Mail from the NASA Administrator

Thaddeus was kind enough to send us a letter that Daniel S. Goldin sent out to all the workers at NASA. It's a wonderful letter and despite the problems they have had recently, they deserve congrats for accomplishing so much. Anyway, click below and read the letter. If you agree, let your governmental representative know that you support your Space Agency.

This is a letter from Dan Goldin to all NASA employees. Generally I consider submitting e-mails to be in poor taste, but this one is to several tens of thousands of people, so its rather public already. I found it to be thought-provoking and inspirational.

MESSAGE FROM THE ADMINISTRATOR

I wanted to take this opportunity to let you know how proud I am of the NASA family. Thanks to all of you, we have had an incredible string of successes this year. Since last October, we've launched 13 missions, with 10 successes.

The list of accomplishments is impressive: Deep Space One, SWAS, Stardust, LandSat 7, Quikscat, FUSE, the first space station assembly mission, and Chandra, just to name a few.

Although I know I shouldn't single out specific groups because the success of any one mission depends on the entire NASA team, I do want to point out the extraordinary efforts of two groups.

First, I would like to commend the Shuttle team for its commitment to making safety our number one priority. The Shuttle team is absolutely right in its decision to examine, reexamine and reexamine again until we are confident that the Space Shuttle is as safe as possible. Our astronauts' lives depend on the diligence of the Shuttle workforce. We must be driven by safety, not schedule.

Second, the Mars teams have demonstrated the true meaning of character and the pioneering spirit of exploration. The Mars program had two spectacular successes under its belt with the Mars Global Surveyor and the Mars Pathfinder. But what makes this agency strong and vital is not how we react to success, but how we learn from failure. The Mars Polar Lander team was asked to perform the most difficult task in the history of Mars exploration - landing on the red planet's south pole. The odds are staggering: three different countries have tried to go to Mars 32 separate times, and only 11 missions have succeeded.

The American people are behind you. They know how difficult, and how important, it is to explore. They know that risk, failure and setbacks are part of that journey. A USA Today poll taken on Monday showed an overwhelming 72 percent of respondents want us to continue our Mars exploration program. President Bill Clinton and Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner, Chairman of the House Science Committee, expressed support for the Mars program and the "faster, better, cheaper" philosophy during separate press conferences this past week. Rep. Sensenbrenner plans to visit the Jet Propulsion Lab next week to talk with employees.

What we cannot do is return to a time when it took 10 years and one billion dollars to build a spacecraft. We all remember when one such spacecraft blew up - the Mars Observer - and we had no other Mars missions on the books.

We also cannot ask our scientists and engineers to do what others only dream about doing -- take incredible risk, try new ideas and technologies, then point fingers and play the blame game when failures occur. As I said when we started "faster-better-cheaper" if we launched ten missions and lost two or three, we would still be wildly successful.

What we can do, however, is learn from our mistakes. We have to find out why two Mars missions under "faster, better, cheaper" were incredibly successful, and why two others failed.

I am in the process of appointing a blue ribbon commission to look into the failure, to make recommendations, and to help us build a better, stronger program. I know it is never easy to have others looking over your shoulder, second guessing, analyzing, and criticizing. But when you work for >>the Federal Government, you are held to a higher standard. We owe it to the American taxpayers to let them know what went wrong and how we intend to fix our problems. NASA is the boldest, most open agency in the Federal Government. The whole world watches what we do. We've wowed them before, and we will do it again.


Daniel S. Goldin
NASA Administrator