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[no audio] >> this is mission com houston, less than two minutes away from the orbital maneuver system burn to increase atlantis' altitude. this will be a one minute four second firing of both orbital maneuvering firing systems and the guidance control officer reports atlantis is in a good configuration for the burn as does the propulsion officer here in mission control. >> houston, we think we're in a good position for the burn.

>> that's affirmative atlantis, in good config for the oms two burn. [no audio] [no audio] [no audio]

[no audio] [no audio] >> standing by for the firing of the orbital maneuvering system engines and the propulsion officer reporting the oms two burn is underway. [no audio] [no audio]

[no audio] [no audio] >> we see a good burn, atlantis, no further trim is required. we'll meet you in the post oms two tab. >> copy and concur, thanks, houston. >> and as we watch the replay of atlantis separating from its external fuel tank following its launch almost 40 minutes ago, the confirmation from cap com

barry confirms to chris ferguson that we've had a good firing of the orbital moo niewferring enjoins and the oms two burn refining atlantis' altitude as it begins its trek on the road of the two day chase to catch up to the international space station. atlantis now at an altitude of 143 by 98 statute miles. >> here comes the -- [inaudible] >> we are watching. >> no delta to the post burn reconfig. >> copy, no delta.

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[no audio] >> mission control houston back here at the johnson space center and the absent team of flight controllers on duty led by richard jones along with spacecraft communicator barry wilmoore following the launch of atlantis 42 minutes ago following a very, very slight delay while the ground launch verified that the gaseous vent arm, the cap, if you will, was fully retracted from the top of the orbital's fuel tank. with the launch having been completed, the first major maneuver of the flight, the oms two burn of the system engines has just been accomplished, atlantis now flying at an

altitude of 143 by 97 statute miles in pursuit of the international space station flying northwest to southeast in an orbit incline to 156 degrees to either side of the equator. >> affirmative, ready for 106, fergie. [no audio] [no audio] [no audio]

[no audio] >> houston, contact from the mid deck, how do you copy? >> sandy, we have you loud and clear. >> very good. i have you loud and clear as well. >> yeah, it's good talking to you sandy. >> mission specialist sandy magnus now out of her seat of the flight deck making her way down to the mid deck to begin the preliminary configuration of the systems down there. in the meantime, rex walheim working on the flight deck hardware. commander chris ferguson and pilot doug hurley will be checking out the shuttle's

robotic arm unfurling it from the port's seal of the shuttles' payload bay at about the six and a half hour mark of the mission, performing a check out of its systems before it's used tomorrow to grapple the orbital boom sensor system for the initial inspection of atlantis' thermal protection system. [no audio] >> houston, consider complete with the checklist. if you agree, we can compose insertion. >> we do agree with that atlantis, and while i got you, fergie, if you want to set a timer for your config it's at 3:

19. >> three hours and 39 minutes, we appreciate that. >> you bet. [no audio] [no audio] [no audio] [no audio]

>> here in the control room, the team looking over the shoulders of atlantis' team as they set up orbit operations. the exact liftoff time for atlantis on the final mission was 10:29 and 3.9 seconds central time, 10: 29 central time today, about two minutes and change behind schedule while the kennedy space center held the clock at t-minus 31 second clock before the sequencer does the handoff to the shuttle's on board computers to verify the full retraction of the cap or gaseous vent arm that is located at the top of the shuttle's external fuel tank.

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[no audio] [no audio] [no audio] >> hey, houston, ready for block one, any deltas? >> i did question fergie, no deltas as you recall, but we will be going single g2. >> absolutely, single g2, no deltas, and here we go. >> we are watching.

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[no audio] [no audio] [no audio] [no audio] >> houston, step one, we'll give you the op-106. >> yeah, we do like you know end

bat atlantis. >> and atlantis' four astronauts continue to set up shop, con figuring their data processing system for on orbit operations that will set the stage for the opening of the payload bay doors. about 35 minutes from now, atlantis is curlily flying over the southern indian ocean about to swing south of the continental australia and back out over the pacific ocean. [no audio] >> while most of the activity was centered around the launch of atlantis in the shuttle flight control room down the hall from here and the international space station flight control room, the team of

flight controllers on consul watching over the expedition of the 28 crew led by flight director emily nelson on the right of your screen, robert handley, the spacecraft communicator talking directly to the half dozen crew members on board the space station. they were watching the launch on a television feed uplinked to them as they watched atlantis begin its journey to link up to the international space station for the final time on sunday morning at the outset of the delivery of some four tons of equipment and supplies to fortify the station over the next 12 months. of course, the station is led by andre along with a russian crew mates. one from the japan aerospace

explore nation agency and nasa astronauts. [no audio] [no audio] [no audio] >> houston. >> within block three, atlantis.

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>> i think, houston, step four if you like the inbat, we double checked it, we like it, and ready for ops 201. >> we do like the inbat and are ready for ops 201. [no audio] [no audio] [no audio]

[no audio] >> this is mission control houston, almost one hour into atlantis' final flight, the four crew members setting up all of their equipment setting up their data processing as they set up to the on orbit load, about 30 minutes or so from now, 35 minutes from now perhaps, we'll get into the time frame for the opening of the payload bay doors and the activation of the radiators to take over the flash evaporator system initiated about five minutes or so into the flight to provide cooling for the shuttle aveonics. the system provides temporary cooling during assent and entry, otherwise the radiators dispate heat and the doors are opened

and the raid radiators are deployed. [no audio] >> following its launch at 10:29 central time this morning, atlantis settled into its preliminary orbit followed 30 minutes later by the firing of the orbital maneuvering systems in the first altitude adjustment burn essentially to raise the orbit as it began its two-day trek to catch up to and dock with the international space station for the start of almost eight days of joint docked operations with the six crew members on board the orbital outpost. >> houston, block one, we double check that inbat as well, ready

for sm ops 201. >> ready for that, atlantis. thanks for the heads up. [no audio] [no audio] >> one programming note, at noon central time, 1 p.m. eastern time, we'll be going back down to the kennedy space center for the post launch news conference. the participants are nasa administer for space operations, and bob cabana, director of the space center, and mike moses, the launch integration manager and chairman of the premission

management team and the shuttle launch director mike. the post news lunch conference targeted for noon central time, 1 p.m. eastern time from the kennedy space center, and we'll be going back down there for that. that should be close to the time frame that we'll be niche -- initiating the payload doors, but we'll keep you posted on nasa audio once we've gone back down to the space center. everything going smoothly, the crew ahead of schedule on its post insertion timeline setting up all the systems to use aboard the orbiter for the next 12 days.

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>> houston,com check. >> we have you loud and clear, rex. good to hear your voice. >> good to be back in space. >> no doubt. while i've got you, real quick, just, i have no deltas to your payload bay door opening attitude. >> okay. copy, butch, thanks. >> that's on 1-5, when you get there.

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>> houston, step ten, ready for the resets. >> affirmative. we will take that, atlantis. [no audio]

>> here on the flight control room standing is paul hill, the director of missions operations here at the johnson space center, talking with the ground controllers who basically take care of all of the buildings functions. anything from air-conditioning to the computer systems, to the scheduling of time on the tracking and data relay satellite system. he has been going around the room, congratulating the flight control team here as i'm suspecting he will over the course of the next 12 days or so. from time to time with all the shifts in both the shuttle and station flight control rooms as the shuttle program enters its final two weeks of the 30-year program. once again, we'll be switching to the kennedy space center at the top of the hour for the post-launch

news conference, targeted for noon central time, 1:00 p.m. eastern time. >> we agree. done with block one. >> while the crew of atlantis continues to configure the space ship or on orbit operations and opening of the payload doors a short time ago, that post-launch news conference coming up at the top of the hour from the kennedy space center will feature, bill gerstenmaier, nasa associate administrator for space operations. bob cabana. the director of the kennedy space center, mike most sis, shuttle launch integration manner and mike line back the shuttle launch director. again the post-launch news conference coming up at topp of the hour, noon central time, 1:00 p.m. eastern time. atlantis launched from launch pad 39-@ in the final

launch in his shaut tell history, one hour ten minutes ago. conducting a orbital system burn 37 minutes into the flight to increase its altitude. the shuttle currently flying at an altitude 141 bring 97 statute miles over the south pacific about to begin a southwest northeasterly trek that will carry it across the equator and beginning of the second orbit of the mission. once the payload bay doors are open, and the mechanical systems officer confirms that that has been completed, the crew will wait for a go for on orbit operations. >> attitude reloaded. we'll give you a maneuver. ready for the maneuver.

>> the maneuver reported i about commander chris ferguson and acknowledged by cap come barry will more on the left in the shuttle room the payload bay door opening attitude. the payload bay doors will be open. radiators will be deployed to provide cooling for the orbiter's avionics and electronics until they are closed on landing day. again, flight director richard jones will first go-around the room to get a go for payload bay door opening. once, once the doors are opened, then he will take a poll of the ascent team of flight controllers to get a go for on-orbit operations after which the crew will be out of the post-insertion checklist and into the timeline we'll see chris ferguson and rex walheim set

up a variety of laptop computers on the orbiter before ferguson and hurley work from the atf flight deck from the atlantis to unfurl and check out the shuttle's robotic arm, moving it, maneuvering from the sill on the port side of the payload bay in advance of the grappling of orbiter boom sensor system tomorrow on flight day two and the checkout and inspection of the thermal protection system starting with the starboard wing of atlantis, to make sure that the reinforced carbon carbon did not suffer any damage during atlantis's climb uphill. the orbiter boom sensor system using a variety of laser cameras and sensors will inspect the orbiter's nose and move over to the, the port wing. all of that data coupled with the ascent imagery and the rendezvous pitch maneuver that atlantis will

do during its final approach for docking on sunday to the international space station, will be analyzed by the debris analysis team here at the johnson space center as they begin the process of incrementally clearing the shuttle for its final entry back to earth and a landing at least 12 days from now. >> we copy. [no audio] >> and flight director richard jones now polling his team to get a go for

payload bay door opening. can [no audio] >> atlantis you are go for payload bay door opening. >> awesome, houston, thanks. go for payload bay doors.

>> houston, how long to estel? >> yeah, just shy of 16 minutes. >> thanks. >> this is mission control houston with approval having been given to the crew of atlantis to open the payload bay doors. commander chris ferguson querying the flight control team about how long it will take -- >> atlantis, you probably know this, make sure we're tagged up. you will be auto mode on the load bay door opening. >> auto mode on doors, thank you. >> the reference until ouch

how much time till estl refers to a fm ground station located here at the johnson space center through which some down link it. v may be available. we'll get a couple of minutes of television around the time of payload bay door opening. we'll see how that goes. the payload bay doors will be operated for their opening by mission specialist rex walheim, backed up by commander chris ferguson. >> [inaudible]. >> that is affirmative,

atlantis. >> copy. >> one of the other big-ticket items for atlantis's crew will be the deployment of the dish-shaped ku band antenna over the starboard, forward sill of the payload bay. >> have we missed anything? >> okay. we'll take a look. >> chris ferguson asking capcom barry wilmore to make sure the team here is looking over their shoulders to make sure they don't miss anything in the post-insertion checklist. again the ku band antenna will be deployed soon. once the payload bay doors are open, that will enable a high data rate telemetry and down link television capability from the shuttle.

>> atlantis, block three does look good to us. nice work. [no audio]

[no audio] >> the electrical systems officer here in mission control reports that the crew has begun the process of turning on the lights in the payload bay. that in advance of the operation of the systems by rex walheim and chris ferguson to actually open the doors, deploy the

radiators, and setting the stage for a go for on-orbit operations. atlantis crossing the pacific at an altitude of 143 by 97 statute miles. soon to cross the equator, moving from southwest to northeast in an orbit incline 51.6 degrees to either side of the equator. >> block five complete, houston. >> we copy. block five, complete. thanks for keeping us tied in. >> block four is in.

>> [inaudible]. >> we're planning to go open the doors at, let me see, met is about 1:31. does that sound about right, houston? >> that's affirmative. 1:31 will be right at the beginning of the estl window. [no audio]

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[no audio] [. >> this is mission control houston. the crew aboard atlantis is preparing to open the

payload bay doors and deploy the radiators on the orbiter to provide cooling for the shuttle's avionics and electronics for the duration of the mission until entry day. we're expecting to see receive some downlink television as the crew begins that procedure about five minutes from now. thanks to the kennedy space center. they will be delaying the smart of their post-launch news conference by just ten minutes. that will start now 12:10 p.m. central time, 1:00 p.m. eastern time. bill gerstenmaier, nasa associated administrator out of nasa headquarters, bob cabana, the director of the kennedy space center, mike most sis, the space shuttle launch integration manager and mike line back, the shuttle launch director will be the participants in the news conference at the kennedy space center which now will begin at about 12:10 p.m. central time. allow us to bring to you the at least the beginning of the payload bay door opening

aboard atlantis. [no audio]

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[no audio] >> houston, block six is complete and we'll pick up with the open command for the doors about 31 minutes after. >> okay. we copy block six. we'll be standing by for the doors. . .

>> go ahead. >> supply water galley supply valve to open. talk back to open. >> complete.

>> thank you very much. >> and the mechanical systems officers reports here in mission control that the latches are beginning to disengage for the opening of the payload bay doors. we're expecting and hoping for some television through the fm ground station here at the johnson space center of that operation. again payload bay door open in work. waiting to lock up on this ground station that is called estel here.

