Comments on Dan Goldin's retirement by the readers of NASA Watch.

I don't think it's any wonder why Mr. Holz would have nothing but good things to say about Goldin. Wasn't it Holz who decided to through NAFIS out the door? A financial system which was almost totally completed and ready to implement?

Then the decision is made to "revolutionize" the financial business of NASA by using commercially available off-the-shelf software which will save untold amounts of resources. I can't remember the exact timing, but I believe it was 1994/1995 timeframe. So now it's almost 2002..... Do we have a new financial system? Is anyone fooled that we will have something off-the-shelf that is not totally customized to suit special government requirements? I can't begin to imagine the amount of money spent on IFMP.. just look at the travel budget this office has consumed

"I just read the TRW letter and then Holz' comments about ol' Danny boy. I can't imagine where Holz is coming from. I could have written the TRW letter... sigh." - Author unnamed.

Keith, Of course the unnamed author of the above comments couldn't imagine where I was coming from...he/she has a totally negative outlook about Dan and maybe more. He/she is incapable of looking beyond the narrow negative view. He likes to use the power of the communications your page provides to do character assassination without going out on a limb to provide his/her identity. You and I have talked about this before and I understand how you feel, but I still do not think it right. You are not shy about your comments and you take credit for them. That's good. Others elect to not provide their names and I think that only shows their lack of good character. Holz comes from working with the "man" and from "Holz's" basic attitude that the "man" is not in the big seat to be loved at every turn. It is a job and his as well as the agency's performance is on the line. If employees want to be loved they should find it at home or elsewhere. These have been tough years and NASA had to retrench. People obviously are not happy with the style but there is not fault with his vision and decisions given the circumstances. Sure people get hurt when this happens, but it was happening all over industry and government. Isn't it time to put the Comments section to rest?

This man is "unbelievable!" (too quote an oft use phrase). Dan took the job as NASA Administrator for one reason only - to stroke and serve his incredible and ever-expanding ego. He then has the temerity to basically accuse the NASA workforce of the sin he has commited - quoting from the Hunstville article, "NASA doesn't exist for the fun and the lifestyles of people who work on the program." Upon his exit we may need to widen the doors at HQ so he is able to get his head through - whatever it takes at whatever expense! Just as long as he goes!!

I just read the TRW letter and then Holz' comments about ol' Danny boy. I can't imagine where Holz is coming from. I could have written the TRW letter... sigh.

Goldin's plans for the manned space flight program were not bad, but in my opinion they did not work out as planned. To make NASA a more effectively working organisation, O.K., why not. But cutting budget on already existing or just starting projects like the shuttle or station is not the right way. What happened to the people who were working on the X-33, X-38 projects,...? What will happen to people in Houston, Huntsville or at the Cape if the budget will decrease further.

If the budget cuts will be approved, someday the United States will ask themself why they lost the leadershop in space flight. Well, I hope this time won't come, but honestly, I'm not sure if NASA starts into a better future with Sean O'Keefe as its head.

Well, Captain Crazy has done it to us again! He just couldn't resist poking his thimb into our collective eye one last time! I'm refering to that abomination that Dan or one of his toadying syncophants erected in the west lobby of the HQ building - his self-aggrandizing, self-centered, self-important paean to himself - "A Decade of Excellence." (It makes my nauseous just to right it.) Talk about waste, fraud, and abuse of taxpayers' money! My observation is that the NASA HQ employees are providing the appropriate response to this affront to all the hardworking and decent people who have suffered and endured during his ten years of "excellence" - it is being devoutly IGNORED!! (It should be torn down!!)

Keith: Suppose--just for the sake of argument--that Goldin is right: that the Government of the United States does not exist for the purpose of funding fantasies of human expansion across the solar system. What would that mean? Would it require of us that we live in the here and now?, that we are instead meant to live our lives in the time and place in which we actually live, rather than in a future which is--self evidently--not of our time?

As to his tenure, **** him. Other than smaller and more frequent planetary missions, he has no positive legacy and much, much too much to explain; but it is ill mannered to speak badly of the dead....

Dan did good and bad. For instance, it was good he didn't ask for more budget when NASA and its contractors couldn't tell how existing budgets were spent. It was bad he didn't force the agency, and its associated contractors, to "get a grip" on actual costs. This unpleasant legacy will haunt his successor for many years. However to me, the most telling aspect of Dan's tenure is the state of the "NASA house" that he is leaving behind. Has it been made clean and orderly for the next tenant to occupy? Or do you need to get a house inspector there before you even move so you can determine what should be done just to make it habitable?

Obviously, it is in terrible shape because it took the Administration the longest time to find a new tenant. Goldin did start a needed revolution at NASA. His failure, however, was that he personalized it, overused weapons like humiliation and intimidation to achieve "his" goals, and finally did not plan for (or achieve) a post revolutionary period for NASA that was supportive of this country's national space goals.

Now the next Administrator will have to spend precious time and money just to stabilize the NASA house before he can decide what pieces to dismantle, renovate or add to. History will ultimately judge Goldin to be an unsuccessful leader because of these costly missteps.

We can only hope that the Administration, Congress and the American taxpayers will support the near term "completion" of NASA revolution during a time increasingly focused on national security concerns.

Does Mr. O'Keefe see himself as a NASA Administrator ... or the NASA 'Grim Reaper' as he, according to CNN, apparently took pride with a logo on his coffee mug while at the Pentagon? Is the administration interested in genuine space exploration or just cost cutting no matter the consequences? This article on today's CNN.com is not encouraging:

Given that the Space Station has become a political/international flagship (does anyone believe it ever was about science?) I fear for the rest of NASA programs. I hope this is not one of those cases of 'the cure being worse than the disease'. Is it possible that one day we might look back and miss Mr. Goldin?

There is a saying in Texas: Happiness is seeing Lubbock in your rear view mirror. For many at NASA, happiness is seeing Dan fading into nothing in the rear view mirror. It just took far too long.

Now that one embarrassment is leaving NASA, we can only hope Goldin takes the NASA Inspector General Gross and her companions with him. NASA is for space exploration. NASA is about family. We need to build NASA from the Top down. Where was the IG when project spending was in question or out of control? Some watchdog. Before fact finding and analyses was complete funding was cut, workers unemployed, and centers shut down. As a civil servant and NASA employee, let's get back to reality and the mission!

On the west coast we are called Tunnel Huggers. During Dan's last visit he complemented us on our ability to let go of the tunnels and move forward to our IT future. Got to wonder where the 'I' fits in NASA - I thought we were supposed to provide research and leadership in the fields of Aeronautics and Astronautics, silly me.

Don't get me wrong, IT is a wonderful tool for NASA, but there's still a lot of hardware to be built and tested to verify IT code. I don't know about you but I don't think I'm ready to go from a computer model to a commercial system yet.

Here are some excerpts from this week's newspaper articles which you have referenced on NASAWATCH. I believe I have found a very interesting conclusion ;-}

Regards your "Worm Watch", I have two questions: One, what would an OMB man think of all the MONEY spent on changing and mutilating graphics on the whim of one man, to the extent of the removal of property tags and emblems from museum artifacts by SCARED federal workers?

Two, are you aware of the origins of Dandy Dan's "idea" to go back to the "Meatball" from his first visit to LaRC? (And the great story behind the photo op that almost had people fired?)

Second topic - "Dan" Dan addressed a gathering of Air & Space Museum volunteers at their annual "Appreciation Night" shortly after taking office. He spoke to this group (many, many NASA & Contractor retirees) for almost two hours. He NEVER once mentioned aeronautics, and barely covered manned spaceflight. My comment at the time was "Head for the bunkers, things will be going ugly at NASA fast."

I can only blame Dan Goldin for the slowdown in American aeronautical progress, and it is painfully obvious that he has mucked-up NASA like no one else could.

As I am a Fed, albeit with loose connections with NASA, you can sign me: A Concerned Federal Bystander

One of Dan's premier accomplishments was to focus the ire of "space enthusiasts" on himself.

While this has likely been an unintended consequence of his management style, it had the effect of camouflaging the real rot in the organization. The hangers-on and poseurs from the last days of Apollo and early days of STS.

These are the people who are really responsible for the fall and degeneration of NASA. They dream for the glory days of Apollo, they dream that they are the same men and women who sent 6 crews to the Lunar Surface, they dream and dream. And in their heart they know that they do NOT meet the standards laid down by their predecessors. They have no leadership skills, only envy for the glories of the past. They compensate for their personal and professional failings with capricious micro-management, fanatical devotion to 'the mission of the day', and a lack of respect for anything they do not control and manipulate.

This is Dan Goldins true legacy; deep-rooted, institutionalized and codified NIH, 'leaders' who are obviously 'retired on active duty', and the Best and Brightest of American Aerospace Engineering shunted off out of fear they would upset the status quo within NASA.

Rather than spend energy further vilifying Dan Goldin, the best thing is to ignore him. Much like Bill Clinton, Dan Goldin will turn out to be no more than a flash in the pan, revealed and exposed for what he is by his activities during the last days of power.

Once Dan Goldin is gone, the most critical thing to do is to cull the remaining dead wood of the 1970s and 1980s from NASA. Let them go to work for TRW and Lockmart and Boeing. If senior and mid-level NASA management are so talented, they can certainly obtain better paying positions in private industry, no? Those who can, do. Those who can't 'administrate'.

Only after personal agendas are purged from NASA HQ and the Centers will the real business of Mankind in Space begin.

The US won the final shots of the Cold War including a political race to the Moon. That alone does not guarantee that English will remain the language of space. There is ample chance for Russian, Chinese, or Portuguese to once again become the language of the frontier and of human exploration.

Thanks to Dan Goldin, (and no doubt many "politicians"), 2001 is about to pass, and NASA is no longer a national aeronautics and space agency .. it has become something like a space science agency - if that. America today has no robust space transportation system; no single, comprehensive national space policy; no national permanent space infrastructure.

Yet we do have serious responsibilities. Today, the United States of America is a nation at war, part of a world at war, possessing a vast range of space assets which are essential to its battlefields, as well as its commercial, and scientific life - but which are unprotected and hardly integrated.

Now Dan Goldin is gone, let us pray the Bush Administration takes space and aeronautics seriously and gives us an Administrator with a real national mission (intended to coordinate and work with defense, the commercial sector, and scientific communities) to create a National space policy, and a permanent, national space infrastructure which, though it may take thirty years or so to build, would include, among other things:

1. Common Standards for space hardware, operations, communications, interfaces, protection, safety, rescue, training, verification and test, etc.;
2. A stable of vehicles both manned and unmanned, along with launch and landing facilities, built to meet varied functions for to and from Earth orbit operations, etc.;
3. Ground based and orbital facilities for test, verification, communication, control, construction, processing, maintenance, repair, re-supply, parts storage, launch, training, simulators, emergency capabilities, data analysis, documentation, etc.; 4. Emergency rescue vehicles, equipment, training, and protocols;
5. Earth orbital depots for space based construction and repair, parts storage, maintenance, refueling, transport transfer, emergency rescue capability, and asset protection, etc.;
6. Vehicles (some powered) for orbital transport and transfer - Earth orbit to Lunar orbit, Earth orbit to other points in Earth orbit, Earth to Mars, etc.;
7. Vehicles for Lunar surface to Lunar orbital transport;
8. Lunar habitation - vehicles, facilities, life support, power generation, living, health, research, manufacturing, maintenance and repair, for commercial, scientific, and military uses -- It's time to use the "High Ground";
9. Lunar Orbital processing and research facilities;
10. Space based robotic systems;
11. A coherent commercial friendly regulatory environment; processing, issuance, review and enforcement of rules and regulations;
12. Facilitation of and documentation of space related disciplines for technical education and training;
13. Serious Aeronautics again;
14. Etc.

