Taking Action

In mid-March, Young briefed Goldin privately on the panel’s findings. Goldin subsequently told his top managers to prepare themselves for sharp criticism. The Young report, he warned, would be the Rogers Commission of space sci­ence, referring to the devastating critique delivered by a panel headed by Wil­liam Rogers after the 1986 Space Shuttle Challenger disaster.30

One point Young made that hit home to Goldin was the need for precise lines of communication and authority. It was not clear who was in charge. The Mars program had expanded rapidly, and with many projects in different stages of development at once. There had to be a specific point of contact at the program level both at headquarters and at JPL. After conferring with Weiler, Goldin called Scott Hubbard, who was away from his Ames Research Laboratory base, attending a conference. Hubbard was with Ed Heffernan, Goldin’s chief of staff. As Hubbard recalled, Heffernan’s cell phone went off. “I was told it was the boss.” Hubbard got on the line and Goldin stated, “I’ll be in California, Man­hattan Beach, on Saturday. I want to talk to you about something very impor­tant—can you be there?” Hubbard quickly responded, “Yes, of course.” (It was not a good idea to say “No” to Goldin, Hubbard thought.) It was then Thurs­day.31 Through Heffernan and “back channels,” Hubbard soon ascertained what was going to transpire. That Saturday, Hubbard met with Goldin at a hotel in Manhattan Beach. The administrator explained, “I need someone who is not tainted, who knows a lot about the Mars program but is not part of it, and who knows about science and technology, to fix this mess. It will be a stain on my legacy. It is unacceptable.”32

The two men talked for two hours, mostly Goldin telling Hubbard what he wanted him to do. Hubbard did manage to get the administrator to agree to give Hubbard a free hand in directing the recovery process. Hubbard said he had to talk to his wife and the Ames director first. “Fine,” said Goldin. “Let me know Tuesday.” The next Tuesday, Hubbard showed up in Goldin’s office and asked, “When do I start?” “Right now,” said Goldin. This was days from the rollout of the Young report. Goldin wanted Hubbard to be present when that happened so NASA could announce the appointment, showing that Goldin was already taking action in making repairs to a damaged program.33

President Bill Clinton was informed of the basic thrust of the report prior to its public release. On March 27, he wrote Goldin, in an obvious attempt to bolster the NASA Administrator’s morale in view of the criticism he had already received and would receive when the report was announced. Clinton said he regarded robotic exploration of Mars and search for life “an important national priority.” Further, he said, he “continued” to be committed “to a sustained and incrementally more aggressive program,” as revealed in his proposed NASA budget for FY 2001. The use of the adjective “incrementally” may well have reflected Clinton’s understanding of the report’s basic criticism—that Goldin had pushed the Mars program too fast, too far, too cheaply.

Clinton seemed willing to admit that the White House had asked NASA to do too much for too little. His new budget, announced officially in early February, gave NASA its first increase in seven years. NASA’s budget would go from $13.6 billion to $14.3 billion. Nearly half of the $700 million augmentation would go to science, including Mars research.34 In his March 27 letter, Clinton directed Goldin to move forward and make changes necessary “to conduct a more robust and successful program of sustained robotic exploration of Mars.”35

On March 28, the Young report was released. Weiler and Young announced the results to a packed auditorium at NASA Headquarters, and Weiler outlined the initial NASA response. Young said his team was reasonably certain that MPL failed because the engines were shut off prematurely as it came in for a landing and it crashed onto Mars at 50 miles per hour. The two microprobes that it carried never had an opportunity to demonstrate success, but had in any event not been tested sufficiently and were “not ready for launch.” Weiler and Young both defended the FBC concept as basically sound and said it should not be abandoned. However, Weiler said that clearly NASA had “pushed the envelope too far.” It was now time to reconsider the envelope, pull back, and regroup.

Beyond the technical causes and misuse of FBC, Young said his panel had found organizational issues. There was ineffective communication between NASA Headquarters and JPL and between JPL and Lockheed Martin. More­over, the mission team was asked to do the impossible with what the Young panel felt was a budget 30% less than needed. The failed MPL was provided far fewer funds than Pathfinder. Weiler added that decentralization and headquar­ters downsizing had also been pushed too far. Also, part of the problem was that there were inadequate financial reserves, and that all the program funds had been sent to JPL and other centers. Weiler said he was now going to keep pro­gram reserve funds at headquarters. That would force center program managers to come to headquarters if they felt something was going wrong.

Young said his panel recommended it be clearer as to who was in charge both at headquarters and at JPL. Weiler announced that Scott Hubbard, present and visible for the occasion, was coming to headquarters from Ames Research Cen­ter to be a single point of contact for all NASA Mars exploration. He noted that JPL director Ed Stone would soon be naming Hubbard’s counterpart at that center. Weiler said the ultimate goal of the program remained “the search for past and/or current life on Mars,” but instead of MSR as the immediate driver, NASA would have the interim goal of “follow the water” as a focus. Water was pivotal to life as currently understood. He pointed out that Hubbard would report to him and lead in developing a new program strategy. He said the plan would cover a decade.36 Almost immediately, the media referred to Hubbard as “the Mars Czar.”

Young subsequently told interviewers that people were trying to do too much with too little and not adequately conveying their concerns to others, particu­larly upper management. He said, “No one had a sense of how much trouble they were actually in.” He commented that “JPL managers did not come out as forcefully as appropriate” when discussing their problems with headquarters, and headquarters in turn may have misheard what JPL managers were trying to say.37 Shirley told the media that JPL had tried to inform headquarters that problems were developing and that headquarters said “you have to do it.” JPL then went back and tried, and in doing so took too many risks. She said that if you got to Goldin, you could get him to listen, but people at headquarters and centers feared approaching him. “When you laid out the facts for Dan, he would generally agree,” she said. “But he would push you as hard as he could [and] when he pushed his people, they were afraid to say no.”38

Hinners recalled a telephone exchange with Stone on one occasion which illustrated the issues as he saw them: “I said: ‘We are out of money. We need $30 million more.’ Stone replied: ‘I committed to headquarters to do this project for the amount involved. I’m not going back to ask for more money.’ ” So Hinners accepted the refusal and the company did the best it could for the money it had. “We all fooled ourselves,” he reflected.39 John Casani, a senior manager at JPL, who led investigations of both Mars failures for JPL, put it this way: Goldin “said if you couldn’t do it, he would find somebody who could. He was putting pressure on us, and we probably should have stood up to him, but we all got to believing we could do it.”40