[no audio] >> craig, are you on estl atlantis. >> i love it when a plane comes together. >> amen. >> the doors are in the process of swinging open. starbird door as you can see is already open. the port door to follow. you're looking right down at the front end of the logistics module carrying some 8,000 pounds of logistic supplies to fortify the international space station for the next year. on the far right, nestled against the payload bay door is the shuttle's robotic arm that will be unfurled and tested within the next few hours by commander chris ferguson and pilot doug hurley in advance of its grappling of the orbiter boom sensor system for the initial inspection of the

shuttle's thermoprotection system tomorrow. now, the port door begins to swing open. [no audio] >> in this split screen image on the left is the shuttle's ku band communications antenna which also will be deployed a short time from now. [no audio]

>> and the mechanical systems officer reports the payload bay doors have been opened for the final time on atlantis. here in the fight control room rick jones is polling his team for getting on-orbit operations. [no audio] >> atlantis, we just pulled the room and you are go for overdock. >> go for over docks great news, houston. thanks. >> so with that the crew will begin the process of docking their launch and entry suits and the antenna and the setup of the

laptop computers on board the orbiter. also on tap the activation of the star trackers, the stowage of the escape pole and other items that will clear the path for the rest of the day's activities that will culminate and the crew going to sleep around 7:00 pm central time tonight. we'll be switching the nasa television satellite back down to the kennedy space center shortly for the start of the post-launch news conference in about 5 minutes at 12:10 central time, 1:10 eastern time. once again the nasa associated administrator for space administrations will be participating in that news conference joined by the director of the kennedy space center bob cabana, mike moses

the shuttle launch integration manager and mike line back the shuttle launch director. again atlantis's payload bay doors now open. ago for on-orbit operations by flight director robert jones everything going fine in atlantis' final flight into space. [no audio] [no audio]

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[no audio] >> with today's final launch of the space shuttle we turn the page on a remarkable period of america's history in space. all beginning the next chapter in our nation's extraordinary story of exploration. from the early exploits of

daniel boone, robert clark and robert perry and alan shepherd and john glenn, bold enough to imagine new worlds, ingenuous to start to chart a course to them and courageous enough to go for it and the gifts of knowledge and innovation that we have brought back from the unknown have played their part in the building of our more perfect union. some say that this final shuttle mission will mark the end of america's 50 years of dominance in human space flight. as a former astronaut in the current nasa administrator i want to make clear that american leadership in space will continue for at least the next half century because we've laid the foundation for success. and for us at nasa, failure is not an option. over three decades the shuttle has brought this nation many firsts and many, many proud moments. it has helped the united states to maintain its leadership in space. it has vastly increased our

knowledge about launch systems which we'll apply to the next generation of space transportation. it opened the door to space for men and women of all races. it united our globe with communication satellites and helped us learn how to repair them in orbit. it launched science missions and brought the hundreds of research experiments to the international space station which will be the centerpiece for our human space flight activities into the future. i know the transition from our flagship program to a new chapter in human space flight has not been easy. change never is. i want to thank the nasa work force for its dedication and professionalism. what you have accomplished continues to amaze the world. and we've only just begun. tomorrow's destinations will inspire new generations of explorers and the shuttle pioneers have made the next chapter of human space flight possible. president obama is asking us to harness that american spirit of

innovation, the drive to solve problems and create capabilities that is so embedded in our story and has led us to the moon, the great observatories, and to humans living and working in space. that american ingenuity is alive and well. and it will fire up our economy and help us win the future. thank you and godspeed to atlantis and her crew. >> good afternoon, everybody. and welcome to a very joyous day. the sts post-launch news conference after the successful launch of the space shuttle atlantis before near-record crowds in the space coast area. i believe that we have 1,535 news media in attendance and it looks like we crammed as many of you folks in the room today. thank you very much for coming. we would like to begin things by introducing the members of our panel and then we'll have

opening comments and then we'll be happy to take your questions. to my immediate left is mr. bill gerstenmeyer nasa associate administrator for space administrations. >> good afternoon. >> bob cabana, mike moses, space shuttle program launch integration manager and the chairman of the prelaunch mission management team. >> good afternoon. >> and mike linebach. >> what a truly awesome day today. we got to witness something really, really special and something really amazing. and you may think that sometimes i talk about the hardware but i'm really talking about the teams and the people that supported the launch that just occurred. what you saw is the finest launch team and shuttle preparation teams in the world that got this vehicle ready to go fly. you got to see the team perform everything we've asked them to perform over these years.

the vehicle had a tremendous launch, the teams worked falsely even the last minute hole the 31 seconds. they worked with that with tremendous professionalism and got this launch off today and just congratulations to the ksc team. i can't thank you enough for everything you've done for us. everything i've asked this team to do here at ksc they have done and they have done it superbly and they have done it beyond my highest expectations it so you to the ksc team, the other teams they still got to get busy as well as the crew on orbit. the docking will be on sunday. it's a pretty busy mission. you'll see that activity on oribility that you're going to go through. we're going to try to extend that mission a day. but i urge you to follow the mission and watch what is going on with iss and really take in and spend a little extra time to understand the research and the activities that are happening on iss and then we look forward to a landing here at ksc.

so again, still a lot of work in front of us but what an awesome and great start to the mission today. thank you and i look forward to your questions. bob? >> thanks, bill. i want to thank bill he has provided human space flight from nasa headquarters. he truly has done an outstanding job. john shannon is not here today, but, john, i can't think of a finer program manager for the shuttle program to close it out and see us get this last vehicle on orbit. lasting but not least i want to thank the two mikes here. i think they did a truly excellent job leading the team through this last launch. and it got a little dicey there a couple times but we found our way through it and i'll let them talk about that. it truly was an awesome spectacular launch. and in my opinion, the only way it could have been better if i found a way to stow away on there somewhere. [laughter] >> but, unfortunately, that didn't work out. i want to share with you what i shared with the launch team after the launch. and bill kind of said it.

words can't express the gratitude i have for this team and the pride that i have in them. they are truly the most professional, the best, most outstanding technicians and engineers anywhere. and we owe them a great debt of thanks. they've done a truly outstanding job in service to our country and they provided us with one heck of a ride through the last 30 years on the united states shuttle program. and i just -- they really need recognition. we're going to be going through a tough time. change is hard and we're going to have more folks walking out the door here in a few weeks and, you know, they were and are performing their job absolutely flawlessly right up to the end. and that says a lot for them. it speaks to their professionalism. change is difficult. but you can't do something else, you can't do something better unless you go through change. and all this talk about, you know, nasa's adrift.

we don't have a plan. we do have a plan. we're enabling commercial space. we have the commercial crew program here at kennedy supported by the johnson space center in houston. we have four folks under contract trying to build a vehicle that will take americans to space, supporting our international space station that's still up there until at least 2020 with americans on board. human space flight program, yes, we have to rely on rides on russian rockets for a while but we're implementing those plans to get a commercial u.s. capability to get our folks there. and we're working very hard on a heavy lift program that will allow us to explore beyond our own planet. if you look out to pad b, you know, you see a shuttle structure on pad a but let me tell you, pad b is in a lot better shape than that shuttle structure and even though you see stuff coming down on the top of the pad you don't see what's inside. all new fiber optics and digital control systems and a new lightening protection system that even helped us clear the shuttle down on pad a for the

lightening strikes that we've had. state-of-the-art. so a lot of progress is being made to prepare for this multiuser capability at ksc. a multiuser complex where we can have a heavy lift program that allows us to explore and commercial programs also. we announced the mcv as orion to go on that big rocket. that hardware starts arriving here at the cape later this year for the first test article. soon we'll have an announcement on the exact architecture of the rocket to go on with it. so we are making progress. we're doing all that we need to do to help move us forward. so, you know, the shuttle program has been truly phenomenal. and i take great pride in this team and thank them for all they've done. we still got a lot to do before it's over. and they're going to be doing a lot of work on orbit and then we're going to bring home them safe and i'm looking forward to the landing on the cape and shake their hands. thank you for your support and

we're going to get through this and we're going to do well but awesome launch today. mike? >> thanks, bob. let's see. after years of training they tell me to do things in the right order i'll do something in the wrong order. i'm going to start on my remarks by telling you mike tells you a lot that he leads the best launch in the world and i'll include that the asset team back in houston and they are truly the best. it is an honor and a privilege to serve with you, mike. >> thank you, mike. >> the judgment they showed today, the leadership they showed today was absolutely amazing. so let me get back on track before i lose it. i'll talk about technical stuff 'cause i'm good at that. [laughter] >> you saw these guys -- you saw these guys really perform, you know, it started yesterday. i don't even know what time i was getting ready to take a nap and they called up and said we took a lightening strike pretty much on the pad. and the team had that cleared within about four hours. we knew we were good to go and press on with the count. we still had to do some data review and dot some i's and cross some t's echo that to about two years ago when i -- 2.5 years ago when i first started we had a lightening

strike the first time made us delay 24 hours. two years before that we had a lightening strike that made us delay about two days. it really shows you how well the team takes the challenge of recognizing that there's something -- we're not quite the best at and we'll become the best at it. and we really showed that with the lightening strike clearing. the decision to go tank today, in face of that weather forecast with the odds we had against us all day and for the weekend i thought was unbelievable leadership to take us down that path and let us try today and it really did pay off. mike's team worked a couple of good technical issues. a lock pump acting up a little bit. and then just to make it really exciting at 31 seconds i'll let mike tell you again that was a great example of how well the team had prepared ahead of time and then we just worked out weather all day long and we ended up coming right down to the wire. the range weather hung right in there. was pretty good all day long. we really had the advantage of having the weather recon aircraft up there to go slice up the clouds to truly find out how

thick they were and where they really were, look where showers were popping up and not and when it came right down to it we ended up around the rain shower rule which says we don't want rain showers within 20 nautical miles of the landing site, the slf, the shuttle landing facility and on this day we had a few showers that were still popping up in that circle so we were at the time needing to go and we were observed no go at the landing site but that's okay because the landing wouldn't be 35 minutes after launch but we were also going to be forecast no go and that's where we need to talk about making taking a little bit of an exception today beyond what's printed in the rules to say we understand the situation a little better because this situation is not one that we wrote down ahead of time. and that's what we did. the team did a very thorough evaluation. the asset team led by richard jones back in houston and our weather recon aircraft with cj stirhof and all the team that supports them did an amazing job of what we were truly facing. we knew we had some showers that

might pop up but they would be limited in scope to only affect one end of the runway. we had good energy profiles that would let us land on either runway so we could designate around a rain shower if it did pop up. really when you're flying through rain showers you're losing a lot of your energy and even if we had that we had excess margin that it would be okay even if we did happen to catch a rain shower at the bad time but really what made us go today was the radar forecasts, the radar maps, the forecasts and the observations by the sta pilot that showed there was really nothing developing down in the quadrant that would then blow up over the pad. so we knew we might have a tiny risk of a chance of a shower. we knew very well it was not going to be a thunderstorm. and that allowed us to be comfortable today to just go a little bit beyond the printed rule and take that extra exception at the end and go ahead and launch today. i kept an eye on the radar map as we were flying uphill all the way through the landing time. there never was a shower that popped up in the circle and it was a really good decision by the team today. we had no problem endorphin that

one. on the way uphill we got an alarm which is a delta pressure over delta time basically a change in pressure. the cabin pressure dropped off just a tiny a little bit we tribute that to cabin stretch as we're lifting up through the cabin grows a little bit because of all the g forces on it and it just vents off a little bit of oxygen. pressure was very stable after that little bit so no worries but it did bring an alarm to give the crew yet more excitement on this last mission. [laughter] >> they got in orbit. miko was on target and they're doing a good job and the doors are open now and we're looking forward to a great mission. as bill said, this is a very critical mission for station resupply. we're going to do our best to try to stretch out an extra day to help get some stowage on stage and it will posture the space station to be done for the future. i think the shuttle program is ending exactly as it should. we built the international space station. we're stocking it up for the future and ready to hand it off

and we finished really strong. that said, we're not ready to look back or forward. we still have this mission to complete so we're going to stay very focused on the mission at hand. a 12 hopefully 13-day mission in front of us. it's going to be jam packed and we're handing it over to the team to get that executed. with that i'll hand it over to mike and just say i can't express again how proud i am to be sitting up here after a good successful launch today. >> thanks, mike. well, thanks for those opening remarks. that was very nice. and on behalf of the team, i accept those remarks. they're very nice. mike discussed about the decision to go tank. it made it sound like it was a tough decision. let me tell you how that really came down. we met in my office before the mmt meeting. we flipped a coin. [laughter] >> that's how we really make decisions. >> got a big dart board. >> now the program is over we can divulge some of our secrets. [laughter] >> no, you know, we met before the meeting. we went over some strategy and then the forecast was such that,

you know, we had a decent shot at it. and as we've said before, we've tanged with worse predictions than that. and so we went with it today -- and we got lucky. i mean, we got lucky is the way you can put it. from a launch weather perspective cathy winter our launch weather inspector did a gret job and those who preceded her on console, an outstanding job today, guys, thank you very much. the forecast for the launch perspective was right on the money. and we got that a little bit of clearing that we needed and so from my perspective, on the launch side, it was pretty easy. richard jones on the other hand the flight director, wrestling with the rtls that was a bit more challenging for them. and he worked his way through that and it was just an outstanding job. so we got -- we got through all that and the tanking went fine. we had a little issue with the major pump that puts the liquid oxygen to the external tank. we're getting a little bit of a tilldown inparticulartive of a minor league and we opted to voluntarily switch to the other

pump before we got in trouble on that. that went per the book. never uncovered the ecosensedors or the depletion sensors there at all and so we were good there. and the locks guys did a great job. coming on down to the count, i thought we were in the clear until 31 seconds when the arm gave us a little trouble and all that was when we retracted the gva we didn't get one of the indicators that it was blocked and locked and there was a pressure system that we were not concerned of it coming down during main engine ignition so no issue there. the team worked through it very, very well. i think we lost 58 seconds left in the window this time which is an eternity lately. [laughter] >> so that worked out really well for us. just on behalf of the launch team we're very proud that we finished it strong from a launch perspective as we did. again, the mission ahead of us,

landing ahead of us and then we'll be able to look back and celebrate. today was a great day and there's a part in the vab so i hope you don't ask too many questions. [laughter] >> yeah, that said, go ahead. >> just one real quick before we take questions, i think you all know rick, a marine was flying on the aircraft and i was listening on the loop and instead of really using technical meteorological terms and he said it's a really, really big hole. [laughter] >> all right. we will take questions. these gentlemen have been working since around midnight and their day is not done so we do want to let them get out of here by 2:00 at the latest so we have about 30 minutes worth of questions unless they nudge me they have to go sooner. to try to make sure everybody gets covered, please ask one question and a follow-up. please make sure you wait for the microphone. tell us your name and affiliation and to whom you're

addressing your question. and we'll start in the front row with seth. >> seth bornstein ap for mike. can you describe the mood after the launch, you know, in the launch control. did it take longer for people to file out since, you know, it was the last one? or how was it different than after other launches? can you just describe what was going on there? >> yeah, you've hit on it very good, seth. it did take a while to leave the control room. we have photographs set up to take some pictures of the team, the entire team at once and then individually or group pictures, whatever we chose to do. a lot of us walked around and shook everybody's hand. people -- it seemed like we didn't want to leave. it was like the end of a party and you just don't want to go. you just want to hang around a little bit longer. and relish our friends and what we've accomplished.