(The International Space Station would become a subset of the space science agenda, one part of the national space program, and would take its priorities from its place within the overall national space policy.)

To accomplish this end, the new Administrator should be given multi-year funding, maybe even a stipulated, small fixed percentage of the GNP each year, to provide fiscal stability over the long term of development, and sufficient independence to be protected against "raids" diverting funding and asset development to ad hoc scientific, political, or other projects not consistent with the mission or steady progress on the critical path.

Dan may be going, and he has wounded us to the quick. I don't know if we can recover, and am afraid to hope.

Reading the 1992 letter from the TRW employee, I understood why Goldin became administrator. The letter probably helped him beat back what seem to be, based on his subsequent NASA record, fairly accurate charges.

There's a great scene in "All the President's Men" that illustrates why. Investigative reporters Woodward and Bernstein had just exposed H.R. Haldemann, a top Nixon aide, as having controlled a secret fund that bankrolled illegal activities. The report was correct, but the details were sufficiently inaccurate that the White House was denouncing the reporters and the newspaper.

Woodward meets with his source, Deep Throat, who chastises him for aiming too high. "You've got people feeling sorry for him. I didn't think that was possible," Deep Throat says.

It's not difficult to imagine that something similar happened with this letter. If there's anything someone like Goldin is good at, it's playing the victim. I'm sure he milked his denials of these charges for all they were worth, to a group of sympathetic politicians who are familiar with being smeared by the press and their enemies.

The letter was a noble enough attempt. I'm just wondering if the effort backfired and made it more difficult to conduct a proper hearing of his suitability for the job.

After reading Dan's comments in the paper Sunday I was stunned. I now have his picture on the bottom of the cat box. I could not believe how out of touch he is, the cats can't believe I would do that to them.

In 1998 I added up the cost of every ISS engineering change, every deviation/waver (a major cost increase - you allow Boeing to deliver a major element or capability to NASA short hardware or software it needs to work, then bill NASA for this additional needed work under the Sustaining Engineering contract for work that should have been covered in the original contract. i.e.. paying twice for the same stuff) and the program impacts from the RSA delays and got a figure of 863 million.

Why did it grow by 3.6 billion over the next two years? Management decisions moved work off to the Sustaining Engineering phase. That Sustaining Engineering money is used to finish development is just damm wrong! Keep in mind the Sustaining Engineering budget was never designed to cover the cost of hardware and software development. Boeing should have been force to live within the budget or pay for it from corporate pockets (nothing in this world get a company smarter that to tell them to pay for the overrun or get a visit from the IG). Some elected official should add up the cost of all current Engineering Changes, sustaining engineering costs and wavers, bet it reaches 3+ billion. In addition POIC costs are 500% + over estimates (how do you do that? Its all people!).

Thanks to Dan we have two types of people working at NASA (contractors included), true believers and ticks. In Space Flight most of the ticks are in management. Keep in mind ticks suck the blood of it host until it is dead. Why did this happen? Because King Tick was running NASA and identified and promoted his own kind. True believers got hammered because they put mission over politics and safety over back room deals.

Want to see a new way to get blood from the host? Just move your people around. On ISS you get to charge overhead and burden for everyone who moves to a new office (ask yourself, why move lots and lots of people ever 5-8 months?). Think about it, you move 3200-5000 + people (@ $200 per hour/per person), all the labs and offices twice a year, you impact schedule by 2-4 weeks each time and get to change all that payroll, facility costs and new hardware to a different bucket of tax payer money. Thats been going on for years.

Dan, you just about ended long term human space flight, given a few more years and you would have succeeded.

A great deal of the Administrator's job is to be the agency's contact with the Administration and the Congress. And to have to tell people at NASA that the glory days are gone and we need to live with-in what Congress allocates is part of that job. Dan Goldin did that with apparent glee.

But equally part of that job is to go to Congress and the Administration and act as a forceful advocate for NASA. Which Dan Goldin refused to do.

It's a sad day when the administrator of NASA does not consider himself to be among the space lovers.

That letter is damn scary. It's as close to forecasting the future as I have ever seen.

Why doesn't Goldin just shut up and leave quietly? We don't want to hear his opinions about NASA anymore. This latest interview he gave just burns me up. I wish he would just give it a rest and try and help NASA instead of still hurting us. But NO! He couldn't do that if his life depended on it. He is still a mean man and I can't stand him anymore. I can't wait until he's gone! Good riddance to bad rubbish and I hope we never hear from him again.

"A pervasive pattern of grandiosity (in fantasy or behavior), need for admiration, and lack of empathy, beginning by early adulthood and present in a variety of contexts, as indicated by five (or more) of the following:

Several people here have said Dan Goldin is mean. Hmm. Yes, I believe that's true.

At Ames Research Center, 45 people recently lost their jobs (and NASA lost their talent) due to loss of funding to the rotorcraft research program (read: ISS cost overruns). The National Full-Scale Aerodynamics Complex has now gone into "standby" mode. This facility encompasses the 40x80 and 80x120 wind tunnels; it's the largest in the world and the only one that can do full-scale rotorcraft testing.

Goldin came by the center a few weeks ago, just after his resignation was announced, for an all-hands meeting. He started his talk by saying how he remembered on his first visit to Ames, people were saying "how they'd have to pry their cold dead hands from around Ames' wind tunnels." So, he thinks it's funny to make jokes about people losing their jobs; jobs they have put their whole adult lives into. And he gloats about having won, since the tunnels are nearly all closed now. Extremely insensitive.

But that wasn't enough. He went on to tell what he thought was a funny story about how it's hard to let go of things sometimes. He used for analogy a story of some burnt orange shag carpet he used to have in his home in Southern California. Carpet he wouldn't let his wife take out. Even after it was warn and looked awful, and "several dogs had left their mark", he still held on to that carpet. Finally one day he came home as his wife was throwing it out the window.

So it wasn't enough to merely gloat about closing the tunnels. He could even have picked for his analogy something like his favorite old car - excellent but too expensive to maintain now, superceded by more modern technology. No, he compared the institutions that good people dedicated themselves to, that produced innumerable advances in aeronautics and space technology, to old carpet. That man compared our wind tunnels to ugly carpet with dog piss on it.

Also, just to give us something else to shake our heads about, he told us not to be afraid to fail, but that we do have to do a better job with the public, because it's the public that doesn't accept failures at NASA.

Perhaps the people who think there is still something to be resurrected from the rubble should read "Dragonfly". There's a lot of factual information to be gleaned from those pages. There are many delusional persons in government, but NASA seems to have collected a disproportionate share. Only a federal entity could have made so many really terrible business decisions and still exist.

Geez this interview that was published in the Huntsville Times really says it all in the end. There is an old biblical proveb that says "where there is no vision the people perish". Well under Goldin's watch the people of NASA and the vision of the exploration and development of space began to vanish.

This is the guy who, when Congress asked him what he would do with a larger budget said, "biotechnology".

This is the guy who, along with his buddy Al Gore, picked the Lockmart version of X-33 when everyone knew that it was the riskiest approach with the least chance of success. Then he lies to congress and directs the people at MSFC to hide the fact that the program had failed until after the 2000 election so that it would not hurt Mr. Gore.

This is the same guy who, in 1996 followed Kate Mulgrew (Captian Janeway of Star Trek Voyager) around like a puppy dog at the thirtieth anniversary of Star Trek and had no time for the engineers and other common folk of Huntsville.

This is the same guy who, at every event that I ever saw him, berated at least one person with that condescending tone that only a know it all New Yorker could have.

This is the same guy who talks about how education is more important that inspiration but totally forgets that it was the inspiration of going to the Moon that educated an entire generation of engineers and scientists and still to this day provides the core of dedication that he lauds at NASA.

This is the same guy who talks about no hardware being built for station before Clinton forced a redesign but forgets that SS Freedom already had lots of test hardware built, including the long modules, nodes, power system, and other components that only had to be fabricated for flight after the redesign that was no more than adding the Russian modules.

This is the same guy who dropped the Shuttle C when it could have significantly reduced the cost of ISS construction and moved the schedule forward by years. Shuttle C could have also been the heavy lift that could get manned planetary modules to the station for assembly.

This is the same guy who has lied to congress so often that no one in congress or the administration believes or trusts NASA anymore.

This is the same guy who has screwed up the agency so bad that in almost a year of searching no one wants the job.

The exploration and development of space is the future Dan. Alvin Toffler, author of the "Third Wave" states that without any question space is the "Fourth Wave" that will transform our entire civilization. With the money that NASA gets today we can do much, but ONLY after your GONE!

The neat thing is that we children of Apollo are coming into our power years. WE will make this happen. You are a relic of the 70's and are a poster child for Jimmy Carter's malaise. This maliase comes from a lack of vision, a lack of understanding of the role of space in the future of mankind, and finally from your ego that is so large you never saw anything else.

As I live and breath and stand before the creator of the universe I affirm that myself and others like me are going to do these things to open the space frontier and like the NASA worm that you so hated you will be erased from the history of the agency.

Dan Goldin's legacy is one super bureaucracy (Headquarters), three major bureaucracies (JSC, KSC, MSFC), and several smaller ones (all the rest). They all exist to protect their self interest. They are arrogant enough to believe that the past greatness justifies all that they do.

An example of this leaderless society showing these truths is the Space Launch Initiative. NASA has proclaimed a desire solve the access to space cost with new launch vehicles. They conducted studies since 1982 - (ALS, STAS, STIS, NLS, STAS II, STAS III, RLS, RLV, etc.). Plus the X programs of the 90's. Now SLI, this is $5B to do hobby shop technologies that the centers have selected based on their self preservation. Goldin requested the centers to work together but never once forced them to arrive at a single vision, approach, or solution. Leaders are supposed lead, not compromise and make everyone feel happy. What a waste of years and loss of spirited talent as NASA and the National Space Program atrophied.

It's all too obvious that Goldin has been a disaster for NASA. Several of us checked him out to understand what prompted his departure from TRW. We found that he had been passed over twice for promotions--- a sure sign of company disfavor. We were also told that he had two personal deficiencies. One was an inability to organize or to understand an organization and, two his interpersonal skills were minimal, to the point of being abrasive and distrustful. Well, we've seen the results to which we can now add (after his talk about closing field centers) a certain vindictiveness.

I returned to NASA (Ames) in 1998 after twenty years in academia and private industry and saw the effects of Goldin�s management style, and that of his handpicked subordinates, first hand. Compared with my experience in the 1970s, I was appalled at the total ineffectiveness of senior management and formulated the theory of "management of activity" to explain the ineptness.

