Goldin Shoulders Responsibility

On the day after the report came out, a chastened Goldin went to JPL. Sched­uling an address to JPL employees and a press conference for the next day, he went to dinner that evening with Caltech president David Baltimore, Stone, and leaders of the Mars Mission Team. One of the younger men on that team pleaded, “Dan, don’t let us go back to the old ways.”41 The next day he spoke at an assemblage of JPL employees. He took responsibility and stated, “The warning bells are sounding. The trend is very, very sobering, and one we can’t ignore. It says we pushed too hard.” Afterword, he spoke to the media. Again, he took responsibility. “In my effort to empower people,” he declared, “I pushed too hard. And in doing so, stretched the system too thin. It wasn’t malicious. I believed in the vision, but it may have made some failure inevitable.” He told JPL and others he was not going to let the pendulum swing all the way back to the old days, before FBC, but that he was going to provide adequate resources to succeed.42

Stone addressed JPL subsequently. He said that the real motivator for FBC was to go more often to Mars, but that JPL had taken too many risks in trying to take maximum advantage of every two-year launch opportunity. He also told his personnel that downsizing was over at the lab.43

The congressional reaction to the Young report was critical of NASA but stopped short of calling FBC a failed strategy. Senator John McCain (R-AZ), chair of the Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation, com­mented that the report was an embarrassment to NASA and showed that the agency’s leadership was “missing in action.” He said Congress would have to exercise “more rigorous oversight” of the agency.44 Congressman James Sensen- brenner, chair of the House Science Committee, expressed essentially the same sentiment, as did other lawmakers. The Washington Post issued a common media view, that NASA had to step back and review its actions. However, it advised the agency that it would be “dangerous” to abandon FBC and “swing back toward the old model of sky high budgeting.” It noted that NASA and JPL simply had too many missions under way at once and too few experienced managers to handle all of them. It echoed congressional concerns that senior managers did not exercise proper oversight.45

Goldin, in congressional hearings on the Mars failures, faced “heat but no fire.”46 Again, Goldin took responsibility and admitted pushing too hard. Con­gress, while being critical of Goldin and NASA management, seemed anxious to also show support. The Mars program was popular, and lawmakers, like the president and media, wanted it to continue and succeed, while exercising fiscal constraint. Some Republican legislators blamed the White House for not pro­viding NASA sufficient funding. Meanwhile, Louis Friedman, speaking for the Planetary Society, gave a view shared by many Mars enthusiasts. He cautioned that while NASA had to make program changes, “it is crucial that NASA not overreact and slow down the program too much.”47 Privately, Friedman also used the access he had to Goldin to argue for making the Mars director position a true czar authority, with power over both robotic and human flight. Friedman wanted a Mars focus for the agency, with the Mars program director under Goldin rather than Weiler. However, Goldin was not about to make that move.48

In the wake of the twin Mars failures and Young report, NASA began the arduous work of recovering its credibility and returning to robotic Mars flight. Hubbard was the man chosen to lead the activity, but he was part of a team that was assembled. The members were responsible for what NASA called the “architecture” of the revised program. Goldin wanted the group, which started in April, to complete its work by October, so that its recommendations could be incorporated into NASA’s budget submission for the following year.