it was very special. >> you talked about all the -- you know, the tiny technical problems you overcame. in the end, are you kind of glad that it was -- instead of a completely clean -- is it more sweet that you had to overcome all these things and yet still launch or would you have just assumed have a nice easier cleaner time for you. >> anytime we get to t0 and we get to orbit safely is good by me. it was fine. it challenged the team at this time at the end but we've practiced that scenario numerous times and so we were ready to go with it. in fact, we had written a little special procedure because in some of the testing over the last month or so we didn't always get that retract indicator so we put together a little procedure and we put the procedure together, figuring if we do that, we'll never get failure.

of course, we got the failure and we had it knocked so it was no big deal. >> leo enwright with irish television. would you have done this if the shuttle was going to fly another mission? the reason i ask being that it was always my understanding that one of the concerns was that if you flew through precipitation that it would damage the tiles. i mean, i'm just wondering were you just making the calculation, well, hey, we're not flying it again so it doesn't matter or have i completely misunderstood. >> so last mission type thing was not part of the consideration today. but you are right. flying through rain showers will damage the tile. and so the rules is not written because you damage tile and it's a turn-around issue. damaging the tile literally is taking energy out of your profile. you remember the shuttles coming in as a glider without engines. every last bit of energy is well managed to make sure you make the runway. we knew today for the approach profiles with the wind we had, the head winds, the cross-winds

and the break energy we would see that we would not have energy problems so flying through a rainstorm would be okay in today's situation. just like you see with the forecasts and we were talking prelaunch. no single forecast is the same, you know, a 70% know-go one day is not the same as 70% no-go for different reasons. those rain shower exception rules are the same thing. they're written for certain cases but not every case. so we take a look at every one every time. that's why we have people making these rules and not a computer voting red or green to go or no go. it did not come in to consideration today at all. >> jim seigel celebration independent newspaper, a question from bob cabana. you mentioned, bob, some of the work being done on pad 39b. so looking forward now, which would you anticipate that that work is going to be completed? what missions do you think are upcoming for that pad? and what about 39a? is that going to kind of stay

where it is for a while for budget reasons or what? >> well, we're, obviously, preparing to be able to launch a heavy lift rocket off that bad as soon as possible with our goal being 2016. now how things work out in the budget project, you know, we'll have to see. that doesn't look feasible right now but we want the pad to be able to go. we'll progress ahead to have it ready as soon as we possibly can for accommodating nasa rocket launches off it. 39a you're right we don't have funding right now to move with it. so we're going to kind of put it in a caretaker status eventually as we explore beyond our home planet there are scenarios where we need two big launch planets to support some of the things we want to do so down the road we do see a need for that pad. in the meantime, we'll make sure that it's not in such a condition that we can't bring it back up when we need it. >> okay. over here, ken kramer. >> hi, ken kramer for space flight magazine. mike leinbach, well, first of

all all of you i want to say congratulations and thank you. [applause] >> i appreciate it. >> you're wearing a very elegant medallion. i wonder if you could tell us a little bit about it. >> this is a little flag i gave to the launch team today. it's 135 prime member and i wanted to give them something they could take with them and remember the good times. and so that's what this is about. >> if i could just follow-up with bill, what is your reaction to these significant cuts to the nasa -- proposed nasa budget by the house appropriations committee. >> again, i think it's too early to react to those cuts. this is what we've seen from the house. we'll get some discussions with the senate and eventually that will get worked into what the nasa bill is. i don't react to those. we understand what they mean. we understand it's a tough environment and we'll work with that and we'll watch the process to go through and we'll be prepared to execute with what we get when we finally get an

answer from congress. >> mark interspace news i don't ask feeling questions but this time i would like to. i would like the perspective of the whole panel but in particular the two mikes. in my view, there's kind of no other place where you can -- where you see the flight control teams and the launch teams the -- when they're on their game, there's nothing like that, to see them perform, whether it's simulation it s or real la. this animal has never exist before. this is the last time you'll ever see that kind of execution and just your thoughts on that? >> we have grown into a very cohesive team. throughout the whole shuttle program, not just the flight control team and the launch team but all the processing team, the designers of the missions, you know, the payload folks. it's a very, very cohesive group. i'm not sure we'll never see it

again. we've grown into a very, very good organization. and it's taken years to do that. but it doesn't say it can't be done again. in fact, it will be done again. what we have learned in the shuttle program in part is how to work between centers and you split the work up, certain organizations are responsible for certain things. you respect that. and you go about your business and work together as a team. and it seems very natural to me to work this way. and so i'm sure it will happen again. there's no doubt in my mind. >> and for me, i'll steal a quote from gene kranse it's a laboratory. it teaches people to be critical decision-makers, critical thinkers and leaders. and so while we -- we aren't going to be churning out from that laboratory for a little bit

we have a whole batch of folks who are going to feed commercial industry and private industry on the nasa team and go push the envelope and take what they've learned and the skills they know how to do now and go help us keep moving into the future and to our future goals so from that standpoint i feel good that we're going to go take this team that's excellent what they do and go out and save the world, so to speak. and he will with be able to rebuild that team when the time comes and we need that again. in the short term, i know exactly what you mean where you've been there so you recognize that. that it's in the short term, it's going to be something missed. that a chance to do that -- a chance to do that every day. >> okay. >> randall seigel for mike leinbach. mike, you got the sash from endeavour. you got the sash from discovery. did you get the one from atlantis? and did you say anything special to the team after it was all over, realizing the finality of where we're at?

>> it's almost like we planted you in the audience. [laughter] >> there's atlantis. what i said to the team today -- there's been a tradition in american manned space flight that the launch director have bid the crews farewell, the astronauts farewell and launched traditionally with good luck and godspeed and the definition of godspeed that i like the best is, have a prosperous journey. and so at the end of my speech to the launch team today, i wished them from the bottom of my heart good luck and godspeed. >> okay. thank you, i have a follow-up. first for the two mikes, i know that during a launch you're fairly busy and maybe you get only a few seconds to get a look at the actual assent. i'm wondering when you did get a peek, did it shine brighter and last longer?

was there anything different that set it apart as it was happening? and as you were looking? >> you put the words in my mouth. to me it looked like it was lifting off in slow motion. again, i failed to apologize like i did the last time that we didn't give you a big enough view while we hit the cloud deck. it hit slow motion for a good 10 seconds. it was -- it was very moving. it was very beautiful. >> it was special today. i remember standing there after the vehicle went into the cloud deck you could still see the smoke from the srb's and the main engine and first stage and it seemed like that cloud plume was hovering and slowly drifting north and bill, a good friend of mine, the payload launch manager -- i believe i'm right when i say we put our arms around each other and looked at it and say we'll never see that again. it was a special moment. >> i just had one more

follow-up, sorry, for bill. you mentioned the same message that administrator bolden did in his recording about the u.s. not pulling out of human space flight. i know there's been a lot of talk in the public about that perception because of the lack of an iconic vehicle like the space shuttle and i'm just wondering how you perceive of the challenge to kind of combat that perception in the months and years ahead before the gap is complete? >> i think one piece that we forget that we've created this unbelievable facility in space, this 16-partner 900,000-pound research facility in space and we've got to really maximize the way we talk about that and the way we use that facility. you know, we've got a chance to do unbelievable research in a facility we've never been able to do. this is a unique period in our lives to get that done so we need to do our level best to take advantage of that. and then when you talk about the flight teams, there's still a flight team on the iss side that

has 17 on that year and they are juggle research manifest. we're looking at establishing a new nonprofit organization to manage the national lab portion of that iss so we are still in space and we are still moving forward with the iss. you're seeing commercial cargo come online later this fall and next spring. you'll see commercial crew come after that. so we're ready to keep going and we're going to springboard off of what the shuttle has done and move the next 50 years to make them just as bright as these last 30 have been for the shuttle. >> greg? >> greg dobbs. and this is for the two mikes 'cause you're the guys on this group who spent the most time around the shuttle. it's a more highly technical than tarik's question. did you choke up? [laughter] >> yep. most definitely. >> yes. [laughter] >> you open it up to follow-up. [laughter] >> i'll choke up if i do. >> elaborate on why you

personally choked up? you're engineers. you're always just, you know, analyzing things at every stage of assent. >> you know, to be honest, i choke up at every launch. this one i choked up before launch which was the unusual thing for me. [laughter] >> but again, as an engineer and just swell at pride at seeing that thing go. effects ngineer >> you talked about the future of the pads and not the vab. does nasa need the vab? does it gets an uplift or does it get bulldozed? >> i think there's folks who would shoot me if i thought about doing anything other than refurbishing it. our plan is to refurbish complex 39 to make it a multiuser space support and that includes utilizing the vab and the other facilities that are out there.

we're partnering with space florida, in commercial companies through space act agreements and use agreements to try to bring commercial work here but we most definitely need that vab for the heavy lift rocket that we're going to build. to support launches out of complex 39 that take us beyond earth. so absolutely. we're going to continue to make it a viable part of the future. and that includes some refurbishment. so making the most of the down time, the transition between programs fortunately we only needed one shuttle pad so we were able to get a jumpstart on 39b to start transitioning it to the future. we need a little bit of down time to make the modifications from one program to the next and that's what we're doing right no now. >> i won't ask you how much will it cost. will the government have to bear all of those costs or will those be shared with the commercial sector? >> if the commercial companies are going to use it they're

going to have pay to use it. >> irene, for anybody who would care to take this. you all inherited a vehicle that was ultimately proved far more complicated and labor intensive to work on. and one of the goals that the shuttle program didn't meet was this low cost of reliability. i guess i'm just wondering why you think it took 30 years for the shuttle program to get to the point where it would standown and give some operator of commercial or some other version of government an opportunity to develop something that would actually meet one of those goals that the shuttle program was sold on? >> is that me? [laughter] >> the shuttle program, you know, we could not have built the space station without the space shuttle.

and, you know, it is a phenomenal achievement on orbit right now. so, you know, i look back on what the shuttle has done in 30 years. the hubble space telescope, magellan, and look at the makeup of the astronaut corps and look at it today, look at the diversity of the astronaut corps and look at the multinations that have flown in space on the space shuttle on what it's done. i don't think it ended early. i think it totally fulfilled what it was -- it was meant to do. did it deliver on the costs that some people said? no. but did it achieve something that was not achievable by any other country or any other vehicle? absolutely. so i think it's done a phenomenal job. >> do you think that the commercial companies are going to have an easier time of developing vehicles that

nonastronauts can fly in i guess is what i was alluding to with the simpler define. >> they will not be able to do what the shuttle did. it was designed to carry large payloads and stay on orbit for a long time and service vehicles in service. the capsule is designed to drop somebody up and go home. is it easier to built. absolutely. that's why we chose the mercury capsule. nasa was working on lifting bodies when the space shuttle was starting out because that was really the best way to go, back and forth, you know, to have some cross-range to land on a runway. but they needed to do it quickly and cheaply. and a capsule was the simplest, easiest way to do that. and it still is. and so we've been going back and forth for lower orby the and we should build a capsule that allows them to take people up to the international space shuttle and back and not just the international space station. but i mean, boeing has a contract with bigalow aerospace.

there will be other destinations. it's not a government contract to the summation it's got to be more than that. >> and i also think the shuttle program gave a lot of information that's going to be tremendously valuable to these programs that are emerging and coming forward. you know, a lot of our computational fluid dynamics, some of the things we understand about transition on the vehicle, how the vehicle flies, those kinds of things are still important to capsules, how life support systems are designed inside the capsule, how docking mechanisms work. all those things that we have really kind of proven and refined throughout the shuttle years we can hand those off to the commercial companies and they can pick those up and move those in another direction. and so i think there was a lot learned from the shuttle program that will become -- isn't immediately evident to you until you look behind the hardware and you look at the equations and some of the physical understandings of how we fly in space that actually have 100% of application to this new activity we're heading off to. >> and the green shirt? >> hi, dave moshier with wired.com.

so you guys have a mission in space and newscast for anybody who can best answer it. what is going to be a really key moment up there aside from getting the astronauts safely on the ground? what's going to be sort of the moment, the main objective that you want to get done before you come home? >> well, i think first of all there's a lot of just logistics activity and that's just moving cargo from the multipurpose logistics module into the space station. this is the heaviest hmlm module that we've flown so it's really packed full so there's going to be just a big kind of logistics activity of moving that activity from the module. then also space station is getting pretty crowded. there's a lot of things up there that are stored that need to come back. this is a unique time to bring unique components come back and that's why we would like to have the extra day on orbit. we have a pump module that's failed outside of the space station. we would like to return that pump module to understand why it

failed so we can improve the next generation. and then we have another experiment that's going up. it's a refueling experiment that will sit outside of the station and this fall we'll be able to use the canadian dextrous robot to service -- to do a mock demonstration of servicing a satellite that was never meant to be serviced so it has on the outside that's a satellite and we've designed unique tools for it very much we design unique tools for the hubbling servicing mission but now this robot will use these unique tools. it will cut the blanket away. it will remove panel and remove a cap and demonstrate fluid transfer between two tanks on board. it will take us now from the space walk generation to start showing us what we can do in terms of robotic activities on board space station. >> okay. back on the other side of the room. >> yes, hi, i'm from radio network new zealand. thank you gentlemen for today.