Here is one example of "management by activity". NASA Ames decided it would become the NASA Center of Excellence in IVHM (Integrated Vehicle Health Management). This was interesting since it was the only major NASA Center that was not involved in IVHM. The first attempts to get a research division involved in the topic failed so it was decided to allocate it to another division that did not have any expertise that would help, but which had been weakened by the cuts in the Aeronautics budget in 1998. An IVHM "Czar" was appointed to start the effort but neither he nor the division were given any funds from the Center, making progress impossible. In response to pressure from the senior management, many meetings were held, managers were harangued and researchers exhorted but all to no avail. After about a year, with no discernible progress or funds, managers were replaced and the process repeated. Eventually senior management forgot about IVHM. There was still no progress but senior management had been very active. All that mattered was the activity, not results.

It is valid to ask how NASA can continue with such management practices. The answer is probably that the NASA management culture has been distorted under Goldin and his clones and has become engrained.

In contrast to the management activity, the top class researchers continue researching their areas of interest and are fairly oblivious to management directives. "Management by Activity" doesn�t affect them that much as the managers cannot really communicate with the researchers. Changes in programs are distorted on their way to the researchers so that the new program essentially becomes a new funding source for ongoing research as opposed to a change in direction. Management exhortations, such as "if you don�t see the future is in IVHM, then you are stupid", fail to motivate change. Management then hides the fact that research directions do not change by changing their organization title. For example, I know of one branch that moved from an "Aeronautics" Directorate to an "Information Technology" Directorate. They still do the same research, but they are now "information technologists" rather than "aeronautics researchers" so this constitutes change according to NASA.

Management at NASA is a game played by managers for managers. The success factors are the perceived degree of activity and the influence that a given manager has with his/her superiors. There is little, if any, connection between the exhortations of the managers and the work the researchers actually perform and even less connection with the real world. The only efficient managers at NASA are some of the Branch Chiefs, the first management level, who have close contact with the researchers.

The most useful function NASA could perform now would be to send the "super pilots" back to their military units and let them perform their originally assigned duties, for which they were trained with many taxpayer dollars. The non military types can continue bamboozling the public and emptying the coffers. Goldin has ended everything worthwhile.

Goldin's internal fiscal polices during his tenure will be his discrediting legacy. The inability of the Agency to voice a credible cost estimate on almost any level has, in large measure, created the current management mess that will take years and very competent senior management to clean up. A little history is in order.

In the early 1970's NASA assembled an extremely competent team of independent cost estimators to determine cost projections for the Space Shuttle Program. The team was an integral part of that programs' management throughout the decade. The cost estimates used to begin the Shuttle Program to sell the program to the Nixon administration were well documented, based on solid technical input, and withstood the test of time through the Program's first flight.

This team was centered at JSC, but contained solid input from cost estimating professionals at KSC and MSFC. It provided management support to the AA for Manned Space Flight and the NASA Comptroller. John Yardley and William Lilly held those positions. Both of these men could �wire-brush� cost estimates and an integral part of their job was to do so. They spend an inordinate amount of their time working those issues for the Space Shuttle Program.

In the early 1980's elements of this cost estimating team were put in place to perform the same function for Space Station. The initial estimates, however, were not within an order of magnitude of what was being touted by Headquarters as probable cost run outs. The team was essentially disbanded and the remnants were periodically discredited as the estimates became based on what ever NASA senior management thought Congress would approve.

George Abbey had a very influential role in assuring there would never be another independent cost estimate made at JSC for the Space Station Program. Over the past 8 years, he received several formal proposals to put an independent cost estimating group in place to oversee and provide credible program estimates. The messengers were shot in every instance. The very simple game plan for the past 4 years has been to hide the eventual cost overruns, get the first elements of the Space Station on orbit and assume that Congress would then have no choice but to be blackmailed into supporting it as an ongoing R&D project.

The Bush Administration appears to have called that game plan into question, but questioning it and really doing being able to do anything about it will be interesting to watch.

As a NASA Aeronautical technician for 15 years, I can tell you that in all my experience in government (25 years), I have never seen such pathetic management style than that of Dan Goldin.

He disliked aeronautical research to the point of trying to gut it, and his dislike shined through every attempt to act civil. I have twice personally witnessed him verbally berate a Center Director right in front of the workers. Once at Ames and once at Dryden. I found myself not only embarrassed for the person to whom the diatribe was aimed, but for Mr. Goldin himself, as he made himself look foolish. I have to say that both incidents resembled a child having a tantrum.

Aeronautics (whether led by NASA or some other organization) needs to be uplifted, or we shall see it slip away to some other country as the standard of excellence, a position that once belonged only to the U.S. Let's see how much it will cost U.S. aircraft manufacturers when they have to go abroad for flight research data.

I worked at NASA for close to ten years and left in disgust. You are fooling yourselves if you think that by getting rid of Dan, anything has been solved.

Dan is a symptom of a decease of nepotism, apathy, mismanagement, and lack of vision, that was there before Dan and will be there after Dan. If anything Dan was "good" for NASA, in the sense that he was such a psychopath that he attacked everyone equally. He just hated people, so he was kind of like chemotherapy drugs in fighting cancer. Yes, it's true he killed the good cells, but he also did not make life easy on the bad cells.

I am afraid it's too late for NASA. It's time to put it out of its miseries and rethink how we wish to carry on with space and aeronautics research from here on. The longer we put this off the greater will be the damage to the credibility of space research, and this would be the real tragedy.

The retirement of Dan Goldin is a long time coming for NASA. He came in to NASA with the mandate "If you can't Measure It You Can't Manage It", we now have a large budget overrun and other programs within NASA are likely to be cut or threatened including the X-38 to offset the "Measured Management" style of Goldin. Goldin was asleep at the wheel while the Station budget overran $4+ billion.

At NASA Centers, workers spent days prettying up bulletin boards with metrics and this took much away from the day to day work making the whole exercise a farce. He pushed Gene Kranz out the door on that insistent issue and just about everyone else with experience was told they were too old, now we have many thousands of man years of experience less than when he started. Those who remain have to take time out, from their tasks, to train new kids who see they are being underpaid and are now leaving in large numbers.

He has seen the fruits of his purging with the Mars mission failures of recent years, he hurt NASA immeasurably during his tenure with his "thanks you sir may I have another cut" budget philosophy with Congress. NASA employees and Contractors continue to work despite low raises and low morale.

The NASA budget has not grown in 7 years of Goldin's tenure, the NASA patient is flat lined and awaits a medical miracle. His style was a classic blunder on how not to manage.

May the door hit him in the butt on the way out on Nov. 17. As they say in the Bronx, "You're outa here Dan".

We need someone like Gerald Griffin at the helm at NASA, so we can continue to grow without having to check our back for the knife.

Nothing so well reflects and documents Dan Goldin's Accomplishments, Failures, and legacy at NASA as the Thomas Young Committee Report and Congress's Conference Report for the NASA 2002 Budget

It is near. The Day that all of us have hoped for is nigh. My own gladness at seeing the "mighty worm hunter" depart is tempered by knowing that a lot of talented people who've given body, heart and soul to NASA are no longer there to celebrate. I'm sobered by the amount of talent and vision that has been squandered, and replaced instead with a layer of vacuous political jelly, that leaves everyone who cares with so little to build on.

But, my friends, the departure of one tyrant, while cause for a moment of rejoicing, is as much a call to action.

More than NASA is ours. So is the Vision behind it. I am of a generation that remembers the words of the New Frontier, because I was there when they were spoken. They ring in my heart and mind even now, down the long halls of history. I firmly believe that even in these days which cast a long shadow over so much that we thought we knew, it must be our Charge to reclaim our collective Vision, and to carry it forward through the struggles ahead.

We must raise our voices, and remain keen in our awareness, for there are those far beyond and above the man who hunts worms who have even lesser and narrower sight than he. We must work now, in these days, to lift up the Vision, and convince those in power that it is not an instrument of political whim, but the seed of a National, and Indeed, an International will, which will not be so easily blown aside by the shifting winds of politics, or national uncertainty.

America needs Vision in these dire days so filled with gray dust and fallen ash. Some would say that the Vision has narrowed, and the sight turned inward. Now, through this haze, we must raise our voices, our hearts, and help others look outward and upward to the stars which we know so very well.

1. In any conflict between two men (or two groups) who hold the same basic principles, it is the more consistent one who wins. Obviously N/A...

2. In any collaboration between two men (or two groups) who hold different basic principles, it is the more evil or irrational one who wins.

3. When opposite basic principles are clearly and openly defined, it works to the advantage of the rational side; when they are not clearly defined, but are hidden or evaded, it works to the advantage of the irrational side.

First, in Goldin's speech he talked about the only way to get costs down is through competition. This from the man that sole-sourced both the Station and the Shuttle programs duing his tenure.

Second, I am tired of NASA getting beaten up for the overruns on Space Station. Really sick and tired of it. You have business pros at Boeing squeezing out every dollar they can from the customer, charging outrageous rates since they were handed the golden goose, and NO ONE is beating them up. I see the failure of the Space Station as being attributed to civil servants that were good engineers trying to work long hours in management jobs they have little to no training in, while the contractor targets in on short-term gains...not long term partnering in space. Where does $4 Billion go??? Not in the Civil Servants pockets... And I'm a contractor, I've been in it for the long haul, but have almost called it quits 3 or 4 times as I watch these companies put short term profits WAY ahead of long term profitability.

I've noticed that the none of the Goldin's replacement candidates have an engineering background or an engineering education. What does this administration have against engineers? If you look at top management of USA you'll find psychology majors, retired generals, and bean counters. Manned Space Flight requires good engineering and managers who at least have some engineering background.

I believe that Dan's departure statement is only a joke on his part. He is asking "... who else wants this job ..." ? The Executive will not find anyone, so they will beg Dan to stay on the job.

It's going to take years for NASA to recover from the "enlightened" administration provided by our soon-to-be-late, not-so-great administrator.

The greatest current danger to NASA is that the "flexible" senior managers who survived and prospered under Dan will not be recognized for what they are by the new Administrator. Does NASA really need managers who were willing to set aside their basic moral judgements, their integrity, in order to keep their power? An example would be those managers who implemented policies in promotion and retention that placed age, sex and race above knowledge, skill and commitment. The old NASA placed value on technical competence, management skill and contribution to the Agency but the new NASA seems to have lost its vision, dedication and many of its values. Its true that there were bigots and morally corrupt managers in NASA pre Dan but they were at a levels that did not set the agenda for the total Agency. Dan had an opportunity to promote people who possessed his characteristics into positions that can still impact the character of the entire Agency. Let us hope they are not retained in those positions.

I HAVE WORKED IN THE FAB DIVISION AT LARC FOR ALLMOST 40 YEARS. I AGREE WITH MOST OF THE COMMENTS I HAVE READ SO FAR ABOUT THE MESS GOLDIN MADE OF NASA. UNFORTUNATELY IT WON'T END WHEN HE GOES , BECAUSE WE HAVE SOME MANAGERS THAT ARE GOLDIN CLONES. WE ARE GOING TO FASTER, BETTER CHEAPER OUR FAB DIVISON RIGHT OUT THE GATE. I WISH HE COULD TAKE THEM WITH HIM. OUR NEW DIRECTOR SHOULD HAVE THE PASSION OF TOM HANKS FOR THE SPACE PROGRAM AND THE GOOD SENSE TO KNOW THAT NASA SHOULD ALSO BE THE LEADER IN AERONAUTICAL RESEARCH.

