Working to transform nasa. I had previous to that worked for Grassroots Organization that was really interested in returning human spaceflight to more than just a handful of astronauts and nasa had sort of lost its way i think after the shuttle accidents when they didnt have the ability to get more people into space for lower costs more reliably. That was the goal of the shuttle. So coming back to nasa as the deputy administrator in the Obama Administration i thought it was a very natural goal to want to continue that transformation process, and president elect obama happen to agree. So it says my quest because its a memoir but its a lot of peoples quest for decades and thats why what the book. Host lets open that up for a minute. He said nasa had lost its way and thats a big statement. What do you mean by that and how did that happen . Guest we are talking primarily about human aspaceflight at nasa. Many, many things that nasa go very well and, in fact, human spaceflight has in some sense been hugely important and transformational even since apollo but the shuttle was supposed to reduce the cost and increase reliability of human space transportation. And it had not. We had only flown a couple hundred astronauts since apollo in the 30 years since and we had lost two crews, 14 people, in a system that was clearly never going to bee reliable because is its design. And it was never going to be cheap. So when i got out of college we were going to be sending people back to the moon and on to mars within decades at the end of apollo they said we could land on mars in 1984. Now that now that may have not ever been possible, but i think most people agree that human spaceflight post 1972 with our last steps on the room had not created the advancement and progress that most people envisioned and certainly that the agency had intended to. Host what were the main problems . Is it that the wasnt like him during apollo sort of cold war adversary like the soviet union, is a congress, militaryindustrial complex . What were the Problems Holding nasa back . Guest those are all parts it. We know that we went to the men to beat the russians and because of that we established a crash program. So we set things up in a race type of format and that meant we were pouring money and to do things one time and that didnt build a sustainable program. Not a fault of nasas because they were asked to win the race and the achieve that amazing accomplishment, but it did not create an environment where you could doy things in a way that left a more sustainable, less program. And, in fact, it gave us three verse incentives. Companies and congress who had developedd capabilities, people in their districts, infrastructure needed to or were incentivized to use those very facilities which were much overbilled for the mission of the shuttle which was to reduce the cost of space transportation. Nasa wanted to employ their contractors. They wanted to employ that people who work in these institutions, and just kept going. That made the future programs expensive by design, instead of doing things like we had in aviation where the private sector really drove the innovation and the government did assist withdv both technoloy advancements as well as the sort of anchor tenancy as we know today which we ultimately had been doing in human spaceflight by the early days it was called the celtic airmail act. The government paid the airlines to carry the mail, and that allowed the airlines to invest in the capability because they had a customer. And once they had that customer they could go find more. Space transportation launch is a lot more than justt government payloads and people, and yet we have not found a way to really leverage the governments investment to expand the market him and thats the transformation that is allowing us i think to make that change today. Host we will get into the dynamic of the Publicprivate Partnerships but when we talk about programs like apollo in this Space Shuttle, people forget that after apollo people kind of lost interest in space and may be the shuttle was dynamic at first but then people kind of lost interest in that. Your excellent book is coming out at a time where there are a lot of competing interests. Retheres a war in europe, thers inflation, the paint to make a still gone. What you tell people about why they should care about space and why we should care about this era, this history and space policy which was crucial and transformative in so many ways, but why is that in your view important . Guest the unique vantage of space has given us unbelievable returns as a society as humans. We first went to space in the 50s, but what we gained as faroo as instantaneous communications and even looking back at our home planet has allowed us to completely change our perspective and our new knowledge. When we sent humans we went to beat the russians but we recognized by doing that we were opening up potentially space for more purposes. I think the real problem for the Government Space Program and why maybe between apollo and the shuttle there is less public support was less public support is people didnt understand the purpose. Po we knew in apollo the purpose but after that we say the cost doesnt seem like a very great purpose and, of course, nasa has triedd to recreate the purpose of sort of the cold war with china today. I think we are really struggling for the value. In my view andnd escaping graviy title comes from this, we were able to escape gravity, launch things and people from the earth, because we had a unified goal. Its really hard to beat gravity. Smart people who have the c same vision can do it and we havent had that with human spaceflight that United Vision to be able to see why the government should put in the publics money for that purpose. Private sector as it gets lower costs we are seeing people have their own reasons to go to space. But for the government the unique purpose in my view is benefiting society. So beyond just the things we get from robotics spacecraft, humans going