i think it will be with us for the rest of our lives. and it looked like it was struggling perhaps. a question for bob cabana. as has been mentioned it's in the past the present and the future are going to be a working launch pad but are there any plans to have any significant extra commemoration plaques, what have you for that pad in the coming future and also when atlantis returns home, are there any special ceremonies that you have up your sleeve that you perhaps cannot tell us about yet? >> well, actually i'm working with the shuttle program to put some plaques in both places both at the shuttle facility and at the launch pad so we'll have something to commemorate the history of those pads as well as the landings at the slf and we've got a couple of ceremonies coming up after landing,

something special for the ksc team participating in the landing post-landing. but we're going to have a big celebration and i can't remember the date right now but it's going to be out at our visitors center and it's going to celebrate the entire shuttle program. and it's going to be open to, you know, easy access to all the retirees, the folks who have been a key part of this program for the last 30 years so we can really celebrate the significance of what the shuttle has accomplished. and that's going to be on the 13th of august. >> andy cox with the weather channel. it seems the weather gods, both teams to show their mettle. and i wonder if you may speak to the bigger picture of what the weather teams have meant just throughout the course of the program, in the support they've given? >> yeah, it's amazing. i'll let mike add in too because he works with cathy a lot and the 45th and we're only sanging

cathy because she's the spokesman for that. we're talking about the future and looking ahead, it's amazing when you work down here how much we need the daily weather forecasts for every operation we do. we're outside at the pad. we're moving hardware back and forth. there's cargo coming in at the slf we need weather forecasting on a daily basis. in fact, mike has a daily weather call where we tag up and see what's coming. and so it's played an integral part of the space shuttle program and the space program and it's really built up an unbelievable capability. you know, i was just explaining to a few folks the other day not too long ago we had flight rules in place that talked that triggered lightening. we learned that lesson the hard way through some of our partners on the air force side where they had an event with a triggered lightening that took out an atlas and to talk about what the limits are. we have field notes on the ground that measure voltages from lightening and kind of help tell you whether you're going to get triggered lightening or an independent lightening strike

but we didn't really know what was happening at altitude and combination with the weather service, the air force, nasa and noaa we flew a project for airborne field mills if cumulous clouds if it had lightening it would be attached so it would be a no go we could have a cloud deck with lightening out near the middle of mexico and we'd be no go here for that and we learned through these rules it's probably not and i can't remember the numbers exactly it's a 20 to 30 miles type of radial effect and the state-of-the-art has paid off and we've got that because we had a dedicated team focused on dedicated weather in certain areas of the country. you learn so much when you look at weather in one spot that closely. and so i really hope that -- that that ceded itself throughout the rest of the country in weather forecasting and weather service too not just for the shuttle program but it's a unbelievable team and we cannot do what we do without them. >> i agree 100%. i do have a daily weather call with cathy winters, a launch weather officer and as mike said

she's just a spokesman for a large group of people over at the 45th. different things come in to play on daily processing versus launch. different things come in to play when we're talking about tropical systems. we work very closely with the national hurricane center. when we have a tropical system threatening us. we've had criteria to roll the shuttle off the launch pad to get back in the vab to protect it. we've done that in the past. weather here in central florida again lightening capital of the world, right. there's a group of people -- the lightening launch commit criteria group. it's a group of ph.d.s who have been together for over 25 years and through those years and the studies they've done like the airborne field note like mike mentioned we've been able to relax our rules but yet stay perfectly safe. and so we're constantly challenging the weather folks because we have an operation to perform. and -- but we need to do it safely and so it's a balance between those two competing

interests. weather in central florida is a very, very interesting phenomenon. and you saw it today. it could have easily turned very, very sour and we wouldn't be talking to you right now. so a little bit of luck never hurts. [laughter] >> but the relationship we have with the 45th and smg and other folks that support them is just outstanding. >> all right. we have time for -- unfortunately, only three more questions so we'll take one here. then todd and ralph from the "l.a. times." >> thank you, jackie for the times of london. over the last couple of years we've -- and right up to last week really we've seen certain harsh criticisms by some very heavy weight nasa veterans, neil armstrong, and others -- how -- if nasa can't convince some of its own finest, how do you think nasa will move forward to convince the public that nasa is

an agency that knows where it's going and knows what it's doing and it's worth doing? >> well, i'm going to let the head of human space flight at nasa add a little bit more to it, but i think as it becomes clearer and we announce the specific design of the rocket that we are building and how we're going to use it and why we chose that design, i think that's going to help tremendously in educating and helping folks understand what we're doing and why we're doing it. >> and i think also there's a piece of it that, you know, we've got a lot of detailed plans that we've been working, you know, in-house quietly with technical teams really building a pretty strong strategy of how we go forward. and they captured a vision of nasa that was in the past with a different set of teams and they haven't had the privilege of being brought in and understanding all the details that the technical experts are working on a day-to-day basis and so we'll reach out to them and make sure we get the briefings to them and they can understand what we're doing.

we'll listen to their opinions and we'll see if it makes sense if we miss something. i grew up under those folks you mentioned. those are my teachers. those are my mentors. i lived in houston with them. i consider all of them truly my mentors. so i think i've incorporated everything that they bring to us in terms of concerns. but i think we owe them to show them technically what we've done and how we're prepared to go address these issues that they raise and i think after they see that, i think they'll come to an understanding where we're heading. they may not particularly like it because they want to push in a further direction. they know what this team is capable of. they see what we can go do and they want us to do even more so they are pushing us as hard as they can on the outside so a piece of that is healthy, too, to have a good strong debate that we can keep pushing and keep trying to do more. and we are -- you know, this team is really ready to execute whatever this nation wants this team to go do. this team can go execute. >> todd? >> todd halberson, for bill or

mike -- maybe mike moses. with the end of the shuttle program and maybe more specifically the end of iss assembly, i'm wondering if either of you see this a golden era in space walking? >> i don't see it really as an end. i see it really -- it's a transition, right? you know, unfortunately, sometimes we can't do -- you know, we say we can multitask, right as a people but sometimes we can't multitask as well as we think we can. you feel like you're multitasking but are you really as efficient as you were or are you just doing three things that actually take you longer than if you would have done those three things individually? right? so in a way we had to really quit assembly to really get focused on this research pace. and to get this activity started and we've got a nice window. we've got a nice nine-year window where we can really

concentrate on this space research and then that shows that there's potentially an economic market. there's now potentially a commercial application for space. that's not government driven so then there's a unique window here where now it's not only individual governments pushing us into space but now there's a real commercial poll towards space and that can really springboard us and move us in big directions. so i don't see this necessarily as an end but i see this as a transition into another era and at the same time we're going to be doing the iss research, we're going to be building and the heavy lift launch vehicle, the capsule we talked about, the orion mpvc to allow us to go push those boundaries to really challenge us as a human race to go out and explore with humans to new destinations. so i don't see this as an end of the golden era. i see this as a chance we can leverage off of what we've got now and really push it in new directions and it's up to us to make sure we explain as best we can to the broader community the

nonspace folks why we're doing what we're doing. why have we dedicated our lives to this? why are we doing all the activities we have done? we need to convey to them that excitement in this small window so they can get excited with us and then move with us into this next phase of space flight. >> ralph? >> thank you, ralph from the "l.a. times." the last question is a lot of federal agencies have gone through ends of eras very technically sophisticated programs and have worried about the loss and atrophy of the know how and knowledge that expanded in the last decades and they've gone through processes of formally documenting that technology and knowledge and i'm just wondering now at the end of the shuttle era where you're concerned about preserving and being able to tap all of the knowledge, the manufacturing, the operational knowledge that you bring to this table and how you're doing it and whether you're concerned about it. thank you. >> we have a pretty extensive lessons learned program where we

try to document exactly, exactly what we've done. we have a database that's searchable. we have all kinds of multimedia activities to try to capture the analogy. but then i think another real effective way to transfer that knowledge is to move some of the people from one activity or one program to that next program so they can take the actual lessons that they have learned and applied themselves and they get to then go and apply to the new program. ..

>> we are trying our best with all the right experts and all these techniques i described to make sure we go do it. time will tell how well we have done it, but i think it's critical for us to try to make the move to make sure we capture. it will not be easy for us to do. >> okay. [inaudible] [laughter] >> they would like to see mike's atlantis slashed one more time. i want to let everyone know we will close by replaying another launch of atlantis on television for you. we also will be replaying a very special farewell tribute video. then will turn things back to

mission control in houston for sts-135 continuous coverage. you can keep up with the entire mission at nasa.gov/shuttle. now we were all video. thank you very much. [inaudible conversations] >> this wraps up just about seven and a half hours of our coverage of today's atlantis shuttle launch year on c-span2. you see nasa tv reporting that launch from about 11:26, 11:30 a.m. eastern time. next, the space enterprise council where they hosted a discussion on the evolution of u.s. space policy. representatives of every presidential administration from president carter to president obama. talked about the core principles of the space program and what drove the decisions to space policy changes through the years. this is about three hours.

>> good morning, everyone. my name is david. i'm an executive director of the space american enterprise council. welcome to this forum focusing on international state policy. from carter administration all the way up to the obama administration. with -- this is the first of its kind. this event has not been done before, and good timing because this may be one of the last events c-span does because we all know the end of the world is tomorrow. a little bit about the space enterprise council. we advocate for the advancement of space commerce in the context of why space is an important economic and national security. wide is the important right now? with the budget environment that

we have, space budgets are under attack, and we believe that space is so integral and important to our nation that this has to be our message. we bring this message out, not only to the inside the beltway crowd but also out side the beltway crowd as well as this audience. so it's my pleasure to introduce my cohost for today, jeff. jeff is the president of the schwartz marshall institute. the institute is one of the few players in washington, d.c., focusing on security issues and space exploration issues. so jeff, i want to hand over the mic to your. >> thanks. thank you, david. and thank you to techamerica and the space enterprise council for graciously hosting this event today.

as i extend my thanks and appreciation to our panelists for giving us their time this morning to come and share their experience and expertise, the anecdotes and observations about the emergence of the dome of space policy throughout the years. as david said, this event is an we think the first of its kind. certainly rare and unique to have this many authors, this reservoir of knowledge about space policy here with us today. as david mentioned, space is increasingly important to u.s. national security. it's important to economic prosperity well. and that underlies a number of programs that the marshall institute and the space enterprise have been hosting over the past few years. whether it's our day without space series with tends to go straight to the common man, to the general public, the importance of space for military prowess our economic security. whether it's our use of current national space policy and application of the policy. whether it's an assessment of the health of industrial base

that provides the tools and the means by which we access space and operate there, whether it is our focus on the commercial exploitation and exploration of space. all of those contemporary policy issues are influenced by the history that we're going to talk about today. if you look at come if you examine space policy over the long run and the marshall institute has been one of the players trying to do that come if you examine that history come to find continuity. certain core principles that were established as far back as the eisenhower administration, the dawn of the american space age, continue to resonate over the years and are present in each one of the space policies that we will talk about today. there are also important issues that get added, in certain areas of disk can't agree that we will shortly talk about today. so in terms of the structure of the event, as i said, we have representatives from each administration from carter to obama here today. we will introduce each one of

them separately and they will come up and share their observations, their assessments of a space policy from their administration said, what its unique qualities or features were, how it differed from the previous administration and how it influenced current space policy for space issues through the years. so it's my pleasure to introduce art morrison is he representing the carter administration. of course, the carter administration is in power during a unique period of time in the united states. you have the iranian revolution which certainly influences our decision-making. you're the soviet invasion of afghanistan, which reignites the cold war period and makes the importance of u.s. national security fears ever more important for the american public. you've got economic issues at home that certainly dog people's perceptions of the administration, as well as the ability of the government to finance the things that it would like to do. all of those things and many, many more of course influence

very to policies and the carter administration, and certainly space policy as well. so it's my pleasure to ask art to come up to the podium. he developed the memoranda for the present on many national security issues, including space policy and export controls. art. >> thank you. it's interesting to be your come and thank you for the invitation to represent the carter administration space policy in the evolution of space policymaking. i'd like to thank the space enterprise institute and the marshall institute for sponsoring this event. as i look over the audience, it's interesting to see a multi-generational, people that work with over the years, and, of course, new space faces, sister states in the marketplace. it's interesting to see and

describe at the outset the space policy generation has been an evolutionary process. the carter administration was the first to encompass the three sectors under its umbrella of space policy, civil space, and intelligence. and the carter administration clearly is built on the investment of decision and investments that were made in previous administration. it would be remiss actually not decide some of the more notable examples. in the eisenhower administration, several lasting policy directors were taken, one was of course the freedom of space, which, of course, was the first article in the outer space treaty that was subsequently agreed to. submitted legislation on nasa you and ashley separate reconnaissance activities from the air force and put it under a

civilian organization. the kennedy administration of course is the most remembered by its decision to go to the moon and the enthusiasm to achieve that objective. the administration also consolidated intelligence, organization and activities and remove them from public scrutiny, and actually placed it in the been classified organization called the reconnaissance office. it also endorsed the principle of freedom of space, how space was open and free to all. someone mentioned an act that was approved during the kennedy years was the creation of compstat which was a federally funded corporation developed, commercial communications satellite. with the speaker that will start working for the organization

today. the nixon administration approved and funded the shuttle program, and it still operational now 30 years after its initial operational flight. the carter administration and highlight some of the things more specific, policy consideration at the time when he arrived in 1977, there was unemployment at 17.5%, which is high. federal budgets were restrained and the cold war was still ongoing and competition in space was central to that equation. the russians were the only other national recognized space power at that time. satellites were pursued under the umbrella of intelligence programs and supporting treaty verification, tactical intelligence was just the beginning of supporting the

systems capable of supporting the war fighter which is a vernacular that is currently use. the defense and intelligence capabilities were becoming more and more recognized as valuable contributions in the arena that we play. the space shuttle was in development and experiencing significant cost growth that continued through the carter administration. too early policy decisions that were taken in the carter administration to shape the subsequent national policy review were decisions on the shuttle and the decision to pursue a bilateral discussion with the soviet union at the time, to oppose him arms limitations on space. the first, the shuttle program after much debate in the carter administration, the administration decided to find for arbiters. the shuttle would be the primary access to space for nasa.

intelligence community as well as department of defense. but it would be the primary access to space. the decision to enter into negotiations with the soviet union to bend systems was a two-part decision. the first of course was to hopefully arrive at an agreement that would place some limitations on then the soviet capability, and the second was to pursue an active research and develop a program in the event that negotiations were unsuccessful. the carter administration resulted in three presidential directives that were released in 1978, and a lot of the material as those of you who are probably schooled in space policy, are redacted but the fundamental aspects of the three policies were reflected in the national space policy at 37. 42 was further national policy,

and the civil operational remote sensing was captured in pd 54. the national space policy directive established policies that would conduct the activities of space, reaffirmed many of the previous administration's initiatives and directives, and added others. and some of the unclassified highlights including the rejection of claim of sovereignty which, of course, we've heard before, the space systems have a right without interference, purposeful interference with space systems would be considered an infringement on sovereign rights, and the united states would pursue activities in space for the right of national defense. the u.s. would pursue space activities in all of the application arena, civil space science to maintain u.s. leadership in space which was of course the theme and underpinning of the space policy at that juncture.