"A reasonable man adapts himself to the world. An unreasonable man adapts the world to himself. So all progress depends upon unreasonable men." I do not know what sage said this - but he must NOT have had Dan Goldin in mind. Dan gave NASA more of a unified direction than it had before, and he made it more accountable to its stakeholders in the public and congress. He created the origins program. He created Faster, better, Cheaper - a success even accounting for the mars failures. Yes, three mars missions failed. But the combined cost of all those missions was considerably less than that of Mars Observer - the success rate per dollar risked is much better with Goldin's approach. We finally got arround to using technologies we have had for years - like ion engines and airbag landings.

Dan Goldin is an unreasonable man. He does not stand by his people, he takes the credit when things go right and shifts the blame when they go wrong. His management style chased all kinds of talented people out of the agency. His insane approach to a shuttle replacement gave us the X-33 and X-34 disasters, which also killed off embrionic US comercial RLV industry with a subsidized compertitive threat.

As to the space station - he bowed to political pressures and let the Russians in on the critical path - destroying the ISS program. Make no mistake about it - the ISS is a financial and policy disaster worse than the Concorde. Dan success in "Faster, Better, Cheaper" and other things account for only a small portion of the NASA budget. But his biggest failure - ISS - will shine as the brightest star in the sky. And if Dan't friends in the administration get their way, that's all it will ever be. A shining monument to politics ahead of substance. A 40 billion dollar remake of Triana(Goresat), doing only 4-5 manhours of research a day.

It may be true that "all progress depends upon unreasonable men". But, mostly, we got REGRESS from this unreasonable man. His successes save millions and make it to prime time. His failures waste billions and ain't even on CSPAN. But despite his self-made public image, make no mistake about it, Clinton and Goldin ruined this agency. It could take decades for NASA to recover from it.

I would like to reply to the comments of the whipper-snapper. Let me start by saying that most of these folks are not just whiners who have a bone to pick with Dan Goldin. Like me, they sit in frustration when they look around at all of the talent available to this agency. I was in your shoes just a few years ago when my career at NASA started, and I had a tremendous amount of enthusiasm for the space program and its future.

In my few short years, I have been subjected to ISO 9000, OSHA VPP, and countless other management buzzwords. I have seen one important technical decision after another be ignored in favor of the politically desirable one. And I have seen the leaders of this agency put on a good front when everyone directly involved knows good and well that they were feeding Congress and the public another line. Now I understand exactly why they did it. NASA is a federal bureacracy that depends on politicians to determine its budget. That is why Triana almost came into being, even though they had to manufacture goals to justify its existence. But there has to be a line where political decisions take a back seat to fiscal sanity and sound engineering. Unfortunately, the ISS program is just a symptom of a bigger problem.

I have wasted many hours of my free time wondering how to bring about change in this agency. I know that the whipper-snapper's answer would be to focus on doing my job well and everything will work out. But, I am afraid that is not enough in this case. The changes needed by this agency must start with an administrator who is honest, takes responsibility, and tackles the bureaucratic hardening of the arteries that has taken place. I sincerely hope that the Bush administration and any potential new administrator takes the time to review the comments layed out here. NASA doesn't need anymore buzzwords or acronyms. We need some clearly defined goals, and then remove all of the obstacles in our path. Space exploration is too important to let it die this slow, painful death.

I have talked to many people who gave Dan Goldin a chance at the beginning of his tenure. But when he began to focus solely on his mantra of 'faster, better, cheaper' or eradicating the worm logo, many people stopped listening. Now I hope that everyone will give a new administrator the same opportunity to define how this agency is to run. But if that person turns their back on reports like the Young report, that plainly states that radical changes must occur, and chooses nifty buzzwords, then we will see similar comments after their departure. My sincere hope is that NASA makes these changes SOON and once again defines excellence in space research and exploration. Because right now, our credibility with the public and Congress is sinking fast!

Finally, I will address the reason for nasawatch's (formerly RIFwatch, right Keith) popularity. Besides being a website that provide timely news about many different aspects of space, it is the only place for many NASA employees to get news about what is happening inside NASA. This wouldn't be the case if our leadership thought enough of us to keep us better informed inside NASA. And this culture doesn't just exist at the top levels. It has seeped down through the layers of management to the point where the rumor mill is the "official" way of finding things out.

Radical changes must occur or else this young whipper-snapper will need to change majors.

"History will remember Dan Goldin more for his bigoted "All I see is old, white, males" introductory speech to the NASA work force that caused a major experience drain than his "faster, better, cheaper three leg stool concept" which would have been far more successful had he not destroyed a significant segment of the agency experience base."

Thanks for this opportunity to respond about a man who, for better or worse, has left an enduring mark upon America's space program. Goldin came in with the mission to cut the cost of NASA to the taxpayers while launching more successful missions throughout the solar system. A hugh task!

It didn't help that oh by the way his feckless political masters concocted a welfare program for Russia out of NASA's budget starting with Shuttle-MIR and ending with this elephantine ISS. Clearly Goldin could have done more, much more, to have designed a space station that was economical for future generations. This will be one of the blackest marks upon his legacy. On the positive side he did point the way to launch useful probes to the planets and other destinations throughout the solar system without spending 1 billion dollars per mission. Today JPL, APL and any other design bureaus can design great science missions for a fraction of the cost of prior missions. He stepped on toes to get there, he overshot the mark but NASA is there now. Dan Goldin wasn't a bureaucrat in waiting when he took the helm of NASA. He came from private business roots, he has a passion for the agency and its far better for NASA and American space exploration to have those types of leaders than bureaucrats whose passion is organizational certitude, org charts and fingers in the slipstream of political winds.

Given the obvious difficulty with finding a new NASA administrator, its obvious the job is a challenge few qualified people are willing to take. So lets not crucify one of those few who took the challenge and left a record to be both damned and praised.

I started working as an aerospace engineer at GSFC this year. I uprooted my family and packed my bags to join the organization leading the world into the final frontier. And I believe that with a visionary yet pragmatic leader in place, with the talent to overcome the myopia of politics while still winning over the right politicians, NASA (or an alternative to the American Space Program) could continue to lead the nations, businesses, and citizens of Earth into space.

From my first 9+ months at NASA, I have two impressions. First the problems that plague the ISS program reach down into the lowest scale, sub-million dollar projects. And second, the recently released strategic plan is a convoluted hodge-podge of too many programs with no clear vision. Clearly, new leadership and major overhaul are in order. I just hope I survive the overhaul, because, YES, I still want to work at NASA.

And I believe that the American Space Program should consist of nothing less than leading the spacefaring nations of the world to colonize the solar system. Why? National Security. How's that? When the neighborhood goes bad, and community action and law enforcement don't clean up the riff - raff, what do you do? Move out. The safest American -- the one that is least concerned for his personal well-being in the face of terrorism of any form -- is currently in space. I believe every program and project at NASA should be devoted to that end -- scientific research into the necessities and results of long-term human spaceflight, unmanned exploration of solar system bodies and the interplanetary environment, more efficient, faster launch and transport vehicles, and of course human exploration missions. The increase of scientific knowledge and advancement of technology should only be means to the end, which is permanent habitation of bodies (or man-made outposts) elsewhere in the solar system. The NSF can fund stellar and galactic astronomy, the EPA earth science, and the FAA aeronatics research (unless a subset of these endeavors contributes directly to the vision of solar system colonization).

It's also imperative that NASA not in any way create barriers to space commercialization. In fact, it is only through commercialization and the associated decrease in cost that comes with competition that will make the vision realizable. But again, commercialization is not a goal, per se. NASA will lead and fund the higher risk research and exploration required to pave the way for the more operational, lower risk commercial endeavors.

Mr. Goldin will not lead us into such an undertaking (and I believe in my lifetime that I will only see the beginning). I hope that Mr. Bush will select someone with this vision, and someone who can convey the commitment required of the US government and populace. Not a crash commitment like Apollo, but a long-term, steady commitment with a reliable budget.

I visit your site often, and let me say, I appreciate the watchdog wisdom. We DO need it. But I really have to wonder if the guys who think Dan Goldin is the devil got fired from NASA or something. I mean I'm as unhappy as the next guy about the space program's woes, but I think it takes something more to make a person revile someone as deeply as you all seem to revile Goldin.

His management style is difficult to bide, no doubt. But the space program is NOT in the toilet! C'mon guys! What I think we're hearing is a lot of moaning from folks who have been laid off or had projects cancelled, or not approved, etc., etc.

I'm a space sciences student who will be entering the workforce soon, and I am disappointed by my future colleagues' constant complaining about Goldin's legacy. - Nice to know that attitude's waiting for me when I graduate. - Sure, he is ultimately the responsible figurehead for what goes on at NASA. But his severest detractors are taking the approach of killing the captain for his crew's misdeeds. I definitely appreciate the comments of those below who have stood up for the guy. This is a good website - it doesn't need to become www.poundgoldin.com. Oops! It already has. But I'm not worried. Just like Dan Goldin, this kvetching will eventually go away.

It's real easy to point to the mistakes and say, "Bad administrator! Bad!" But the reality is that we've seen our knowledge and ability to reach out into space improve drastically in the last 10 years, with no end in sight. This is such an exciting time! Have we as a species ever done a lot of these things before? No. Do we have a whole lot of practice exploring the universe? No. Might this be a path fraught with difficulties of all sorts?

Funding problems, even $5 billion ones, are not going to kill space exploration. The agency has had to change since the cold war ended, and it has done so. It NEEDS to continue to evolve, and it will. Even if times get rough for a while. Don't worry, it's gonna be okay.

I think that what the space program needs, besides a new administrator, is to adopt a new slogan. Let's let "faster, better, cheaper" collect a little dust and switch to something like, "NASA: Don't worry, we'll fix it" (although, "No whining!" might do more good).

Then again, maybe you guys are right; maybe he IS the devil. Maybe he stays up at night collaborating with the little elves of chronic-mismanagement, coming up with ways to sabotage our dreams of exploring the final frontier. Yes, how vain of him to conduct a farewell tour of facilities he was in charge of for 10 years! Bad Administrator! Bad!

I hope the new administrator institutes a policy that every employee and contractor must learn to ride a horse. Maybe then they'll understand the value of failure. Maybe his motto will be, "Chin up people, we're exploring the universe here!" Maybe he'll give hugs too.

I don't work for NASA, so I don't feel I'm qualified to offer an opinion as to whether Goldin was a good or bad administrator. Certainly, I don't agree with everything he did; however, there has never been a "boss" in history who was able to please everyone all of the time. As someone who has literally worked their way up the ladder from the bottom rungs of the organization to management, one of the biggest lessons I've learned is that those at the bottom don't have a clue what it's like to be in management - and those in management who have never worked at the bottom don't have a clue what it's like at the other end of the stick. Both groups are seriously deficient when it comes to having the information they need to make a judgement as to what the other *should* be doing.

Nevertheless, I've enjoyed reading the comments on this page - and have enjoyed reading comment pages that you've put up in the past. What I find distressing, though, is that your dislike of Goldin seems to have almost become an obsession. Over the last year, you seem to have taken every opportunity to make a crack about either him or his (perceived) management shortcomings.

I come to NASA Watch to read about NASA-related news - not to read about Keith's personal vendetta against Goldin. You have want you wanted now - give it a rest, man....