to space is transformational. We know that the first photograph from the far side of the moon that was taken by astronauts called earthrise started the environmental movement. Lots of pictures having taken from space of the earth but not by a human. We go with our astronauts when they go to space and i believe there is plenty of wonderful robotic things to doll as well, but for civilization humanity as the species there is l no doubt that over the long term if we want to survive we need to be a multiplanetary in beyond species. So the very early beginnings of that are under way today. Host lets jump into the deep end of the narrative and one of the main tension points, when you are coming into nasa as the deputy administrator, the Space Shuttle is sort of on its last legs. Theres this program called constellation thats way over budget behind schedule, talks about canceling it. What was the situation you are walking into nasa when you became the deputy administrator . Guest yeah, that was a unique time in the space program. Program. I had left nasa in 2001 and now in 2008 ive been asked before even being deputy to leave the Transportation Team for the incoming Obama Administration and the humanht Spaceflight Program was in disarray, i should say. Not only, we were retiring the shuttle which i felt was the right decision. There was a really a lot of political difference of opinion on that. The former george w. Bush president had deemed that necessary if we were not able to recertify the shuttle which wouldve been very expensive. As you said the program constellation replaced it, we found was offtrack. It had in its first four years spent over 8 billion but had been delayed five years. If you were going to keep it going it was currently going to launch only after within their budget profile the space station wouldve had to have been the orbited. Their plan was only able to be paid for if they d orbited the space station. We knew they were not really going to do that. They were trying to go just trick the next administration into giving more money. You come into administration, at least i did, not wanting to lie to the president. That just didnt strike me something i should probably do. What he uncovered i had is uncovering it or lie, and i found a workaround which was get a Blue Ribbon Committee to look at the human Spaceflight Program, populate it with bright minds who didnt have been asked to cry. We had a couple of wonderful astronauts, the ceo former ceo of Lockheed Martin shared it and they came at up the same sceo we did. They uncovered the problem with the program and gave us some options for how we could move forward. When we made a decision to go forward that was unpopular and as i outlined in the book i took a lot of the blame, but the truth is so many people really did agree that we were at it and ask him something had to be done. Host explained to him what was constellation and what did it consist of and why was it so badly managed . I mean, what was going on there . Guest the constellation was a government owned and operated program along the lines of apollo. They called at the time nasa on steroids and was to do all things. It was supposed to start with the capsule called orion which was to left and iraq are called ares one that we take astronauts to the space station after this shuttle retired. The space station wouldnt be 30 more in less he got a lot of money but its longerterm goal was to build an even larger rocket called the ares five that we take us back to the moon. Astronauts on the moon again. Real threethe only elements along with ground systems and only the first two were funded but the review showed we would never get to the moon and again what it needed the money from the space station, and the fault is really no different than what we are experiencing today. It was a costplus program, really initiated to continue the shallow contracts to keep money flowing to the congressional districts and at three to 5 billion y a year you would kp going at that rate without making a a lot of progress. We did have women in apollo the ability to build up right away and when you can come in and do that you can succeed. At budgets today thats not really possible and plus its not really what we should be doing given the goal is to sustain progress. So here we are constellation has to carry the infrastructure of apollo. Its no ones fault. Its just w the system was set p against doing those kinds of programs unless you get really, really large amounts of money. Host so emblematic of what youre talking about why nasa need to be transformed a lot of money going in but not a lot of progress so you stand up this commission, norm augustine former ceo of Lockheed Martin endorses your view. You bring this but with different options to the president and he supported the cancellation. Did that surprise you . Well, what did you make of that in that moment and once you knew thats what youre going forward, how did you prepare for that . You knew that was going to set off a firestorm. Guest yes. We had on the Transition Team our report had pretty much aligned with what the Augustine Committee later came up with. So having the Augustine Committee at our transition report both say this program constellation is that something you should keep investing in and away to get humans back to space is through the private sector. I was very confident that that not only was the only way to go forward, the best way to go forward, but the president agreed. I had talked to him enough. He agreed plus it just made sense and leisure getting money, billions, from the people who feel they might not be as competitive. So we were all ready to announce this actually in october of that year but the white house was very concerned about keeping every vote for health care. We had a really close margin to have our 60 votes in the senate with the democratic leadership and they decided to incorporate the decision with the budget process. Well, that meant we had to involve many more people which in a way was a good thing