the united states would conduct cooperative space opportunities benefit the united states and encourage commercial exploitation of space capabilities. spelling out the space shuttle, nasa would be incorporation in development with nasa and launch priority would be given to defense and intelligence mission. the shuttle as i indicated would be the primary access to space, but they would provide some ddl the backups for a short access and to be hearing more about that subsequently as the policy default. and cory's corner nation between the various sectors which is one of the objectives of the space policy review was encouraged. policy organization, a comment on that. it was as i said the first time that all of space policy, players or development organizations, nasa, defense

department and intelligence community participated, but in addition, state actor, agriculture and energy were also included in this but it was interesting, the latter two or three can enter your, agricultural and energy were the first experienced in space policy. and it's interesting that their participation and contributions made. the structure included all of the players with many opinions, and it's interesting to note, it was surprisingly cooperative in that period. one would have thought it would have been an argumentative jungle, competition in priorities institutional. but in reality it turned out to be surprisingly successful. all departments and agencies were very vocal. the white house included in that discussion. in the final analysis the

president, president carter, was very involved and actually made the ultimate decision in the direction of the national space policy. in the remaining time i'd like to briefly highlight some of the civil and operational policy tenets as they have continued and will be fleshed out and subsequent policy discussions as we go through the morning. there was emphasis on applications to bring important benefits to the understanding of earth resources, climate, weather, pollution and agriculture. 18 of course you here again and again, another discussion as we go through the morning. and emphasis on space science and exploration and the manners that permit the nation to remain vital in its space technology base. increased benefits to increase efficiencies throughout the various sectors, and assurance that the congressional leadership would be continued with the necessary resources for basis of later decisions to

develop programs. the private sector, and i also cited earlier, was really encouraged to participate and become, nor is the administration was advocating more roles and activity by the private sector, even at that juncture. and, of course, to foster to medications between nations. at the time it was decided it was not feasible, necessary to commit to a high visible space engineering initiative comparable to apollo. that was a shorthand for the space station. that would come in subsequent years. the government role, to highlight two points, and land programs noaa was responsible for land sensing. and again, there was encouragement at that juncture to press for commercialization.

that discussion, i wouldn't call it now, but that discussion and pursuit continues. the weather programs, defense and commerce would coordinate that continue duel polar orbiting satellites, and not to combine them at that juncture but steps were late for few joint development if warranted. in science and space science and exploration of the goals were to maintain u.s. leadership in space and planetary exploration, pursue a vigorous program and planetary exploration, continue reconnaissance of the outer planets and utilize a space telescope to usher in a new era of australia. we are asked to comment on views of accomplishments. actually, there were several restricted initiatives and program activities that occurred, they had been enduring

and significant. i think sustaining the shuttle program, clearly the shuttle is a significant contribution command operations in space. the hubble telescope operates by a landslide that program, i think tried to make them operational. of course, hubbell was regarded in the previous administration's but few benefits have been amazing and remarkable the contribution of space. on the opportunities lost, i view that the inability to negotiate an arms control agreement with the russians was an opportunity lost with the in invasion of afghanistan, the soviet union, the ministration decided to withdraw from those negotiations. since that time there has not been a serious entertainment of any arms limitations in space since that period of time. thank you.

[applause] >> so, a couple notes. we're going to do the q&a session at the very and of this program. so save your questions. the very end of the program. when the q&a session arrives, because we aretaking this for c-span, please make sure you state your name and your organization or affiliation. thank you. so, next we have the reagan administration, the reagan administration is marked by the stallworth program, arms control talks, the beginning of the space shuttle program. and, unfortunately, the space shuttle challenger disaster. there were a few other events occurring as well. the bombing of the beirut american embassy in beirut, but

a very lively area. and to discuss the reagan administration, we have mr. deal right. he was the director space and intelligence program on the national security council staff in the white house. he was also the executive secretary to the senior interagency group for space which oversaw the military civil and commercial sectors of the u.s. space program. it is indeed my honor to introduce gil. >> good morning. i am reminded of introduction of a friend of mine gave to me recently. here is gil, he used to be somebody. i felt like i was somebody back in the golden years of the reagan administration. we came into office under a

president who was considered to be a true leader. and it was a very stimulating, exhilarating experience for me, and i'm sure my fellow panelists would agree that their period of white house was one to remember, and maybe a highlight of their career. well, anyone, tall and handsome cowboy from california road into the white house. he came in on a campaign, successful campaign to demonstrate u.s. leadership in the world, and to bring on a new age for setting the stage for many other programs that he wanted to set forth. it is a fitting time really today will we are a couple months away from the last shuttle flight, to travel back

in time to win the shuttle began, at least when the first operational shuttle landed on july 4, 1982, at edwards air force base. president reagan was there. he was there to announce his national space policy, which was really his first statement of where he stood on the space program in general, and where he wanted the country to go. this was a product of a, almost a year-long activity to collate all the various inputs from all of the agencies, and to bring those together in a coherent way that carried on from previous administrations, and set the course for the future. i had arrived at the white house about two months earlier, and had been only a week when bill

clark, the national security adviser, brought me into meet with the president for the first time. i sat there in awe. the national security advisor, bill clarke, asked me to explain some of the things that were going on in space, which i did. but as the meeting went on, it became clear to me the president was a little frustrated. he was frustrated that space policy it taken so long to develop, and he was also frustrated that it didn't appear that space policy was being given an of emphasis within the administration. he wanted that changed. he wanted an organization to pull together all the sections of the space program into one coherent hold. that's what resulted in the senior interagency group for space, one of those acronyms, that could only be invented by a bureaucrat in the u.s. government, not as sexy as some later ones such as the national

space council, but nevertheless it got the job done. it established the national security adviser as the chairman of the s.i.g. space. the first time that had ever been done. it established an executive secretary, who is the guy who did most of the dirty work. he tried to bring the agencies together in meeting after meeting after meeting. and we tried to bring together all the aspects of space that were going on in the government. that is civil, military and commercial. this was the first time that commercial space sector have been elevated to a level equal to the military and the civil. so bringing those together, turned out to be quite an experience. the website for the george c. marshall institute says that the

ronald reagan administration arguably had more focus on space, and certainly issued more space policy documents and any other administration. so maybe we won the numbers more at least. we had -- we issued, the president signed 15 national security decision directives, what we called in as dvds. user policy statement decisions on his bargain with space. during his administration. i was there for all but five of those. i think all of those policy documents reflected the president's optimism and commitment to demonstrate u.s. leadership and our exceptionalism on multiple fronts. the u.s. space program fit perfectly in his vision of a future for our country.

the tools for executing that vision were provided by an economy that was called the largest peacetime boom in the history of the united states, over 35 million jobs were created from the beginning of his administration to the end. in his state of the union address, early during his ministrations, the president stated that developing the frontier of space would be one of the four major priorities for his administration in the 1980s. that's pretty heavy stuff. i think this is the first time a president had ever spoken that highly of space. and, in fact, the senior interagency group for space was only one of four senior interagency group established by the president. the other three were on foreign policy, defense and intelligence. to me again, that emphasizes the importance he placed on space.

early on the administration our attention was focused on the shuttle program. obviously, because previous policy statements had announced that the shuttle would be the primary launch system for both the military and the civil sectors of space. immediately after i got into the white house, i became aware of the military's attitude towards that policy, which wasn't very friendly. the military had fought that policy before he -- it had been announced but they felt they were doing perfectly fine with unmanned expendable launch vehicles for bigger satellites in orbit and forcing them on board the shuttle was not something they looked upon favorably. they were not really happy with it, and the main thing that they weren't happy with was placing primary reliance for the military's access to space on one vehicle, shuttle.

so one of the first things that we did was, that i did was to arbitrate an agreement between nasa and the department of defense, that pervaded the department of defense to crank up the production lines or heavy lift launch vehicles that eventually resulted in the type for. and also agreed that the context of nasa, the department would continue to use the shuttle for at least a third of its launches. this seemed to make both relatively happy. also during our administration we expanded the fleet from the four arbiters approved by the carter administration to five. we permitted the use of the shuttle for foreign and commercial launches, something that hadn't been done before. we encouraged technical assistance and launch a

assistance to friendly foreign governments. these were just a few of the policy statements related to shuttle. there were many more. perhaps one of the major achievements of our administration i think was to elevate the commercial space program. the president had a great deal of faith and trust in the private sector, and he wanted to stimulate entrepreneurship to get private enterprise going in space. and he felt to do that he had to break down a few barriers. so, the first thing he did was issue a statement that promoted private investment in space, and u.s. is constitution to facilitate that. we worked to establish a pricing mechanism for commercial and

foreign launches on the shuttle that needed, we needed to balance on the one hand foreign competition, the french were heavily subsidizing the area and launch vehicles so we wanted to make sure that the shuttle was competitive against those foreign launchers. that on the one hand. on the other hand, commercial, in order to stimulate the commercial eld, we could not have a shuttle price so low that it would not incentivize the investors to invest in those commercial eel these where to strike a civil bowsprit and that took many meetings to do. one of the more important things that we did was to permit the use of government ranges and launch facilities for private launches. this resulted in a private

industry not having to make a large capital investment and expenditures in ranges and launch facilities associated with the development of new elvs. clearly, the centerpiece of president reagan's space policy as it regards to military sector was the strategic defense initiative, or as the media coined it, star wars. you've got to love the media. the president had announced this policy on march 23, 1983 come in a televised speech to the nation that was supposed to be primarily devoted to the defense budget. and he tagged on at the very and this little thing called the strategic defense initiative, which, as he described it,

signaled a major shift away from the policy of our government that relied on mutual assured destruction, or as it was probably coined, m.a.d. the soviet union will not attack the united states because will have a triad of nuclear offensive systems that could retaliate, and vice versa. the president said this is hogwash. the united states should be able to defend itself. if we have the technology to do that there should be nothing to stand in the way of the united states implementing, developing and implementing a system that defend us against a nuclear attack. and that signaled the beginning of the sdi program that really

signaled the shift in space policy has with regards to the military sector. traditionally, the department of defense has relied on space systems as what might be called force, systems that support the operating forces with the communications and navigation and other things. this policy in effect said that the medium of space can be used to defend our country. what some might call a war fighting capability. although the emphasis was always on non-nuclear capability, since the placement of nuclear weapons in space are prohibited by international treaty. some of the original intention of the sdi program did not materialize because the technology didn't materialize. i mean, most obviously sdi today

is a ground-based defense system, meaning that technologies that were intended to be developed such as space lasers and very so kinetic energy devices didn't really materialize, or prove to be the most cost-effective way of defending our country. but we still rely on space systems of course to support sdi as well as other capabilities. in august of 1984 the president issued a national space strategy, which reaffirmed the department of defense relies on space systems as an integral element of its war fighting capability. and one of the things which i don't know that i've ever heard mentioned, the national space strategy directed the department of defense to look at options for elevating the organizational options for elevating the importance of space in the military that has resulted in the formation of u.s. space

command in colorado springs. the implementing actions associated with the private sector, commercialization of private sector were also mentioned in space strategy, and it also of course documented his decision earlier on the space station, which i'll mention in a moment. and it announced the formation of a national commission on space to find a gold that he wanted that commission to pursue. the centerpiece for the president civil space policy was his approval of the international space station program. at the request of the nasa administrator, gym beggs at the time, arraigned -- arranged a meeting with the present in april of 83. he briefed the president. they talked to the space station being the next logical step beyond the shuttle. for the manned space program.

he also emphasized the rapid development of the soviet soyuz space station. if you are to get president reagan's attention, you talked about the soviet threat. and there was a soviet threat to our leadership in the manned space program in the form of that space station. following that study, the president developed or signed a study directive, which asked the senior air agency of the group for space to conduct a study of permanently manned space station. nasa conducted a dedicated study on the space station. headed up by a gentleman named john hodge. and i was given responsibly for taking that study, comparing it with other options and presenting that to the president. which i did.

early in, late in 1983, i briefed that to the president, and almost, almost all those in the cabinet meeting that they agreed that the space station was the logical next step for our country. the presidents approval of the space station was announced in his state of the union after january of 1984. in 1988, the last year of the reagan's presidency, congress passed the law allowing the creation of the national space council, a cabinet level organization which you hear more about in just a minute. this was a fitting end for the cowboy from california, who used the space program as a symbol of u.s. leadership and a brighter

future for america and the world. thank you very much. [applause] >> thank you, jill. so now we move on to the george herbert walker bush administration. where the world changes again. the soviet union disintegrates, managing that process in a peaceful manner certainly is one of the hallmarks of the first bush administration. you have the first gulf war that is thought where we begin to see in clear terms on national television the integration of space capabilities to enhance american war fighting capabilities. who can forget on cnn seeing the pictures of precision guided munitions going in a window? that video is seared in the minds of those of us that follow that conflict, and it was a perfect illustration of how

america had integrated its space capabilities into its war fighting capabilities. and some say that reconnaissance strike complex as the soviets called it, that we are created and invest in throughout the end of the cold war operationalize and in the first gulf war has fundamentally changed the space policy discourse. and take your as it relates to the space warfare. the bush administration creates the national space council, the first two speakers talk about in various respects how you organize space activities, but it was the herbert, george herbert walker bush administration that decides this need to be a cabinet level decision-making gets what the white house you have a national space council chaired by the vice president. you also have the authorship of the space exploration initiati initiative, which attempted to define a new course for american space exploration in a post-cold war context where we're not competing with the soviets for

leadership. what is our path forward in the absence of the cold war. central to most of these decisions was marked who was the principal advisor on space to president bush serving in the executive secretary of the national space council during his administration. >> good morning. and thanks, jeff, for the introduction. this is a pleasure. i'm enjoying this as much as you are. it's interesting to hear the continuity, and i'm kind of want to read ahead to see where the hell we are. ideas in this chapter of the national, u.s. national space policy, this is where it gets interesting. you heard from gil, presently did a remarkable job in leading the nation in the space program. at the end of the cold war. and put in play on a lot of

things that needed to get elaborated on, and operational. that's what happened in the bush administration. as has been said, in 1988 the congress and the nasa authorization bill begin to recognize that things were beginning to get complicated with regard to space and space policy. and the fact authorize the president to great a national space council inside his white house. despite the fact that most white houses as you would on this panel will agree, jealously regard executive privilege when congress tells them this is the way you are going to organize who you're going to choose, they tend to bristle. but the bush administration, president bush personally decided that he was okay with the idea of a national space council. in fact, there were some communications from the then vice president to the hill that he would be accommodating to this. and so when he came into office