In response to "...I come to NASA Watch to read about NASA-related news - not to read about Keith's personal vendetta against Goldin. You have want you wanted now - give it a rest, man...." [See above]

I'm an employee of the Marshall Space Flight Center. I've never met Keith and know him only through nasawatch. I don't know if he has a personal vendetta against Goldin...and I don't really care...but I do know that what Keith does here is a good thing. If you've never worked for NASA, then you really haven't a clue about all that Goldin has done, good or bad. Keep in mind that Goldin's salary and his Agency's budget is 100% funded by taxpayer dollars. That makes Goldin and what he does accountable to Keith, you and me. What Keith tries to do here is make Goldin account for how he is using the money and managing the Agency. Every citizen of this country has a vested interest in what Goldin does. Goldin is the one who started making things personal by the way he publically berated, chastised and embarrassed many employees of the Agency during his tenure (among many other things). If Keith wants to reciprocate in kind (which I very much enjoy), I'll support him. I believe that Goldin gets exactly what he deserves.

When NASA employees talk of Goldin's retirement, they're almost brought to tears of joy. We've waited for this for such a long time; it means so much more to us than any other person. Is Keith obsessed with Goldin? I don't know. But I do know that what Keith has said and done here has brought to the attention of the American public things that Goldin didn't want you to know. Things that he tried to conceal. Things that he deliberately lied about. And I, for one, am thankful.

In response to a posted comment that because Goldin's tenure spanned three administrations it must have had some quality I find completely spurious.

I think it speaks more to the fact that the second president had no concern for NASA and that the third one has (at least now) bigger issues on his plate.

If Bill Clinton had an interest, not a driving interest but just an interest, in space exploration, Dan Goldin's tenure wouldn't have been nearly as long.

'Ole Dan did his best to destroy Americas space program. Getting his name and face in the paper was more important than insuring the success of NASA. Every October 17th should be a day of celebration.

Am I the only one who remembers how long it took to find a replacement for Fletcher?

Seems a pity that Mr. G. could not have left NASA faster and the agency in better condition than its continuing state of decline, which would have been cheaper in the long run than struggling to rebuild the agency in the budget-cut darkness that will follow the Goldin sunset.

A contractor veteran of Mercury, Gemini, Apollo, Skylab and the space station.

I enjoy reading various opinions about Goldin's departure - the good and the bad. However, when I read the comment from the person who signed "Someone who loves NASA and its potential for the future", it made me angry. The author appeared to be a know it all, but probably knows very little. The person must be fairly old because he must have worked at every NASA Center and knows intimately its programs. For someone who claims to love NASA, his or her ideas don't give a rats a** about the good people at NASA (all Centers included). I just hope the next Administrator (not that person) will get down to work and begin fixing things right from the get go.

"NASA breathed a sigh of relief when the Mars Odyssey spacecraft phoned home upon reappearing from the back side of the planet (see p. 64). Interestingly, until that critical radio signal, Goldin was nowhere to be seen, certainly not on television from the control room. Space science chief Ed Weiler was on tap to answer reporters' questions after the event. But once MO phoned home, Goldin appeared in the control room footage, and Weiler got the hook. Would Goldin have remained the invisible man had MO's orbit insertion failed? Inquiring of a NASA official, we said, "We're putting two plus two together and getting four, is that right?" to which the response was "Yes, four is the correct answer."

I am sure that six months from now you will complaining about the new administrator. The problem is we all want the future now. We watch Star Trek and dream. The truth is we are not the generation that will venture into the cosmos. The taxpayer dollars and public interest are not there. A new administrator will not change that fact. Dan Goldin did an okay job. That his tenure overlapped three administrations speaks volumes.

As a side note. I have no understanding why NASA is still in the aeronautical business. NASA should be concerned with space and getting to space. The FAA and airlines should be handling aeronautical R&D.

I don't know anyone that got along with Dan all of the time and he never gave out accolades unless they were really deserved. However, I would not misinterpret his comments or actions. He is a great visionary, sharp as a tack, excellent at politics, a fighter for the agency and its missions, a tough leader, almost always correct in making decisions, and caring about employees and their families. I know this from my own personal experiences. I also understand some of the obstacles that he faced in doing what had to be done. If people want to take advantage of his retiring to whine about their careers, that is one thing, but give the man a break. He is far smarter than they and he was a great Administrator.

This is my second post on the subject of the late unlamented Daniel S. Goldin. The reason that it has been so hard to find his replacement is that he did so much to destroy the moral, infrastructure, and future of the agency. In addition to this, his serial lying in front of congress destroyed any credibility that NASA should have. Still more damaging and his toadying to political correctness. To make things even worse he damaged himself with the potential new administration by hiding the overruns on the International Space Station and hid the debacle of the X-33 program till after the election was over.

The question now is what can be done to correct the problems that any new administrator inherits? There is much that can and must be done to revive and make NASA a valuable part of our nation.

Dan Goldin in one of his bright moves wanted to consolidate the roles and responsibilities at the NASA centers. However, he had no clue about how to go about this and after some very limited efforts the initiative died. If this initiative is to be successful it must be combined with closing of redundant NASA centers. Here is a list of core competencies that should be distributed across the centers.

JSC should be the focus of all manned space flight operations. All payload processing, operations and development should be at JSC. This means closing the POCC at NASA MSFC where all it does is add an additional layer of paperwork and heartache for payload developers. The same with the Hitchhiker program at GSFC. The same with the Get Away Special program at Langley. ALL manned space flight operations at JSC.

MSFC should be the center for engineering excellence at NASA. This covers propulsion, launch systems, and the engineering for manned space flight. All work such as Franklin Chang Diaz's MHD propulsion, Glenn's nuclear propulsion, and JPL's ion propulsion should be done at MSFC. MSFC should also be the engineering check on the other centers work in a revolving set of review committees. These committees would function much like the post failure investigation committees but hopefully would find the problems before flight, thereby saving taxpayers money.

Goddard has an incredible set of resources associated with Earth sciences and Earth remote sensing. Let GSFC focus on that. Remove any of these activities from JPL, MSFC, or Stennis. GSFC could also focus on Earth Change research where they actually do the real science associated with man or natural caused Earth change.

Of course unmanned robotic exploration. However, JPL in its current incarnation has deep seated problems in working with the contractor community. They have a terrible problem in stealing ideas that makes any but the most stout hearted shy away from them. This has to change.

Wny is Ames still a NASA center? Their only purpose today is to keep JPL honest. They have not done a good job of it. APL does much more of that today and they aren't on the taxpayer dole. Give Ames to Stanford and let them compete with APL for contracts.

Glenn research does not have the support of their home community. The airport there wants to take most of their land. This may be held off for a while with the events of Sept 11 but it is inevitable. Their solution is to buy other and and rebuild their facilities. This makes zero sense. Either fund Glenn's aeronautical research like it deserves or close the center.

Focus NASA's aeronautical research at this center and fund it properly. The first A in NASA is aeronautics. There is still much to be done in this arena to help with our national aeronautical competitiveness.

Close it and move the engine work and testing to MSFC. People in Huntsville love the sound of engines roaring. If there are facilities there that are unique then keep them open under MSFC's control.

Its the launch place. Keep it that way. Upgrade the facilities and fix all the crap wrong down there.

A good place to test but why does NASA have to own anything there? Can't they rent from the Air Force?

K. Headquarters We have a headquarters? With the Goldin led decimation of headquarters and his psychotic management style we are lucky to have anyone left there. You could tell the decreased stature of NASA when they were forced to move HQ from next to the FAA to across the tracks a few blocks away.

Headquarters does have a purpose. Besides being the political interface to congress they are there to work with the president or is designee to help focus the centers toward a common goal. This has been sadly lacking for a very long time.

The problem with the ISS program is that it has waay too many people working in operations. This ain't the Apollo program and ISS could do with a lot fewer people. Word on the street is that Goldin's famous core complete configuration is still up to $1.5 billion dollars over budget. The problem is not the hardware which is completed and mostly in test but the number of people on the program. If the above consolidation of resources takes place the program could easily handle a 15% reduction in civil servant and contractor staff. The program should be reorganized with an emphasis on safety and operability. With the savings in personnel NASA could fund the rest of the ISS program.

USA is a failure. It has done little to actually save the money that was claimed and has cast into stone many bad habits. Do something to fix this first by bringing it back into civil service and then reorganizing the system.

CSOC is costing the government more money that what was in place before. Get rid of a bad contract. Bring it back into NASA. However, no more TDRS satellites. Buy capacity from commercial vendors. Piggyback transponders on commercial birds if you have to.

NASA is the legitimate government agency to go after and explore the rest of the solar system. However, today's NASA cannot afford to do so because of the terrible state of ISS and the Shuttle program. Why not use ISS as a staging ground for Mars exploration? Science on ISS is dead and has little chance of reviving over the next several years. In 1962 a fateful decision was made by President Kennedy to abandon the construction of a space station where the Lunar missions would be staged from. This decision allowed us to get to the Moon by 1970 but left nothing but flags and footprints on the Moon after the expenditure of over a hundred billion dollars in today's dollars.

Many advocates of exploring Mars such as Bob Zubrin advocate the construction, at a cost of tens of billions of dollars a mega Saturn V type vehicle called Magnum that would get us to Mars quickly. However, this is just a repeat of the flags and footprints of the 60's. Why not use a soon to be operational vehicle such as the Delta IV heavy and assembly at ISS? This would cut the costs by tens of billions of dollars and would put the hugely expensive ISS to good use.

The bottom line is that NASA can be fixed. NASA has a huge cadre of truly dedicated people, many of which are truly happy that Goldin is gone and would love to have a leader who could truly lead them to Mars and beyond.

My second thought: "God help us! We're stepping from the frying pan into the fire."

I think it is revealing how now that he realizes just how badly he botched his job here at NASA, Dan is bailing out and sticking his successor with the festering mess he has made. It is damned nice of him, though, to offer to help pick the poor schlock.

I wonder if the successor's first action will be to reinstate the worm to disassociate himself from NASA's "Goldin Years"?

In industry, "house cleanings" have become essential. Maybe the same is needed across NASA?

Without a doubt, Dan Goldin was worst administrator NASA has ever had and I rejoiced when I heard the news he resigned. He had a lot of good ideas (like faster, better, cheaper), but completely lacked the skill and expertise to set up the management infrastructure to implement them. He was totally erratic and never stuck with anything long enough to make it work. At NASA HQ, I survived 4 complete reorganizations in just 5 years. After totally messing up NASA, Goldin's resignation speech sounds like the "Bass-o-matic" salesman from 'Saturday Night Live': "Hmmm! That's good bass!"

To the end he never got it. "Better, faster, cheaper" is a JOKE and an old one at that.

Although he is leaving, Goldin's devastating impact on Aeronautics will likely result in its demise as a viable part of NASA. Aeronautics reasearch at NASA is shrinking all the time and infrastructure related to it is slowly falling apart. Goldin's final volley looks to be to shed NASA of it to save costs. The joke is Aeronautics is less than 5% of the budget so savings to put toward the Goldin disaster in ISS and Shuttle will be minimal.

This is my second time writing to you concerning Goldin's retirement. I have been reading all the comments posted thus far and I think they tell a shocking story that most of the US public never knew existed.

I cannot argue that NASA needed to be changed. All government agencies need this. It's a natural by-product of being Federal Government. But the change Goldin sought was certainly implemented in the wrong way. He's correct when he says that he was not well liked...in essence, no one liked him. But why did this occur? He wasn't despised because he tried to turn the Agency around. Contratry to his belief, we NASA employees knew that NASA needed this and we supported change.