because it meant the National Economic council got involved and certainly the office of science and technology policy, omb. But nasa didnt want to do it and the budget process has to go through the administration but the agency prepares the budget. The budget the agency prepared kept constellation. It didnt at commercial crew. I try to get them to change. My boss at the time the head of nasa Charlie Bolden was just ready to do what the nasa people wanted to do and wasnt really listening in meetings at the white house. Last meeting with the president which are outlined in a book he came away and told how it went. It was very clearho to me what e president which use that we got the answer couple weeks after prthat and it surprised charlie. It did not surprise me. Host this is a memoir and as you are going through that experience of trying to cancel a major Government Program worth billions of dollars to some of the most entrenched interests of washington, you can under attack. This became personal. You opened a book with a scene of being threatened where you received, or a letterte was sent to nasa with some white powdery substance. Can you talk about that experience and what you endured going through all this . Guest sure. It was surprising and, of course, disheartening that i was attacked for putting something forward that i i thought was y well studied, that again in the 1990s the nasa administrator of the time had supported. Indeed we were already planning toar launch cargo with the prive sector through a program started by the previous administration. But i think because the administrator of nasa didnt agree and he was an astronaut and revered marine general, having a woman, i was young, 48 at the time that it went there, i didnt have a technical degree, i was the one to attack. And being physically threatened as the sort of prelude outlines was very surprising and scary, and i was strengthened by it in some ways because it made me realize these are notot good people who are fighting. They are fighting and ethically, illegally in some instances and, of course, the system is corrupt in many ways beyond nasa. Just this status quo well, ill scratch your back you scratch mine. Thats not what a country should be doing. Host at the point where you had security. Guest nasa security was alerted a few times to threats that some somehow they wour tell m me details that somehow a credible enough that i would have a s security detail even wk into my cart in the nasa garage. That was the hardest because shorter like the call is coming from inside the house. Theseepl were people i hope to o lead to a Better Future and who i knew had been frustrated by the also were very thought into the current programs and lots of lies and ugliness were spread and, therefore, people considered maybe if they got rid of me they could get rid of the problem and come back to how things were where we spent a lot of money and didnt go anywhere. Host you mention Charlie Bolden during this time with the nasa administrator, former astronaut, marine corps general, sort of beloved in the Space Community, the Aerospace Community and just sort of generally. You all had some significant differences and youic write abot in the book at times going around him in a lack of trust. So i i wonder if you can talk a little bit about that relationship with him . Guest yeah, i wouldve tried to not talk about much of this if the story could be told without it because charlie is a person who, you know, we were very friendly certainly especially at the beginning, revered andnd understandably and deservedly so for many accomplishments hes made. He was someone who the administration firstf of all hadnt selected to be nasa administrator at first. Senator bill nelson and he had flown on the Space Shuttle years before together and bonded, and senator nelson fought as outlined in a book to have charlie be administrator. That was after i had already been not named publicly but asked toep serve as deputy f administrator and after the Transition Team had already really formulated the policy and the augustine report was underway. So charlie came in late and didnt agree with the president s plan which you like to consider my plan, but i kept saying unit, really the president will all work for who should be a line. In fact, i understand he asked rahm emanuel during his interview for head of nasa could he take his own deputy . Rahm emanuel said no. No, weve got lori garver to be deputy and charlie said what if we dont agree on things . He said you both work for the president. So we dont expect any problems. I know that i am seeing as the outlier but it wasnt the outlier. And my choice as a deputy of a federal agency and be senate confirm, do you follow your immediate boss, or the president , and i was nominated by the president. Charlie couldnt fire me. Im told he tried a few times and that wasnt approved by the white house. So i did when it became clear charlie was working behind the scenes against the president not share everything i was doing with him. And as aeg sand about my biggest regret is not being able to develop a trusting relationship with charlie and i really dont think hes bad. I think he was listening to the people, the wrong people who are self invested in the status quo. And hes such k a nice person, h well, they know. He really doesnt question their motives. Host so you come , perhm a different background than the sort of traditional nasa astronaut in you have a name for them c in the book, the space pirates. I wonder if you could talk about that. What are the space pirates . What do they represent . Whats their philosophy . Who are the . Guest the book was even called space pirates by the at one point because i prefer to them as people who raised me. When i first came into space commuting i work at a small nonprofit called the National Space society and the goal was to create a space faring civilization against postapolln thinking without space was going to be open to more of us than handful of astronauts and a way to do that is e