in april at 89, he signed the executive order that established the national space council here there were a variety of things, that shape the space policy issues that the bush administration face right from the beginning. the first and foremost, while the ball was keyed up and certainly president reagan and his administration was central, in ending the cold war, it didn't actually and end of the bush administration. and that had enormous consequences for our space program. as gil said, of president reagan and the administration was very much animated by the cold war and the race with the soviet union. and at the end of the cold war, that source of animation, that source of motivation was removed. we had a series of concerns right away with the end of the cold war. one was one of the going to do

with russian weapons, their inventories and capabilities? where are they going to go? who's in control, who's in charge? how do we incentivize soviet technologists not to sell their know-how or components to other nations around the world, that in the vacuum of a post-cold war world would have ambitions about creating their own regional power centers. and we also had a problem immediately thereafter, which was how to define u.s. national security space requirements, and forces post-cold war. again, as gil adequately described, so much of our national security space program forces policies structure, strategy, were based on the primary conflict associate with the cold war. we now had to say what were the right set of requirements and forces to meet our objectives, and what were our objectives after the cold war? we also had to deal with the

immediate response of congress and the american public for a peace dividend. there was an expectation with the end of the cold war. that dollars spent our national security now could be saved and returned to the taxpayers if applied to other purposes. it's staggering now, but in the spirit of time then congressman les was talk about a 25-30% immediate reduction in the dod budget. and that's not a leveling off. that was a real reduction in the budget. so if you had $100 million laughter, he was talking about $60 billion. that was going to put an enormous squeeze on the procurement and r&d accounts because you have to pay personnel first, even though you have a rapid drawdown of forces, it will take a while to get men and women out of the services. it will take a while to stop

necessary oh indian. y. to take a 30% reduction at the top line, the procurement and r&d accounts which are dollars, not people and pay, et cetera, are accelerate. so sometimes look at 50, 60% reduction. that was a significant challenge. we were worried about the technology pipeline closing. gil talked about sdi, one of the benefits of sdi was that it had another cold war injection of technology, acceleration in the united states. that story is yet to be written, but it is remarkable the amount of technology that came out of sdi efforts. a whole field of physics that in 1985, talk to friends and colleagues are physicists, optics was not considered a very, very important part of physics. everybody was into nuclear particle physics, et cetera. but the sdi program re-energize the whole optimal part of the

physics business, and then the enormous outflow technologies that have accelerated everything in today's world. we also had a recession. and the recession was looming and we have a president that had made a tax pledge not to increase taxes, and do all the spending cuts. that was a huge problem, and so space was going to take a huge hit, or potentially huge hit out of this. we also a space launch crisis right at the, right between reagan and bush. we have the challenger accident. and that took an already fragile, as gil adequately described, launch picture for the united states and really put us into a crisis mode. the shuttle did not return. flight was shut down for 32 months. so we here we have the national launch policy, national launch strategy based on a single threat to space which was the

space shuttle come and with the challenger accident, 32 months, we have no access to space. at jewel said, and i was up on the hill at the time, he deserves stars for american space history because he almost single handedly can i do know what was going on inside the administration, but up at the senate armed service committee, overmuch objection was able to get what he called the complementary expendable launch vehicle program funded. if we hadn't had that, the united states would have literally been grounded for almost three years. we also had a situation at nasa with the space shuttle crisis and space station freedom that was really big, moving from grass to building something, we begin to understand the program. shuttle program was in disarray at nasa in 1988.

space station freedom, which gil neglected to admit that administrative exit the president reagan was going to cost $8 billion. by 1989 the first time we can open the envelope, it was 400% cost decreased and it was rapidly escalating. fundamentally, when you begin to get beyond the grass you understood that the number of shuttle flights every year required to assemble the space station was two or three times the annual flight rate than had ever been exhibited by the shuttle. the requirement for extravehicular activity which was a design choice which was to take up the pieces and assembled them in space was more thinking year, and one year of space station construction, was going to be more eelv hours than had been witnessed, or by allsup is bearing nations together, it exceeds it in one year.

so there was really serious question about the feasibility of space station freedom as designed. the national academy of sciences the into question the scientific use of the space station. in fact, they were very explicit and critical issues that they suck and out of the space station, particularly would so the first trade off decisions were made, a large centrifuge that was going to allow the creation of all kinds of science experiments. they called it marginal. we had the beginning of i'm happy international partners who had gleefully signed up to be part of the space station freedom program, but as the program began to evolve and interactions and the decisions, they realized they were less partners and subcontractors. there was unhappiness being expressed about the. the planetary program and the observatory programs have been put on hold with a 32 month hiatus. nasa was in a situation of

defocused and unstable program. but that's not all. there was at this time the beginning of a very serious concern about global climate change. and there was a very strong initiative on the part of the hill, and from outside academic community, that, in fact, the trend should have a heavy emphasis on global change. climate change, and the way it was coming to us was that the problem was so critical, and the tangible and crucial for the future of the world that we needed to act first and study as we were allowed to your hand so we are faced with global climate change steamroller that was coming down the hill, that expected the space program cannot start studying it.

but, in fact, implementing large programs in low-earth orbit to begin providing data to actually start acting on global climate change. the eos, earth observing satellite system which was right at the end of the reagan administration was designed to gigantic platforms, both in excess of $1 billion, take care 12 years to develop. again, it was a result of the enthusiasm and the science community, and it was also the nasa culture was one, there was money to be had, and there was big exciting new projects. they embraced it wholeheartedly. as gil said we also had an emerging commercial space market. it's something that has been on the horizon with the carter administration. it was embraced in the reagan administration tried to create fertile ground for it to grow. by the time we arrived there was $5 billion a year of actual commercial space business and it

was beginning to get complicated, rules of the road, what the proper role of the government, how to interact with other countries, what we expected of it, what the role of government utilization of commercial services. so that was clearly a large contributor. so all those things with a kind of, not kids, care decision of where we found space policy and space needs. as we said before we headed national space council. the president was interested in the area of it, and so he was more than happy to have one. we had great relations. and as each one of these guys will tell you, the chemistry inside the white house makes a big difference of what could be done and how it's done. it is in thermal -- internal wrangling for a variety of reasons, it gets hard. if there's comedy, if this clarity and their unity been a lot of good things can happen. we had a clarity, comedy injured in the bush white house.

he clearly defer to us on space matters, obviously they our national security and intelligence space matters that require the nsc to be a joint partner in all these things. he had enormous energy and there were a lot of issues that he was focused on elsewhere with the end of the cold war. science and technology policy, that is where art resided in our case we had a terrific guy. he was very, very focused on the superconducting super collider project down in texas. the main focus, we also had a variety of things on biometrics that really focused allen. and allen was more than willing to let the space council take the lead. dollars matter. dick darman was our director of omb and he was a bona fide space guy. he loved space, very energetic

and extremely brilliant guy. and as long as we stay within certain boundaries, he was a natural ally. he did some remarkable things when he was omb. john sununu for crying out loud was a scientist and he, as the reminders on occasion, went to graduate school on a nasa scholarship. and so he certainly was enthusiastic. and it turned out to be the one of two most primary policy assignment of the vice president with all the ingredients there to make the space council active and engaged on all the topics. and so it worked very well. we ran it just like the nsc. we had regular meetings. we had meetings with the principals, deputies. we had a variety of committees formed et cetera to go deal with the confluence of issues that i described in the very beginning. our primary policy focus, the first direction of the president

was keep u.s. out in front in space. as the cold war warned -- rolled down. u.s.-based leadership was not just a consequence of cold war. not just the reaction to soviet space program. but, in fact, u.s.-based leadership had importance for the country going forward, and that we were to tailor and design the policies of the administration to ensure u.s. space leadership given to changing circumstances. probably the most significant thing we focused on was the space exploration initiative. and is very complicated. but the basic tenants were that all the problems that we saw, although probably some u.s. domestic economic to technology pipeline, et cetera, were at risk in the president's mind with the end of the cold war. that, in fact, with the rapid reduction of expenditures in

defense, the heavy leverage, deleveraging on r&d and procurement would really put the united states at a technology disadvantaged at one of the primary motivations first in space and space leadership is important for america, even outside the context of the cold war. second, that the technology driver, the historic technologic driver of space and national security space can play in the previous 30 years really needed to be sustained and, in fact, a bold new initiative in space exploration would be a way to continue that flywheel technology going in the future. .. that talked about

technology and economic benefits and most importantly the vision from the very beginning included -- including russia and the soviet union now russia in the mix. and an adjunct as a lot of participants in the space station programmed been. but as a real partner. it turned out that that leverage really was used with great success in the clinton administration where those initiatives and that vision were really put to great use for different purposes and i'll let richard talk to you about that. we wanted to refocus the program and it was very complicated and when you began to look at the real structure of the program and you added in what the national academy was telling us

about the value of the science, you begin to see that this is -- we didn't call it that but it's been determined a dead-end program stuck in lowerth orbit science that was not -- and budget pressures and the program got descoped as it would over time and the centrifuge being reduced and finally eliminated that, in fact, we needed to reorient the entire civil space program. >> we also -- many of us were believers. some have been -- took some heat for it but we believed that some of the concepts with the strategic defense initiative were applicable to what was then an aging civil space program. we called it faster, cheaper better. i think richard and the clinton administration morphed it into a different way and that's great. but we believed that there were ways to do things in space that really could give us better

technology, faster and, in fact, in doing it better and faster, it would done more cheaply. we also wanted the industry the defense and the aerospace industry to pivot after the quiet cold war for the focus on applying critical national security needs to an ambitious civil space program. there's another civil space initiative to have a new capability. the shuttle as i said had gone through a lot of fits and starts. it was a very expensive program. magnificent technology. and an extraordinary capability. but it was fragile and it was expensive. and with the incident of the challenger, even though they flew eight times after it returned to flight in '88 and september of '88, it flew eight times in the next year, but within 18 months we were stood down again for month after month with hydrogen leaks, et cetera. it's just a very complex system.

we had the celv program the titan 4 as gil described. very expensive. very delicate. 18 months on the pad. we needed a new launch system. we needed it for national security purposes. we wanted it for civil space purposes. we wanted it flexible, robust. we wanted it a very affordable, adaptable to a lot of means and we spent a lot of time and energy on that program and a lot of money. we looked at a national aerospace program something that president reagan admired with the idea of going from los angeles to tokyo in three hours and then ultimately be able to sustain orbitable flight in a vehicle that would be a single staged orbit which as you all know is more or less the holy grail of the space launch business. we made an important policy decision. the president made a very important policy decision with regard to the shuttle. when we came in, in 1988 there was a request for an additional

orbiter by nasa. and after we went through this entire plan of putting together an overall program decided that additional shuttles were not going to be the way we wanted to go. it was very difficult and i think as we'll see with some of the speakers that will go down, the chain, if you keep the baseline program intact, and then try to do something new, i'll cut to the end of the story, you can't do both. and it is very hard to stop. believe me. it is very hard to stop. and everyone here has had this experience and i'm eager to hear from our colleagues further on down the chain. it's very hard to stop once you start. we stopped the space shuttle program and our view was that it would stop flying in 2005. that was actually a policy directive and it turns out it looks like it's going to be 2011. that's pretty good. i mean, as i say for government work. okay.

let's see, new launch. again, as gil said and art said commercial space was growing. it was $5 billion a year when we were there. there was a lot of policy decisions that were clearly on the side of encouraging commercial space but there were a lot of detailed implementing policies that needed to be -- that needed to be rolled out and we spent a lot of time on that. it was a serious -- a serious policy focus. just defining it, defining what the role of government, what the responsibilities of government were, dealing with the issue of subsidized development and operations has as opposed to nonsubsidized. it's kind of in the grind it out phase of government. the real estate work was done by presidents reagan and carter recognizing it was going to be an important part of the american space future but it was left for the bush administration to start providing the real details and the rules of the road of it and that was a large policy initiative of our administration. we restructured the climate

change program. we were able to use independent commissions, et cetera, to say, hey, study first then take action. so we didn't need to do everything at once at climate change. big problem, important problem, urgent problem but, in fact, it was better to build multiple platforms to start collecting data on climate change rather than to wait for 10 years for a multimillion dollar programs that was going to collect data on everything and start providing it. you guys remember an eo program, some of the original ideas of the amount of data that was designed to come down to the earth daily was staggering although it's probably in your handheld today. finally, i'd like to say that desert storm really helped solidify national space policy. we had a space policy national security space program. that was primarily designed to

prosecute a potential war with the soviet union. and we all know with the gaps and all those attacks, desert storm really began to show how all those space systems that had been designed could be used inflicts far short of a major conflict with the soviet union that could involve nuclear weapons. and, in fact, we -- and that established the beginnings of a policy about what should be our national space policy with regard to national security. we needed -- that they were absolutely critical to military operations, whether they were small or large. that was new. that they were necessary. that they needed to be sustained, modernized and had to be protected. so all of a sudden we crossed over the line. you know, art talked about a missed opportunity and we had one where we could have signed up for an arms control agreement with that.

i think by the time desert storm occurred, it became clear that arms control is going to be very, very difficult. if the united states national security apparatus was to be as reliant on space assets as it was clearly demonstrated to be in desert storm. it was an eye-opener. chuck horner who was the allied commander of i was as in desert storm called desert storm the first space war between navigation, real time reconnaissance communications. it became very clear that u.s. military forces in the future would operate on a backbone of space-provided capability. not cold war provided capability but new space capability involved in doing military operations around the world 24/7 in regions that could not be predetermined and prepositioned for. this was really new and important and we spent a lot of time on that. they asked about what were some of the impediments? we focused on a lot of different

policy areas. i think a lot of them, as you can see, there is a lineage to all this. we did have impediment and i think it's really important to get them around the table because it's part of the space policy and space program history. and it's best summarized in my opinion by a chapter -- a paragraph in the final report we provided the president in january of 1993 that said -- and here it's talking about the space launch, what we wanted to do with space launch but it really applies to a lot of things across-the-board. during the intervening five years, efforts to secure support for a new launch system have been largely unsuccessful. the failure of our institutions, u.s. government agencies, congress, and aerospace companies to converge and agree to support and fund a new launch system not only is short-sighted but will prevent us from achieving many if not most of our long-term space objectives.