But rather, he was despised because he deserved to be: he used fear, intimidation and humiliation as a means to get what he wanted. His childish tantrums are legendary and are well known throughout the Agency, even to those people who never saw one first-hand. He had no respect for any NASA employee that ever worked for him. He continually lied to Congress about holding space station cost overruns under control (and no one from Congress had the guts to challenge him about it). He willfully put our astronaut's lives at stake by promoting the Shuttle Phase I Risk Mitigation Program where two of our astronauts came perilously close to death on Mir while he ostricized the astrounaut in charge of Shuttle safety who disagreed with the program (in fact, the Mir flights actually tore the Astronaut office apart). He decimated NASA's technology development budget to fund his own pet projects (it was widely considered to be his own personal discretionary budget where money would be taken from a task or contract at a moment's notice...damn the consequences)...and then he has the nerve to lament not seeing man put on Mars. Indeed, this man was not a leader...he was not a manager. He spent his tenure here filling his own ego with whatever he could get out of the Agency. Such a legacy, indeed.

I would like to ask you and your readers to listen to the comments that are sent to you. You can feel the relief in the very words that are written. Gen. Colin Powell has presented charts where he defines leadership as sometimes making an unpopular decisions...where you don't make everyone happy all the time. But when an entire Agency celebrates the retirement of their Adminstrator, it shows that this man was not making tough choices where some of his people became upset...rather, it shows that this man was not ready nor qualified for the job. When 100% of the troops despise you, you've done something dreadfully wrong.

On a last note, I would like to thank you for the "watch" you have placed on Goldin and the Agency in general. I feel you provide more oversight than Congress every could. You ask the right questions and you have more than once upset our upper managment by telling us things they did not want us to know (thank you). And I thank you for allowing all NASA employees a forum for venting our frustrations and fears without fear of reprisal. It's good to be able to discuss our feelings for Goldin in public...it's a weight off our shoulders. You have done this Agency a better service than any one program that Goldin ever initiated. -- An Employee of Marshall Space Flight Center

The last decade or so of NASA history demonstrates clearly that fools shouldn't be at large in the Universe. NASA has an ample supply---especially in the ranks of management---and the departure of one or two isn't going to change much of anything

There are two extremes in the downsizing executive cadre. There are the experts who manage to downsize while invigorating the company (or agency) and keeping the top talent in place. There are also the chainsaw types who cut indiscriminately. They often over cut in their enthusiasm and then have to backtrack quickly. These executives lay waste and dissatisfaction and lose a good portion of the talent usually leaving the company struggling to recover after they leave.

Mr. Goldin is of the latter type and sought to find success in his prowess at cost cutting. He measured his success by how much he cut and not by what the agency accomplished through him. It is no wonder he could not answer Congressional questions on how he would spend a larger budget. That is totally inconsistent with his success criteria.

Please give NASA a new Administrator who has an interest in space and not in success at budget cutting.

The one thing that stands out about his tenure for me is his irrational and childish hatred for anything related to space tourism. A thriving space industry may be the only thing that gets us into space on a large scale. It may be the only thing that can save NASA.

Unlike yourself, I had the privilege of watching Dan's resignation speech live. While we certainly don't know what the future of NASA holds, certainly we can see what Dan has done to us for the last 9+ years. Unlike what the "different former Congressional staffer" had to say, many at NASA welcomed his arrival. He was saying the right things (at that time anyway): return NASA to its roots, do more research, make NASA better, etc. Unfortunately, all you see with his legacy is failure:

The consolidation of the Shuttle contracts to save money? Worked for a while until the lack of government and contractor personnel in the unmanned programs caused rockets to begin blowing up or not delivering payloads properly. All of a sudden, the Shuttle civil servant and contractor workforce was restaffed in the interest of safety.

Cancellation of a project if it goes more than 10% over its budget? See the space station project for more information on the success of that initiative.

Bringing a new attitude to the agency? You could call that a qualified success if you consider fear, unknown and dread to be a positive.

I must say that the current management at the centers that I am familiar with (KSC, MSFC and JSC) seems to have its act together and is the main reason that Dan's attitude and general negativism hasn't done more to cause problems within NASA. I certainly have a lot of hope for the future. I also have a lot of trepidation as well, especially given the current budget climate. We can only hope that whomever is selected as the NASA administrator has the same type of vision as Goldin had, but with the people skills to do something other than snow people outside the agency. As with the rest of your contributors, please don't publish my name.

It is with joy that I daily look at the countdown, how I long for it to be shortened- nay, that he would already be gone.

The fact of the matter is that after 8 years of his tenure, both NASA, and the entire American aerospace industry, is in the worst shape that it has ever been in---bar none. Aeronautical research has been truly decimated; space technology development, including the big ticket ones like X-33 and X-34, has produced nothing significantly new in the past 8 years despite billions produced. The infrastructure at the research centers is literally crumbling. The US is down to only a single large civil aircraft maker--something he gave formal approval to---though more people travel by air than ever (exc. 9/11, of course). I never in my wildest nightmares thought the dawning of the 21st Century would see, instead of regular taxis to a moon base et al; instead a low-tech, declining industry and research base. A real, broad-based, innovative, leading NASA has not survived Goldin. I never thought it possible that a single administrator could do so much damage to my Agency, and to what was to be the high-frontier aerospace future of my country and society.
--- 30-year NASA employee

Keep up the good work. This is a real service. And Peggy Wilhide continues to illustrate what is wrong with NASA and Goldin's management practices by her remarks. I enjoyed your response.

I would appreciate you not publishing my name. Thank you.

A long time space fan and member of the private sector.

Goldin & The State of NASA

Dan Goldin's resignation can result in one of two outcomes: a.) a new administrator who is unable to clean up the leadership issues as well as operational issues at the agency, or; b.) a new administrator who recognizes that a totally new approach to running NASA is required.

The former possibility is easy for most to see. What is not easily visible is how to make the latter occur.

Despite Goldin's statements to the contrary, NASA has not a clue on how to develop privatization and commercialization of manned space flight. It has been clear to many outside the agency for some time that NASA would need private help to achieve its manned space flight goals. Not only from an economic perspective but from an expertise perspective as well. Goldin's answer to this was more outsourced contracts still controlled and managed by NASA insiders and a "cutting edge" media partnership with former associates of his. The outsourced contracts issue remains a sore topic of discussion and Dreamtime has apparently failed to live up to its contract as well as its promise. No surprise to anyone outside of NASA.

NASA is filled with top notch talent throughout the agency. Unfortunately, that talent is not allowed to surface in many cases because of years of poor leadership. Some may question that statement. But it is difficult to question nine years of Dan Goldin's and his close associate George Abbey's tenure and the results they produced. The mark of great leadership is not only the current results achieved but also the legacy left behind and the foundation that is provided the next generation of leadership.

They say leadership is an art form and management is a science. Leadership focuses on people, management on systems. Other writers have eloquently stated Goldin's fascination with management fads like ISO 9000 and others. None have been able to successfully argue the people of NASA were developed well and a solid foundation was built for the future.

Let's do a quick review on measuring the tenure of Dan Goldin as NASA Administrator.

1. What is NASA's mission?
2. Do the American taxpayers understand and support that mission?
3. Is NASA executing their stated mission?
4. Is NASA managing their budget well, meeting forecasts and controlling costs?
5. Are NASA personnel motivated and working at peak efficiency?

The answers:

1. Unclear. Is it science on ISS, which is taking a beating on cutbacks? Is it to get to Mars, and if so, when? Or is it to preserve the agency, its jobs and its budget?

2. Obviously not, since NASA can't seem to define or explain it and budget support is waning.

3. Maybe. Depends on which part of the mission you believe is true. There is an ISS, but not a lot of science. Odyssey is in orbit around Mars, but there is no timetable to put a man on Mars.

4. Let's see...$4.8 billion overrun and growing, and NASA didn't even know about it until early 2001. Or at least, Goldin and his people didn't tell anyone until then.

5. Probably not. Lack of mission, poor budget management, usually converts to poor morale.

Going forward, the new Administrator needs to start from scratch. Dump the management fads and all-consuming org. charts and get back to basics.

A. Get a mission. Define it. Explain it. Get people behind it both inside and outside of the agency.

B. Develop private partnerships with real benefits and entrepreneurial zest. Recognize that smaller firms have good if not better ideas than bigger firms and often are more flexible.

C. Drop the "Not Invented Here" and "We're NASA, you should be pleased to do business with us" attitudes and recognize the world is demonstrating it can get along without NASA just fine.

D. Clean out the residual senior management and start fresh. Sadly, the entrenched current management consisting of Goldin selections and Abbey astronauts hasn't gotten it done and need to go. There is a reason flight operations has forever made sure everything on spacecraft is "astronaut-proof". The long time NASA mentality has to be changed, and a shock like this is what is required.

E. Keep it simple. Recognize that manned exploration is what excites the public, and science as well as R&D benefits society. Sell these points by allowing the private sector expertise to do it for the agency. Put shuttle operations and ISS operations in the hands of the private sector. NASA needs to move forward on

new frontiers. F. Sell the agency. Forever, NASA has done an incredible job at making a very exciting thing terribly boring to the taxpayers. "Big deal, another shuttle launch." "Great, we have a space station. What does it do?" Good public relations requires that taxpayers paying for NASA activities should KNOW why there is an ISS and KNOW how they benefit from an active, aggressive space program.

Dan Goldin and friends did an excellent job at perpetuating confusion in the public at large about the space program. They did a great job at creating chaos and poor morale inside NASA. They ate up billions of taxpayer dollars due to poor fiscal management. There is no clear vision for the future or mission for the agency.

Whether NASA can recover is up to a new administrator, and a bunch of new leaders not currently in power at the agency.

Hopefully, things will get better. But an investment in airline stocks might be a safer bet right now.

Thank you Keith for providing this comment forum regarding Dan Goldin's leaving and legacy. And greetings from New Zealand too!

I think when Dan arrived at NASA it had become bloated and lost it's way as budget driven agencies can do. However it's very sad to see that Dan was unwilling or unable to inspire the team there. I think leadership should inspire and a good leader should be good with people and should be able to make friends out of some colleagues even if alienating a few. Perhaps that is the problem , Dan was a manager not a leader, lacking those personal skills and perceiving he was not getting through to people he just locked himself away and went to war against the agency. Of course this is just based on what I read.

Despite these very profound failures in Dan's treatment of staff I believe the Agency has achieved some milestones. I am glad that NASA implemented the faster better cheaper approach (despite the failures) for sending out more space exploration probes more frequently. Obviously they were cutting a few too many corners but it is better to have more innovative technologies and less eggs in one basket. Another technical milestone was actually getting the ISS up in some form despite the Clinton budget cuts.

Since New Zealand is such a small country we don't have a space agency but as a young vibrant democracy living next door to Australia (another former British colony!) we share America's pioneering spirit and like much of the world we thought we would have bases on the moon and Mars by now and living in a space based civilisation.

