, very clear throughout the book that i am not the only person who could transform nasa. It was a huge group of people still is working on that but i would say yes. I would say nasa is transformed. Its been transformed. People have told me who are still there that it is a different place, that people talk about costplus contracts and even the nasa administrator like they are a plague and do a sacrilege to say anything like that ten years ago tremont lori garver thank you so much. The book is escaping gravity. Its been t a pleasure talking o you traded thank you, chris. Its been wonderful talking with you. If you are enjoying booktv then sign up for our newsletter using the qr code on the screen to receive a schedule of upcoming programs, author discussions book festivals and more. Booktv every sunday on cspan2 or anytime online at booktv. Org. Television for serious readers. Cspan is your unfiltered view of government. We are funded by these Television Companies and more including comcast. Are you thinking this is just the Community Center . Its way more than that. 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