that's something that's worthy of discussion because that's a recurring theme. missed opportunity, we do have a missed opportunity. i have this personal one where we came in senator william proxmeiye built in a requirement the president certify within 30 days of being sworn in his intentions on space station freedom. the senator was not a fan of space station freedom. it turns out that the time so fast, and i think all of our colleagues will attest to this. the time is so fast you're playing double time and triple time in the white house. it seems to be a blur and moves at a speed of light. a 30-day injunction after i was sworn in march 1st of 1989. and we were already -- we were already 10 days into the period of time. i had -- we didn't even have an office. long story short, we ended up

working quickly and getting the president letter over to congress certifying space station freedom. it was an opportunity missed if we had a zero based review. it's arguable whether at that time and that place the system would have stood still for that is debatable. but it's a regret i have and i've talked to both the president about it and again the things rolled out eventually on the space station, had we done a thorough zero based review we might have done things differently. that's a small, i think, missed opportunity. so what were the significant achievements of the bush administration in my opinion? first and foremost, we defined a post-cold war national security space framework that's sustained today. i think that you could take a direct line from that because before was -- was cold war national security space policy and strategy and forces and afterwards was a post-cold war

world. space is vital to military operations. must be protected. cannot be threatened. critical. we created a policy for commercial space commerce that's sustained today. that government supports, utilizes, facilitates, encourages and protects u.s. commercial space enterprise. we initiated cooperation with the russians. it was modest by the end of the bush administration. we'd agreed for the shuttle mir program which had been in the works for about three years but desert storm intervened and eventually before the president left, we signed with boris yeltsin an agreement to fly cosmonauts on the shuttle and put u.s. astronauts on the space station mir and that really opened up the opportunities for a lot of cooperation, very positive on the u.s. side. i want to talk just briefly about because i'm going to be a little bit controversial here.

two points, one, i think a largely unintended but perhaps the most significant policy initiative by the bush administration, unintended but potentially most significant was when we convened the advisory commission of the future of the united states space program, the so-called augustine commission 1. for a variety of reasons. long story, if you want that story by the way i have a book coming out in another three weeks called "falling back to earth: the firsthand account of the great space race and the end of the cold war." you can read in detail about that. but the augustine commission, even though it was designed to focus on the specific issue of nasa, nasa organization, the space exploration initiative, freedom, space station freedom and the shuttle had the unintended but significant consequence in my mind of creating the intellectual and

programmic framework for nasa post-cold war that was based primarily on our wallet, not our will. and it was focused on balancing and satisfying competing space stakeholders rather than suboardnating them to national objective. that's worthy of additional discussion. finally, in conclusion, i will say another, i think, controversial thing. and that is in my opinion, having looked at this and this will be a fun thing for the panel to discuss, i believe that the united states human space flight program died at the end of the cold war. and it was like a radiation sickness, not an execution. the lethal dose was administered at the end of the cold war and for a variety of reasons. we have seemed to be and i believe we are incapable now of really re-energizing human space flight program. i think it's a tragedy. i think it's something that

needs to be rethought. but i think -- as we look down the list here, i look at our share as the period of time when the human space flight program in the united states essentially was terminated. so with that, i look forward to questions. [applause] >> thank you very much, mark. next we have the clinton administration. the clinton administration was marked by the emergence of the globalization. the real emergenciance of terrorism, we had the bombing of the uss cole, crews missile strikes into afghanistan, we had the somalia situation, the bosnian war. we also had the rise of china and in our industry, we do have the rise of satellite services to the consumer.

i know during the clinton administration -- and i think we had someone from hue network systems. i bought my first satellite dish for directv services and i think several thousand others across the united states and by the end of that decade into the millions did the same. to represent the clinton administration, we have two gentlemen, richard dellabellow richard under the clinton administration was director for aeronautics and space in the white house office of science and technology policy. we also have steven moran, steve was a senior policy advisor for space in aviation in the white house office of science and technology policy. one small caveat, i know steve has a deadline in terms of time. he has to take a critical phone

call. we'll either have rich solo and rich and steve. so let me hand it over to rich. >> thank you. >> thank you very much, david. it's a pleasure to be here. and to echo what mark said to listen to this fascinating story as it unspools across -- all across time, i think clearly one of the themes we're hearing which i'm sure will continue with the other speakers will -- although the administration's change in focus sometimes significantly, we have some very stable themes that are -- that are running through this story. and there's themes that started in the kennedy administration that continue on now into the obama administration. and i think the organizers and thank you very much to the space enterprise council and the marshall institute for

conceptualizing this very interesting event. one of the things the organizers asked us to do is spend a little time talking about context and i think each of the speakers before has done a wonderful job of reminding us what it was like to live and make decisions in those times. and i think at the end mark was trying to be controversial but i think he is putting his finger on an important fact that where we are today in society and in our economy and our place in the world -- some things that were possible during the kennedy or the reagan administrations are probably not going to happen again. there are significant changes that have changed the context of what we are and what we want as a nation out of our space station program and who we expect to do those things are going to be fundamentally altered as we go forward in the future. the clinton administration again -- each administration as we've already seen you don't invent the world new. the world is it is what you take

over. you may have won the office with an orientation. ronald reagan certainly with an orientation of strong leadership. and a goal to express a unique american voice in the world. clinton administration not quite so dramatic. looking around the room, i guess about half of you were around and thinking about administrations when this happened and the other half of you probably are not. but if you recall, the big phrase in the clinton election it's the economy, stupid. it was a goal to refocus america on america. and to remember in the context where we are with the budget today, a really hard focus on the budget realities. we had a young, i think, with all due respect slightly

disorganized president, tremendously creative. a congress first democratic and then a republican congress after some significant, i think, missteps on the part of the administration. and a re-energized focus and this was a period where we shut the government down and so there was a lot of looking inward at this time. the themes that mark talked about are still fundamental when the clinton administration comes in, you had a winding down of cold war. you had a very serious concern with what was going to happen to all the very, very talented soviet scientists and engineers. there was a lot of concern as has already been mentioned about the concept of terrorism. and the fear over the issue of loose nukes so a great deal of energy -- and i'll talk about the administration in a minute but a great deal of energy about thinking about space and the white house in the clinton administration was in the office

of the vice president. and he had -- and vice president gore had a very strong concern about what we could positively do to affect change within russia. this wasn't certainly limited to the white house and the united states congress -- congress was also deeply engaged in this issue. but certainly one of the things that happened was because of the world situation there was a renewed focus on trying to engage the russians again as mark said a dialog which had already begun in the bush administration was broadly expanded trying to bring the russians more fully into the space station. it was not without -- it was not without its bumps and bruises, for sure, as these two cultures collided in a very, very significant way. you had the u.s. which liked to do things its way and the russians who although at the time were in the middle of a significant financial and political crisis were, of

course, a very proud people and very proud of their tradition in space exploration. so those two -- those two cultures colliding in unlikely places like houston was -- was always an exciting thing to watch. i think another big theme which we've seen and gil described, i think, very well the atmosphere and the goals of the reagan administration in rolling out these really big themes. the star wars initiative, the national aerospace plane and then through the bush administration, the strategic -- sorry, the space exploration initiative. but i think in all honesty, what you saw in the clinton administration was a realization -- again, renewed focused on the economy, the budget. the realization of what these -- certainly there are always ideologues and people come with a prefixed mind set about it and there was a realization at the

technical level just how massive these programs were. we'd spent a lot of money on these issues. and we hadn't made very much progress. it turns out the national aerospace plane which is a great idea and perhaps some day will be implemented -- we just simply didn't have the technologies to do it. we have done -- we've done a substantial amount of spending on the strategic defense initiatives since it was first announced by president reagan and we still see the complexity of that. there's all these people who argue well, if you spend more you would make greater progress but these are monumental issues and the issue isn't can you make progress? the issue is what is the percentage of the country's wealth that you want to spend on any given thing and again, coming back to this issue of a renewed focus on the budget during the clinton administration, if you will recall we drove the budget and it wasn't just the clinton

administration. it was with the assistance of a republican congress. we drove from a significant budget deficit to an actual surplus when the clinton administration left office. at the same time another key theme was reinventing government, rightly or wrongly, and it's interesting now to -- in light of the tea party and the other things to think about these roles. if you think about it, ronald reagan was pushing large government programs. clinton administration was talking about reducing the size of government. so we have all these strange role reversals that happened as we go through time. cheaper, faster, better one of the themes that was, i think, planted in the bush administration was again played out more fully in the clinton administration. there was a sense that we had tied ourselves up in endless

bureaucracy and endless subjectives and there ought to be a way to move through technology in a more crisp fashion. and again, i think a key -- a key environmental aspect of the clinton administration was that to understand this was the birth of the internet. i remember physically seeing the engineers come in and hook up the first t1 line to the white house. so prior to that, you know, we were communicating over regular telephone wires. so we all got internet on our desks at the white house. and to think at the same time of the tremendous explosion, the dot.com revolution that was happening and there was a great sense of the vitality of the american entrepreneur, there was a company being born every minute. so you know some of those now have all gone away but some of the large icons remain. so i think that there was a

sense of vitality and youth and i think a little bit -- i have to be honest, i think the sense was that space was not as exciting as all of this. that space was too slow. too bureaucratic. and i think there was some second and third guessing about the ultimate value of investment in space. during this time, the united states congress had a moment of doubt, too, about the space station. there was a critical vote in the house. and the space station only passed by one vote. so there was a real -- there was a real thinking at this time that the space station might simply have gone away. but that vote did reenergize the whole purpose and then the vice president's office got involved and sort of reoriented the thinking about the space station as a fully international space station with the russians in a way which actually has paid off very handsomely -- first of all,

the russians have made a significant contribution over the years but important now as we wind down the space shuttle program, the russians will for a while be the only access we have to the space station. i'm going to -- there were a couple of -- i want to talk -- let them just talk about wins and losses if i could and then if we can -- did he run? >> he'll be back. >> okay. let me just talk about -- well, let me talk about organization first and then wins and losses and i think as you heard, we started out with space in the carter and ocp then gil talked about the sig process and the ig process grew in terms of congress to the national space council. when the clinton administration came in, there was a real sense again going back to the reinventing government that the white house had grown too large. that there were too many white house and white house-related advisory groups and there was --

whether it was wise or unwise and we could have that discussion, there was a goal to cut the white house by 25%. as part of that, as part of that initiative they decided to take a step back from the space council and say well, this is just like any other complicated issue. we don't have council for the oceans. we don't have council for the air. we don't need a space council. and so what happened was responsibility for space went back to ostp. at that point it was run by dr. gibbons who was a scientist and a physicist and i think his passion for this was perhaps less real than his passion for science. and so i think that reflected some of the decision-making dr. gibbons' leadership on this. of course we always had the full involvement of vice president gore in all of these issues. but in terms of organization, in

terms of day-to-day came back to ostp as mark pointed out at this time in history there was also an extremely important national security space program. .. >> our primary focus was not on the national security space program. and i think if you come to this enterprise with that narrowed scope, you can't see the whole picture because there's a tremendous amount that happens on that side. so i think that, i think that

organization does, ultimately, matter. we made the decision so really you had a trium very rate in the white house, there were many large decisions which were handled by the national economic council, and there were many, many large dollar decisions that were handled by the national security council. so sort of divided the responsibilities again. um, wins and losses, and then i think i'll wind up. i think the biggest wind, without question, was the clinton administration's on the gps program. certainly, we can't take credit for the gps program itself which had been the product of many presidents and much investment and some very wise decisions on the part of the department of defense to invest in this critical technology. but we had a fundamental decision to make which is, is this something that we want to -- you probably don't recall at the time they were actually dithering the? so to -- the signal. so to make it impossible to get

a signal out of the gps system. they were actively involved in if making the signal bad for everyone except the military. the fundamental question they were asking is are we going to make gps and make it a global utility? is the united states going to give to the world this incredible tool which, you know, every soccer mom and dad in america uses to find fields on saturday and sunday morning now, and we couldn't -- half of -- all of us have it now embedded in our mobile devices, so we couldn't find a starbucks without it. but we made that decision, and it was not without controversy. and i think that was, perhaps, our best and most important decision. i think bringing the russians into the space station, i think there's a lot to be said about whether the space station is a good idea or not, and history will write and, hopefully, mark's book will cover some of

this. but bringing the russians in, i think, was an unqualified, good move. there was a lot of creative work that was done on air traffic. i'm going to -- i think steve's coming back, so i'll not talk about the air traffic modernization program. um, i think an important -- it's complicated, but an important thing that the clinton administration did was to privatize the entityies in marsat. at the time they were intergovernmental organizations. they were owned by governments. so the clinton administration came in and said, well, this doesn't make sense. why do we have governmental organizations providing a commercial service globally when companies can do this easily? it was very controversial at the time, very, very little support from other countries when it was first announced, but i think it's paid off handsomely. and both companies have survived, have prospered and continue to offer generations of

new service in ways that have fundamentally improved life around the planet. and i think there's a lot to be said around the planetary science program. again, this has been mentioned by several speakers. the question of getting the space station and the planetary science program to a place where it was fundable and sustainable over a long period of time was a challenge, and it was one where the white house and the congress had to work properly together. and i think by and large that's turned out well. there were some big losses, unfortunately, some big lessons learned. perhaps the biggest loss was the impose program. we encouraged the consolidation of the military and civilian weather polar orbiters weather system. it turned out to be a logistical nightmare with the primary user with the triumvirate of nasa and

noaa and dod trying to agree on a system. it grew phenomenally out of the budget, just went haywire, and requirements for the system were uncontrolled in a way that the spending went dramatically out of, out of control and, eventually, the program had to be killed and separated. so that was a big, that was a big loss. my own personal loss, i was very involved in space transportation policy making at the time, and we were passionate about the x33 program, single stage to orbit. and i learned a very important lesson which is policy never trumps physics. [laughter] so you can say whatever you want, but if you can't do it, it won't happen. and we wanted to will single stage to orbit, into existence. and we had a beautiful, lockheed came up with a beautiful concept, and it looked like the future. and we just didn't have the technology. we did not have the technology.