I believe that a space agency has a place but the hope for producing a space civilisation firmly resides in the private sector. I was continually upset that NASA used its hegemony in many space related government circles to do everything it could to dismiss space tourism during Dan's tenure. I just cant figure that. It may sound unpatriotic but I hope that NASA gets out of running a shuttle airline and a space station. It's better to leave this to a private organisation in some sort of competitive environment. That way there is not a conflict of interest. NASA should not compete with the private sector. NASA should be about exploration and technical development. It should return to the NACA model of doing things on behalf of Aerospace industry. It should not develop planes or space planes, but rather the missing enabling technologies. However it is up to the private sector to develop space and make money. What we need is Space tourism pure and simple. With marketing studies we should be able to build a solid business plan for space tourism that will get the dosh (money). The cold war is well and truly over. Space Tourism is the way forward (and maybe space solar power too). I'd love to see NASA and other space agencies explore Mars and put real people there. I would like to see industry following close behind. At least RLV's are no longer laughed off the stage as I believe they were 10 or 15 years ago. The Europeans are slowly getting it together. But the answer to getting our civilisation off world is not with the government. We need the private sector to build vehicles to send people into space regularly. The market already exists - it just needs to be investigated with more solid marketing Surveys. How many people how often and at what price. This is not rocket science and it doesn't cost mega bucks to do these surveys.

Hey folks I'm an optimist and this will happen. We will get there. There is life after NASA and Dan Goldin. Space and the human desire to push itself is the prime mover not the agencies themselves. Companies, Organisations, Governments and their Agencies come and go, wax and wane. But America was founded by individualists and pioneers with a plan. Some failed some succeeded. But we all have a heart that can get down with compounded disappointments - hey its human. But remember that the good Lord gave us a moon and gave us the grace to land there many times. God or nature or both has given us profound abilities. We have as a species the most profound ability to create or destroy. Let's not be downcast. Let's lick our wounds and have a cry. Work out where we went wrong or how to make it right. It is up to us to take hold of the future. Forget government, remember the spirit of America's founders and lets make the future the way we want. As Richard Branson once said when wondering if they should create 'Virgin Records' - "Screw it lets do it". If governments cant open space then lets find another way. And if that fails lets find another way. And if that too fails, lets find another way! Money is not the problem. Marketing studies, better business plans for Space Tourism will get us there. There's billions of dollars floating around the world economy. Our task in business is to show an investor that we can put his money to work with interest. It will happen and we will live to see it.

God bless (and may the force be with you always...)

In response to the comment by "a different former Congressional staffer:"

I think what you miss when you read these comments is the desire NASA employees had to enable and participate in the revolution. Most employees applauded a Goldin when he came to NASA. In the beginning, he initiated a dialogue with employees and asked for their ideas and cooperation -- which they gave enthusiastically. After the first year, Goldin retreated behind closed doors and shut off the dialogue. By withdrawing from the mainstream, he only heard the opinions and counsel of a select few. He tried to singlehandedly force the fat elephant through the narrow gate.

How much more could he have accomplished had he led the elephant through the narrow gate by offering fresh peanuts (and perhaps a few aerobics classes on the way)?

This morning I heard an interesting Goldin quote in regards to mars odyssey. As close as I can recall, the quote was:

"Of 21 spacecraft sent to mars, only 5 have successfully gone into orbit. We do things that are hard. ... But Mars Odyssey succeeded because previous missions failed."

In other words, "failure is a prerequisite for success." Suddenly, Goldin's tenure at NASA drops into focus...

Mr. Goldin's resignation is only about nine years too late to benefit the Agency. I remember as a NASA manager when he first came aboard the talk of he importance of TQM (total quality management) and how we must make it part of our lifestyle. We went to school and started to implement TQM which was a lot of common sense only to find out he PRACTICED anything but TQM. He would explode and get rid of anyone that would dare to have an idea different than his and team effort was certainly not in his plan. The now famous too pale, too male, too stale speech made you know that anyone of us that was in that cagtegory should seek other employment or at least leave which he suggested. The result was loss of corporate memory in to short of a time and that coupled with diverse staffing caused a lot of troubles at a time when the design and building of the ISS was at a critical stage. The dictated heavy involvement by the RSA via the previous administration will forever be a problem to the mission of the ISS including the other international partners. I only hope that the one government agency that I loved for 38 years can not only survive but heal.

The only thing sadder than Dan Goldin's decision to leave NASA is Keith Cowing, who consistently reported rumors that Goldin was leaving when Goldin was staying, and rumors that Goldin was staying when he was leaving (Oct. 2001) But the saddest thing of all is Keith's delusional self-aggrandizing and inflated sense of importance. He actually believes Goldin timed the announcement to coincide with his trip out of town!! Pathetic.

-- Peggy Wilhide, Former NASA Associate Administrator for Public Affairs

Editor's note: Peggy: apparently, you are on of the few people on Earth who doesn't have the Internet and email saavy to know that the international symbol ;-) affixed (in this case twice) to my post implies that I am kidding. OF COURSE Dan Goldin could care less about me or anything I have to say! DUH!

Goldin is easily the most dynamic Administrator NASA has ever had, or may ever have. He inherited an agency entirely too satisfied with itself and possessed of a NASA-centric view of America's potential in space. Almost through sheer force of personality and will, Dan Goldin turned that around and proved that the Agency could deliver more for less at a time when the Clinton Administration was cutting NASA's budget and burdening it with ridiculous foreign policy goals.

Folks may accuse Goldin of having waged war on the agency--and there's no doubt that his management style drove many good managers out while enabling less-inspired or decisive personalities to rise in the ranks--but they're forgetting that in 1992 it was NASA that declared war on Dan Goldin, and by extension the President of the United States and the American people. The comments from current and former NASA employee you've posted to date suggest that the agency is institutionally out of touch with its current place in American society and politics. Goldin did what President Clinton asked him--and he was therefore arguably Constitutionally obligated--to do; he presided over a major downturn in agency spending without sacrificing any major programs or giving any specific interest group a particular reason to attack the Clinton Administration's space program. You don't have to like it or agree with the manner in which Goldin did it to appreciate that as a significant accomplishment.

As a Republican space geek, it was infuriating to watch, but it was an impressive feat nonetheless. While the Administrator probably stayed in the job longer than was wise for either the Agency or the Administrator, I think history will judge his tenure as having, on balance, advanced the cause of exploring space and expanding human civilization beyond our planet.

-- A different former Congressional staffer

Nothing so speaks to the issue of why Goldin had to go more than his testimony a few months ago to the House Science committee. Goldin was asked what he would do if the congress were to give NASA more money in their budget. Godin refused to talk about the subject saying that he was quite happy with the budget that he had. The committee chair thanked Goldin for his restraint but asked the question again. Goldin again refused to accept the opening and said that he was quite happy with the money that the agency was being given.

Frustrated, the committee chair asked that just as a theoretical exercise what would you do with more money for the agency.

Goldin replied "invest in Biotechnology". The committee chair was stunned and asked no further questions.

With all the things that opening the space frontier could do to solve our problems all this guy could say was biotechnology.

Looking forward to a new administrator

To me, the most puzzling lie that Goldin told during his "voluntary" resignation speech came during minute #18 of SpaceRef's video, when Dan said that NASA had "met every goal" regarding outsourcing to small businesses (i.e. companies having fewer than one thousand employees", according to the Small Business Administration). Even by NASA's own official admission though, only 13% of NASA's prime contracting dollars are awarded to small businesses DESPITE the fact that Congress imposes a goal of 23% (which many agencies successfully achieve). In fact, Congresswoman Velazquez (D, IL.) and the minority side of the House Small Business Committee recently awarded NASA a "C" in its "report card" evaluating federal agencies' small business outsourcing performance. Neither the Committee, nor the GAO are persuaded by NASA's self-serving data-massaging. Why would Goldin publicly lie like that again? I doubt I'm the only one who misses cheering for the likes of Rotary Rocket, Mir, Beal, and the DC-X (etcetera)

Dan Goldin had the leadership skills of a rock and an ego of a high altitude balloon. Watching him berate senior NASA managers in public was one of the "low-lights" of my life. It will take an exceptional leader to turn NASA around and get it moving in the right direction.

For obvious reasons, please withhold my name.

Current NASA engineer.

As an employee of the Marshall Space Flight Center, I am qualified to comment not only on his service here at NASA but also his resignation:

Officially, I'm sure that our Center Director would tell you that we are very sorry to see him go and that NASA is much better because of him.

Off the record, and coming straight from the employee's hearts, we couldn't be more pleased that he is leaving. In fact, I've not heard one single person express ANY kind of regret...but perhaps the cheers coming from the halls were drowning it out. We have lived through ten years of hell and humilation...all because of this man and his complete incompetance.

Perhaps now the Agency can begin to heal itself.

No matter who they get to replace him, he/she could not be worse. To Goldin I say, "So long, Danny...it's about damn time."

Greetings Keith,

It has been at least four years since I sent any correspondence your way. I finally cashed in and escaped from NASA exactly two years ago. I am in the process of writing a "personalized" history of NASA aeronautics. I suppose one day it might be publishable. I will not have a single good thing to say for Goldin except he recognized the command and control problems that had developed in NASA over the decades but he was totally inept in how to correct them. Whether or not he was the right man at the time I do not know. It seems to me he fit into the mood of Congress and the Clinton Administration perfectly. It is all about money and not about prestige, exploration, or people. I am here now because of decisions that Goldin perpetrated through his pathetic staff. But I can't complain, it was not to be in my life time.

As an aside, I was visiting my old haunts at Ames last Friday when I learned of the announcement. My good friend and NASA pilot who stayed on running the airfield for Ames after our flight operations was shut down by Goldin, told me an interesting bit of trivia. About a day before Goldin made his announcement my friend got a panicky call from the Aircraft Management Office at NASA Hq requesting the following information: all the landings that were made at Ames (Moffett Field, CA) during Goldin's tenure. Such a silly request lead to some "ROM" calculations and the figure went back to HQ. (I think it was 13,000 landings over the period, which is pretty darn amazing considering the type of flight research and airborne science operations we were running in those days.) It turns out that Goldin used it in his departure speech as an example of how safe his flight operations were in his era. Hogwash, there were a lot of aircraft mishaps under his watch and his distain for aircraft and pilots led to some serious short falls in funding for safe flight operations as I will point out in my book.

1. I agree wholeheartedly with the anonymous Congressional staffer that "Nothing so became his tenure than his leaving of it," if nothing else because of the next point.
2. What chutzpah it takes to bemoan the lack of manned interplanetary flight at the same time as congratulating yourself on gutting NASA's budgets an accumulative $ 40 billion.
3. I like the countdown clock.
4. Dan Goldin couldn't care less about you or anything you have to say.

Dan Goldin may be leaving, but his spirit will remain. He is coming to our center on a "farewell tour" and we've been invited to see him give his farewell speech. The moment it was learned he was coming and the day, the tension visibly increased among the senior staff. I can remember from my Air Force days the ORI teams that would desend on an air base for an operation readiness inspection and the anxiety all of my commmanders went through. We never failed, but weaknesses were uncovered and steps were taken to stregthen those weak areas. It was a part of AF life, but welcomed by mature and committed commanders who used the ORI's to improve their squadrons and Wings.

At NASA, what I have seen is the complete opposite. Worm hunts everytime Goldin announced his intent to visit. Budgets raped to spruce things up for appreance sake. Aircraft hidden that he didn't like to see. When he came, there seemed to be a platable imperious air about him and his entourage There was an almost frightened look of the senior management, as if their lives rode on what he said or did. Upon his departure, there was a collective sigh of relief from management.

