What was intended to be a hearing on NASA Management began instead as a strange flurry of concerns about a news story and angry NASA denials of that story. This issue arose several times during the hearings. All of the concern centered around a UPI article by Jim Oberg that alleges that NASA knew that the Mars Polar Lander was doomed before it landed and that it sought to withhold information from the public.

Sen. Frist (R-TN) opened the session by reading from a prepared statement [HTML] [Acrobat]. He noted a string of specific NASA errors and failures and the reports that have been generated as a result. He noted that "based upon our initial review of the various investigation reports on these problems, the real culprit is management." He went on to note that "we are alarmed by the sheer volume of the reports that we will discuss today. Their recommendations are numerous and far reaching." With regard to the UPI report, Frist said "if the content of the new stories is indeed true, this is very disturbing, and there is sure to be significant fallout from the facts the report will uncover."

Sen. Hutchinson (R-TX) then spoke from a prepared statement noting that during the 1990's "Faster, better, cheaper" was embraced as the mantra of NASA. But perhaps the mantra for the next century should be "faster, cheaper, and better defined". She went on to note that NASA had managed to make significant cost cuts and improvements in program efficiency. She added that "NASA has the right to be ambitious - that is what America expects But the American people also expect Congress to provide NASA with the resources the agency needs to carry out its mission without having to cut corners - especially on manned space flight missions". She ended by also making her concerns over the UPI story known.

Sen. John McCain then read from his prepared statement [HTML] [Acrobat]. He said "over the past year, I have continually been amazed by the reports coming out of NASA about the mission failures and program delays." He added that "the extent of mismanagement noted in these reports is very startling. For years now, I have expressed concern regarding NASA's management and I repeat that concern at this time." With regard to the reports to be discussed he said that "some of the overarching themes are apparent: staff complacency, inadequately trained personnel, lack of effective internal communication, and staff not following established procedures. The funding impact of failures and delays is staggering, estimated to be in the billions of dollars." With regard to the UPI story, McCain said "If the media reports are true that NASA withheld critical information from the public and elected officials, then the trust that is vital between this government and its citizens has been violated and warrants a very serious examination of how the agency operates."

Sen. Burns (R-ND) noted that there had been a lot of information swirling about - most of it negative about NASA. His main point was that more attention should be paid to the positive aspects of what NASA does.

Dan Goldin read from a prepared statement [Acrobat] and presented his standard "space exploration is tough and so is NASA" pitch. In so doing he acknowledged NASA's failures but attempted to contrast them against NASA's considerable successes. He also repeated the standard NASA party line that these mission failures are helpful because they help NASA learn valuable lessons.

Goldin then took UPI to task for the article on Mars Polar Lander and its allegations of a NASA cover-up. In so doing he referenced a NASA press release which detailed NASA's objections to the UPI story. Goldin was rigid in his denial of the content of the story - and questioned the credibility of its author suggesting that the author had never bothered to check with NASA before writing and submitting his story. He said that NASA had made its concerns known to UPI. He added that he considered these allegations a personal affront - that he would spend all of this time talking about safety and mission success while withholding such information from the public. After his testimony he gleefully went through his denunciation once again in front of reporters in the hallway.

Sen. Frist began the questioning by asking Goldin about the Young Report on the Mars Polar Lander. Goldin replied that he had just been given a briefing by Young's team on 14 March, that he had a meeting scheduled with Tom Young on Friday to go into detail about the report, and that he expected the report to be released by NASA to the public next Tuesday - but only after the White House had a chance to review it. Frist asked why the report had not been released yet. Goldin replied that they had been waiting for the delivery of several appendices to the report which they had just received. Frist asked if he and his colleagues could see the report now and said that they had made a request of NASA. At first Goldin said that NASA knew of no such request but then corrected himself and said that they had indeed received the request.

Frist asked again if the Committee Chairman could see the report. Goldin paused for a moment and did not answer Frist's specific question but said instead that NASA was not prepared to release the report to the public.

In subsequent questioning, Goldin was asked how he was going to implement the recommendations made by these various reports. He replied that NASA's chief engineer would be going through all of these reports and extracting the things NASA needs to work on. He then said that he'd be back in a few months to tell Congress what NASA was going to be doing to address these concerns.

When asked by Sen. Hutchinson what NASA's priorities were and whether there was a preference for human spaceflight over robotic missions Goldin replied that NASA's priorities were 1. Fly the Space Shuttle safely; 2. Complete the space station; 3. Provide new access to space that is ten times better than today's at one tenth the current cost; and lastly, to do credible science and technology.

When asked by Hutchinson what he thought of the McDonald report, Goldin said that he agreed with its findings and that he wanted to change the NASA culture such that people at any level would feel free to raise any issue of safety or mission success.

With regards to Shuttle upgrades, Goldin noted the electric APUs and the health monitoring system as priorities and that all upgrades were being done for safety - not performance purposes.

With regard to the Russians and whether it might be prudent to spend the money to get them out of the program Goldin said that NASA had taken a number of steps to reduce the reliance upon Russian systems and hardware.

Sen. Durgan asked Goldin whether "better" had been sacrificed at the expense of "cheaper" or "faster". Goldin said that in some cases, yes, it had been. He then went onto showcase Lunar Prospector and Mars Pathfinder as examples where it worked very, very well.

Goldin added that there was a specific concern of his - one he took personal responsibility for not foreseeing - that of mentoring. He cited the fact that voluntary separations were used to get the workforce down from 25,000 to 18,500 and that as a result experienced people left, and comparatively inexperienced people were being put in positions where a little more experience would have been preferable. He spoke enthusiastically about the 2,000 new hires NASA was going to make and his hope that this would address the skill mix and experiential imbalances that NASA now has.

Goldin then added that he also felt that NASA had not done a good job of facilitating communication such that people were free to raise issues. "People were talking and we were not listening" he said. He said that one result of this lack of open communication was that people thought faster-better-cheaper was too rigid to be adjusted.

Goldin then moved on to the issue of peer review and chided some NASA programs for not getting credible advice in place as programs were reviewed and approved.

Sen. Breaux asked several questions about the UPI story, reading a quote from it at one point. Goldin repeated much of his earlier statements. He added that if "anyone in America has information, they should bring it to our attention and we'll investigate it."

Breaux added that he was considering adding and amendment to Sen. Burns' Rural Satellite TV Access bill to add in his loan guarantees for commercial launch companies. Goldin expressed his support for this amendment noting that "this bill makes sense to me" and then chided his "friends" in the aerospace industry for the "stupid and vicious things they did in fighting this bill".

Editor's note: An audible response (and some nervous giggles) was heard from a number of aerospace representatives seated in the hearing room.

Editor's note: Despite Mr. Goldin's displeasure with the lack of responsiveness by the NASA Office of legislative Affairs (Code L), this is certainly not the first time they had dragged their feet. Note this letter from Code L in February 1999 accompanying the delivery of answers to questions asked by the House Science Committee in February 1998, exactly one year earlier.

• Allen Li, Associate Director, National Security and International Affairs, U.S. General Accounting Office [Acrobat]
• Harry McDonald, Director, Ames Research Center, NASA
• Tony Spear, (Retired from Jet Propulsion Laboratory) Task Leader, NASA [Acrobat]
• Art Stevenson, Director, Marshal Space Flight Center, NASA

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