If management felt this way and it was visible to their subordinates, what do you think this did to our feelings and morale about NASA? Frightened of the boss? Terrified that a "worm" would be discovered on an old, but usuable memo pad? My God, what trivial crap his visits put us through. Thank God this may be over. But I do not celebrate. NASA is not the NASA I grew up watching in wonderment about. No chiseled jawed astronouts, no sense of commitment or sacrifice of the hundreds of thousands of support personnel, no sense of belonging. Nope. It's 40 hours a week and a paycheck. Too bad. Dan, you've left a wonderful legacy. How about writing a book about your management style like Jack Walsh? I'm sure it will be in the bargin basement at Border's.

I let the full weight of Mr. Goldin's resignation sink in for a couple of days before I decided to post a comment. I've also tried not to let the "too male, too pale and too frail" comments influence my thoughts.

Looking back over the last 10 years with Goldin at the helm, I've seen NASA go to the dogs. Think about it; we are flying the most sophisticated spacecraft known to man with 25 year old avionics. Goldin has managed to set the shuttle program back decades with his better, faster, and cheaper philosophy.

I can only hope his successor eliminates all the eyewash like VPP, ISO-9000, RATS, and most of all the silly safety rhetoric. I can't think of a better way to waste tax payers money than have a day where employees are not allowed to do any useful work. Please understand I am in favor of stressing "Flight Safety" more than most people in the space program. The loss of another shuttle could mean the end of NASA as we know it. However, I don't think all the home safety stuff belongs at work.

I guess the bottom line is I am glad Goldin has chosen to retire. I don't think the program could stand another 10 years of Goldin's policy and survive.

We here have come to depend on NASA for the space station. However, with NASA changing their budgets and mind every so often wreaks havoc to other countries smaller space agencies. With the rumored upcoming budgets cuts and downsizing of the station, many countries will start jumping "ship". This is not because they want to , but it's a question of survival.

Was this due to Dan in particular, I don't know for sure; but someone with vision, guts, and political non-chalance would have saved a bad situation getting worse. BUT, why would anybody think Dan's replacement will be any better. Humans have their own egotistical agenda. CEOs have changed their HQ's location to be closer to home, or better golf courses, etc. What makes you think the next guy won't do the same as Dan.

I know NASA is based on human hope, but it's now dead. Dan was only the last nail in the coffin.

-- "a lowly engineer from another country's space agency"

Opinions on his management abilities aside, we have been wondering about the timing of Mr. Goldin's resignation...why now, exactly? Why so abrupt, with no warning?

Was he making a statement to the White House that they MUST address NASA's needs and install a new administrator now instead of continuing to ignore us as they have done for the past 10 months? Was he given a choice to resign willingly or be fired for not implementing White House policies and further cuts? Was he actually trying to fight for NASA against the White House and lost? Did he resign because he knows impending White House budget cuts at NASA are not feasible without destroying the agency? Is he abandoning a sinking ship? Has he had a personal epiphany? Is he

ill? Not knowing the surrounding circumstances and his personal reasons for this action makes it is very unsettling for those of us who remain at NASA. This anxiety is aggravated by the growing perception that the new administration would be very happy to simply disband NASA and sees no value in our work or accomplishments and that our days are numbered.

Perhaps it would be wise to transfer to DoD.

It was midnight on the sea. The band was playing Nearer My God To Thee, Fare Thee Well, Dan Goldin. Fare Thee Well.
Well, ol' Dan he just wouldn't quit with the 'faster, cheaper, better' shit.
Fare Thee Well, Dan Goldin. Fare Thee Well.

I fail to understand the logic about how someone who claims having a dream of putting humans on Planet Mars asked Congress to cut US$40 billion from NASA's budget. Thirty two years ago humans walked on the surface of the Moon and nuclear thermal rockets were being developed for a Mars mission ... and here we are thirty two years later not only without any semblance of a manned Mars program but also unable to return to the Moon. No wonder increasing numbers of people believe the Moon program was faked.

In his final years former President Nixon admitted he made a mistake terminating the manned Mars program and, referring to the Vietnam War, said that a nation needs to set up clear goals especially during difficult times. Queen Isabella of Castille gave Cristopher Columbus her personal jewelry to fund his voyage because at the time the royal treasury was depleted due to the war against the last Moor Kingdom (Granada) in southern Spain. Nevertheless Columbus got his 3 ships and made it to America. When the will exists anything can be done.

I was exteremly happy to hear about Goldin's resignation. I have been waiting for this for a long time. Not only for myself but for the good people of NASA. Goldin was right. No one liked him. He was a mean man and he said mean and hurtful things to the people that worked for him. I was offended and embarrased by what he said and did during his tenure. Remarks that he made like "male, stale and pale" were not only disrespectful to alot of good men I worked with but were also totally untrue. His performance was very unprofessional and I am surprised that he lasted this long. He seemed only to care about himself and pleasing the President instead of the people who worked for him. I feel that a big weight has been lifted off of our shoulders and I have hope for the future. I believe that President Bush has always wanted to replace him but he wanted to make sure that the next NASA Administrator was the right person for the job. After all the bad things that Goldin has done and left in his wake, the new person has alot of cleaning up to do to make it right again. I am looking forward to my future at NASA now and I am glad I was able to hang in there long enough to outlast him and George Abbey. That was my goal and at least I can feel good about that much. I do appreciate that you provided an outlet for the people at NASA to sound off about all the ridiculous things that were going on with Goldin; it gave me some faith that at least there were people that felt like I did about him. Thank you for hanging in there, too.

His self-fulfilling prophecy of being too stale, pale and male will be his legacy.

(FYI -- I am an aerospace engineer who worked for a major aerospace contractor at JSC for 8 years. I have seen and participated in effective uses of civil service / contractor teams. I am not in favor of either of the twin dogmas of outsourcing and in-house efforts. I recognize the failings of both corporate and government organizations -- and their respective strengths and potentials.)

Comments on Goldin's tenure

It is a hallmark of American corporate leaders to focus on the numbers. Dan Goldin has been no exception. The NASA press release announcing Mr. Goldin's retirement lists the numbers he considers to be important: number of missions launched successfully, and the dollar value invested in those missions. Those top-level metrics do tell an important story, for mission success must come first in any venture. I think Mr. Goldin deserves credit in particular for the intense focus on operational safety at the field centers -- not just for the Astronauts and flight test crews, but for all employees. The 'Safety Day' stand-downs were sometimes a bit galling for engineers working in an office setting, but this is a small cost to bear in exchange for an excellent safety record and a rational accounting of risks in the Shuttle program.

However, the corporate mindset produced some pathologies along the way. I would summarize the corporate practices which flourished under Mr. Goldin's tenure as being: inconstant reform by buzzwords, single-minded focus on outsourcing, and deflection of responsibility to subordinates. In these three practices, Mr. Goldin unfortunately cherry picked some of the worst private-sector practices, and attempted to graft them onto an organization which operates in a completely different manner from corporations run for a profit.

Inconstant reform by buzzwords

Does anyone remember TQM? What could have been a genuine reform turned into nothing more than a feeding trough for consultants. How about ISO-9K and its variants? I have little doubt that ISO-9K has been beneficial in mass production manufacturing, but its value in a low unit production rate environment like NASA is debatable at best. Yes, let's have well-expressed requirements, well-defined and meaningful acceptance tests, and well-designed operational procedures. But the overhead of ISO-9K and its predecessors has been a millstone around the necks of individuals who really do know how to do their jobs well, and who take personal responsibility for results.

Single-minded focus on outsourcing

Mr. Goldin's jihad against civil servants and contractors has been demoralizing and, at times, outrageous. Who can forget the infamous "pale-male-stale-frail" speech? This incident was emblematic of Goldin's bombastic rhetorical style, which often misfired. Yet, like the excesses of the tinpot dictator of some banana republic, such outrages could not raise the ire of his patrons enough to dislodge him from office -- if for no other reason than the diminished esteem in which the agency itself was found by the public, Congress, and the Executive Branch.

More recently, Mr. Goldin's jihad against civil servants has been expressed in terms of outsourcing. Again, outsourcing is a hallmark of the recent corporate world. Yet, we must consider the record of outsourcing in the context of NASA and its missions. Let's start with the 1994 Mars Observer, which was built by General Electric under contract to JPL. It failed due to an unforeseen propulsion system design flaw, and this failure led to what might be called "The Goldin Doctrine:" 'Better-Faster-Cheaper'. This was a watershed event in the unmanned space exploration program. It was followed by Mars Pathfinder (built in-house by JPL, this mission was successful) and the two Mars 98 missions (outsourced, both missions failed due to embarrassing errors). The current proposal to complete the outsourcing of Shuttle operations should consider this spotty record carefully before proceeding.

Let's not forget that Mr. Goldin has been an equal-opportunity attacker of contractors. Who can forget his calling contractors "blood-suckers?" So which is it? If NASA civil servants shouldn't do the work, and contractors are resented for wanting to make a profit for doing the work, who is left to do the work? Perhaps Mr. Goldin imagines a fantasy world where cult-like masses of workers slavishly hang on every abusive word and obediently follow every dictate without complaint. Maybe Mr. Goldin shoud consider leading the North Korean space program after he leaves NASA. He might find his style is a cozy fit with the leadership of that nation, where the only constant is egotistical unreliability.

Deflection of Responsibility to Subordinates

The famous motto "The Buck Stops Here" was coined by President Harry S. Truman, who did not even want the job. Yet this sense of personal responsibility for results is foreign to many leaders of American corporations. Mr. Goldin seems to have lifted a page from their playbook in his handling of the Space Station budget overruns. The first response was to blame JSC Director George Abbey. While Mr. Abbey was certainly largely responsible for the execution of the program, it would be foolish to think that Mr. Goldin was somehow unaware of the problems looming during the development of the project. Then again, it just doesn't matter whether he was complicit or unaware: either way, Mr. Goldin is responsible for the execution of the program. In spite of having killed innumerable valuable scientific projects, having raided other budget lines, and having generally obscured the cost accounting for Space Station, Mr. Goldin failed to get the project under the one number which mattered: the cost. Mr. Goldin must take responsibility for this failure.

Goldin's Legacy

Any assessment of Mr. Goldin's tenure will be incomplete until an adequate period of time has elapsed to judge his legacy. Yet some contemporary assessment can be made. In March 2001, the Office of the Inspector General released a scathing assessment of Shuttle staffing levels and programmatic deficiencies. The situations identified by the report are the direct result of inattention to resource management and of the demoralization of NASA civil servants and contractor personnel. A rational evaluation of career prospects by many individuals employed in the civil space programs may also account for some of these deficiencies. Any Chief Executive who leaves office claiming a string of victories, yet leaves behind a resentful workforce and a history of voluntary attrition, will not be judged kindly by history. Secretary of State Colin Powell, who knows something of the subject, once said: "A good leader is someone whose troops will follow him, if only out of curiosity." (*) How many contributors to the civil space program would follow Dan Goldin again?

(*) Interview in Context Magazine: http://www.contextmag.com/archives/200002/Feature0FollowtheLeader.asp

I think the "countdown" picture of Dan Goldin is too mean-spirited even for you.

It will take an incredible leader to pull this Agency out of