and, ultimately, we did not have the will either. i think that i wouldn't say that national security space was a loss under our, under the administration. i think a lot of great programs were developed that we can't, i can't really take credit for any of that is what i'm saying. there were a lot of good people working, and we weren't really deeply involved in that. so i think with that i'll wrap it up. but, again, i think this is a fascinating exercise, and i look forward to hearing the rest, how the story is going to end. [applause] >> thank you, richard. so now we're at the second bush administration, the administration of george w. bush, where the world begins to change again. you have -- one of the interesting perspectives, i think, on the bush

administration at this time is the importance of expectations. secretary rumsfeld comes in and assumes control of the defense department, but he had just been chair of two other commissions in the latter portions of the clinton administration. those two commissions, one on missile defense and the other concerned with space management and organization, set expectations for how the community at large thought space policy and certain defense policies as it related to missile defense were going to evolve. the rumsfeld missile defense commission outlines a very adepress e set of programs including some elements of return to the strategic defense initiatives use of space. the rumsfeld space commission talks in great detail about the failings of the organizational process, but the important, also, of space to our national security missions and warns of a space pearl harbor. the expectation on the part of the community that was then

observing the decisions of the rumsfeld defense department and the bush defense department and the bush national security policy writ large, i think, then expects movement in the policy and movement in the budget along the lines predicted by these two commissions. but, of course, reality changes. we have the terrorist attacks of september of 2001, the subsequent wars in iraq and afghanistan which divert attention and resources onto immediate critical national priorities and perhaps shifts attention away from these policy movements that we thought would happen. you have the vision for space exploration that comes out in 2004 which, again, attempts to define a new path and a new set of priorities for american space exploration. and you have a deteriorating economic condition in the second half of the two bush administrations. all of these things then effect space decisions central, again, to these decisions where brett

alexander who served as the adviser at the white house office of science and technology bridging the clinton administration into the george w. bush administration. and while he was at the white house, brett served as one of the principle authors for the vision for space exploration. brett? >> thanks very much, jeff. as he mentioned, i had the pleasure of being there at the end of the clinton administration, through the transition, the election that lasted 35 days and then the transition to the bush administration. and that sort of period of turmoil which we all thought would taper off into an administration that moved out in lock step along these new lines of the way the rumsfeld commission had talked about national security, space and other issues, um, obviously, in

the first year with 9/11 it didn't happen that way. overcome by events is a good way to describe the reality on the ground in terms of the making of space policy and the use of space. so what you have throughout the rest of the administration, the next seven years really, is a, um, a reality of the dramatic increase in the use of space for national security, um, purposes. you know, space being at the forefront of those issues and those activities, afghanistan, iraq, global war on terror, around the rest of the world as well. and at the same time a space policy then that is trying to reflect that as opposed to trying to lead that. so when the national space policy comes out in 2006, it is, it is although not dissimilar,

in fact, almost identical to previous policies, it is viewed not only by the administration, but it is viewed by the rest of the world as fundamentally different. it's viewed through a new lens. it is viewed as many bellicose -- as more bellicose, more unilateral things that the rest of the world sort of viewed as hallmarks of the bush administration. so backing up before that, um, there was a reality, as i said, in the use of space for national security purposes. on the civil side, the reality on the ground was the columbia accident. february 1st of 2003 changed everything from a civil space perspective. it changed a -- with it came a recognition of the civil human space flight program as being

fundamentally different than what we had thought. whereas i think the community thought it was more of an operational system that, you know, had had people in space on the space station, a permanent presence. it was working towards scientific goals, and i think in the light of columbia people said, what are we doing? we're not going anywhere. why aren't we moving forward? why aren't we flying something that we've been with flying for 25 years? we need to change this paradigm. and i think an accident like that instantly changes the paradigm for folks watching it. um, one of the very first actions that the bush administration took, and this was pre-9/11 with regard to the civil space program, was on everybody's favorite program, the space station program. so throughout the clinton administration when, you know, when the program was finally solidified from a political

perspective by bringing the russians in, um, at the same time every two years there was a budget overrun or cost growth of multiple billions of dollars. and it always had to be worked out. and my impression of those battles was that in the end, you know, the schedule slipped, but nasa got the same program content for the station, some minor changes here and there. at the beginning of the bush administration, there was a $4 billion i believe it was overrun on space station that was presented to the omb within the first couple months, and the result of that was omb and the white house pushed back and said you don't get any more money. you don't get to keep, you know, the content. you have to cut content in order to meet your goals. that resulted in what was called u.s. core complete which dramatically, i'd say, reduced

the capability of the station, kept a lot of the scientific things that folks wanted off, habitation modules, things like that that were no longer part of it. and over the past year it morphed into international core complete because it had sounded like we weren't going to allow the international partners to bring up their modules but, of course, that was always part of the plan was to let them continue in that part of the program too. so it was a fundamental budget reality that the administration tried to instill in nasa programs. along with that outgoing administrator dan golden who had been there for ten years, started under bush 41, was there throughout the entire clinton administration, was still there at the beginning of bush 43 was replaced by sean o'keefe who had been the deputy director of the

office of management and budget for the first 9-12012 months, i believe -- 9-12 months of the bush administration. so it was a recognition to put in place a manager, a program manager, someone who could manage budgets, not a space person, not an astronaut, not someone who's sort of in and of the program itself. and i think that really said where the bush administration was going. mentioned the columbia accident. and that really, you know, fundamentally changed everything from the bush administration's view of the civil space program. there had been an ongoing review of space policies, and there had been a remote sensing policy that had come out or was about to come out. space transportation policy was 99% done. i remember a meeting on the very

last issue between nsc, ostp and nasa administrator o'keefe that happened on the wednesday when columbia was in orbit. and at the end of that meeting we all thought we had come to agreement, and the policy was done. and, of course, that saturday morning everything changed, um, and we ended up putting off space transportation policy and redoing it two years later. so i had the pleasure of writing that policy twice and leaving the interagency twice with 50 people around the room twice, you know, for a year each time. um, you know, and i bring that up because the administration, the obama administration right now has just kicked you after is space transportation policy review, and i'm just so glad it's them and not me. [laughter] but i did enjoy, obviously, i did enjoy that process. um, there are two things about the columbia accident and what

came out of it that led towards the vision that i think are important. one is that the columbia accident investigation board came out in august, and we had sort of known it leading up to that, but came out and said some very important things. in fact, there was a late add to the columbia accident. the investigation board were folks to focus on policy instead of just the technical reasons of why the accident happened. that made a lot of us in the white house nervous because now you're going to broaden it from here's what actually happened to here's why it happened and start pointing fingers of blame. and what they ended up saying, and it was john logsden in particular who was on the committee who wrote chapter nine. and what it said, you know, of importance was that it was a failure of national policy.

it was a failure of national leadership, that that contributed significantly to the accident. that within the organization there wasn't a sense of why we were doing it, where we were going, the importance of it. that that had been lost. the second thing that they said was it wasn't a failure of this particular administration. it was a failure of national leadership over 30 years. it was a failure at both ends of pennsylvania avenue and of both political parties. and that was very interesting because i think at the highest levels of the bush administration what that said was this one's not your fault. but if you don't change something now, there will be another accident, and that one will be your fault. you may be out of office, it may happen ten years from now, but the finger will be pointed back at you, and it will say you were warned, and you didn't do anything about it.

and i think from the very beginning after columbia, about three weeks after the accident most of the pieces were being picked up, literally, down in texas. um, we started a very small group of folks who said, okay, now, what does this mean for the program? what does this mean for human space flight in general? and there were folks that said, you know, we shouldn't be doing this. we don't have a rationale to do it anymore, we don't -- it's too much money, we don't have the money. and president bush on that day of columbia's accident had come back from camp david, and he said, you know, something very important in his speech that he made. he said that, you know -- he didn't say we're going to keep flying the shuttle, he didn't say any specifics like that. because this is an important part of the american character. and that was very useful, so i carried his speech around for

the next two months. when people said we shouldn't be doing it, i'd pull it out and say, well, you don't get a vote. president already said we're going to, so let's figure out what we're going to do, not if we're going to do it. and that was very powerful, you know, at least it stiffened my spine a lot in a lot of those conversations. consequently, i almost got fired a few times, but you've got to stick up for what you believe in when you get these opportunities. and i think everybody who's been up here today has, you know, understands that when you get the opportunity to work at the white house, whoever you're working for, it's an opportunity that, number one, you can't pass up, but it really is something special. so as we were looking at what this meant for the space program, the human space flight program in particular, we kept having interaction with senior administration folks. chief of staff andy card, depp any national security adviser,

stephen hadley, condi rice, others. and every time we brought 'em sort of the latest rock of what we were thinking, they didn't say, oh, i like that or i don't like that or change this, change that. they just said keep working. you do figure out what you think the right answer is, you know? and bring that back. and i think that was very, you know, very different than a lot of administrations would have end wh the decision meeting happened with the president and all the senior advisers, the vice president, you know, all the folks that people know in the bush administration were this; karl rove and others. you know, the decision was made not onbe the basis of -- not on the basis of wanting political credit because, frankly, at that time in the administration, you know, they'd just gone into iraq, it was not going that well.

um, nobody was thinking, oh, this is going to be a kennedy speech moment, and everybody's going to love it. i think the president's father had done that, and it had not gone so well. but it was a matter of, you know, what's the right thing to do, how do we fix this. and, therefore, all options were on the table. i think, ultimately, what i believe most about the vision was that it confirmed what, certainly, those of us in the space community had always said which is that nasa's about exploring and going beyond, not about operating in lower earth orbit and doing things. but it once again put on the table that which had been taken off the table which we should be going out and exploring. it also laid the groundwork for turning over the leo activities to the private sector. it said in there, you know, i

think it was a choir commercial and international services for crew and cargo to the international station. later that summer of 2004 thal dribble commission that was put in place to look at implementation of the vision came out and said, you know, turn lee over to the private sector right away. and they said it much more eloquently than we did in the policy, and with the clarity of hindsight, i think we would have written things quite a bit different in order to make that happen. um, so with that the vision became sort of the signature policy direction of the bush administration. there were other policy documents, so there was a u.s.-based exploration policy document that was issued with the vision which was the vision. there were documents on space transportation, remote sensing, remote sensing was really, you know, had fundamental shift to

allow foreign access to u.s. remote sensing capabilities and commercial capabilities to develop was done back in, i think, the either late bush 41 years or early clinton years was pddnsc23 which in the end had set up a tiered structure of how, you know, foreign companies could get access, and u.s. industry was going to develop these capabilities and after ten years or so it had not developed the way we had thought it would and, therefore, we redid that policy to have a partnership between the government and industry. and i think that has worked much better since then as we now have commercial remote sensing companies that work both commercially and hand in hand with the government. but then we had this overarching national space policy. now, i left one week after the second term began in january of

2005, but -- and at that time we were about 95% done with the national space policy review. in fact, that was one of the reasons i felt, okay, i've been here five years, you know, it's time to move on, and we're in a blood -- good place. all that's left is a couple dotting of is and crossing of ts and a signature, and that document will be out. it was another two years before that document came out after i'd left, and the reason for that was there were one or two last remaining issues that were hotly debated, actually, between the department of defense and the intelligence community. and so, you know, when you get those titans, you know, locking arms or not locking arms, but butting head if you will, things take some time. so when the policy finally did come out in the summer of 2006,

it was, you know, it was surprising to me how it was viewed by the public, by the community, by the international community. while the tone had shifted a little bit in terms of national security priority versus scientific priority, um, you know, the national space policy that rich dalbello had done with the clinton administration had said, you know, office of science and technology policy leads space policy, nsc co-leads it when appropriate. we all know what that means. you know, national security council's going to hold on to the national security space issues no matter what. but there's on the oics with that. the bush administration policy sort of left those optics, you know, aside and just said here's how it is. the substance of the policy

particularly on the peaceful uses of outer space, um, you know, the willingness to enter into or not enter into arms control treaties about space, all of those things were no different sub substantively froe clinton administration policy. there were a couple minor word changes. i remember going through the interagency policy meetings on that document led by gil clinger who's at the national security council then. unfortunately, couldn't be here today. but going through those documents and saying, okay, if you change a single word, it will be noted, and you must have a good reason why. and in the end very, very few words were changed. and so when people came out including vice president gore, former vice president gore came out and said, you know, it was a fundamental shift in policy and very group laterallist -- unilateralist in its outcome. i was just surprised because it really, to me, was a very --

marked a lot of continuity in the past. there were not a lot of substantive changes. but looking ahead through the rest of the administration, um, the exploration activity, for example, um, the new administration that just came in and i'm sure jim will talk about this found that to be a broken program. so when we talk about wins and losses, missed opportunities, obviously, the exploration vision was near and dear to my heart. i think going back to the moon is going to happen before we go on to mars with people, if we do. i don't dislike the idea of going to an asteroid first. i think you need, fundamentally, almost the same amount of infrastructure and cost if you're going to go to an asteroid versus the moon. but we're going to do all of these things if we can ever get

out of lower earth orbit. the fundamental shift which didn't happen in the second term of the bush administration that i think is happening now is that shift to have potential to take over lower earth orbit so that nasa can get on with lower earth exploration. so that, to me, is a missed opportunity in the past administration. so with that i look forward to your questions, and i really, really have enjoyed what i've heard from the panelists today and the rest of the panelists as well. is thank you. [applause] >> thank you, brett. i think that may be the current obama space policy team calling in to make some comments on their program. that'll be taken care of in a second. and the obama administration brings us full circle.

during the obama administration, we had the continuing war on terror. cam pays in afghanistan -- campaigns in afghanistan wrapping up activities in iraq, and a new openness that the obama administration has pushed forward. and openness was, has been portray inside the space policy -- portrayed about in the space policy that you hear about now. more of a focus on international cooperation and a look at a different blend of space players in our industrial base, not only the companies that focus on the programs of record, but also the emergence of entrepreneurial and commercial space company.

to talk about the obama policy, we have two gentlemen today. first, we have jim cullenberger. jim has a lengthy resumé, but i will focus on his time focusing on space policy, and that was as chief of staff for the obama white house, chief of staff for the office of science and technology policy. following jim, we have peter marquez. peter served under both the bush and the obama administrations working space policy, and at that time he was the director of space policy at the white house. but first we're going to start with jim. >> well, thank you, david. and it's great to be here and see so many folks. the great thing about making space policy as you move forward is your ability to stand on the

shoulders of giants. and here we have some of the giants of space policy previous, and it's just wonderful to hear this. and i think you're going to hear this continuity, um, of progress all throughout. and i was lucky as well to spend eight years in the clinton white house with the vice president's office where he had come out of the senate commerce committee where he chaired the space committee, and it was great because he was engaged in space policy and had a real passion. and the only thing that's better than having a vice president who's passionate about a vigorous rouse space policy is having a president who is passionate about having a vigorous space policy. and that's what we had in the obama white house. but to give you a little, you know, context, and this is, of course, recent history is, you know, we came into office at a time when benefits of space have completely permeated almost

every aspect, um, of our lives. um, from the iphone on my belt to the navigation system that brought us here to the google earth that's on my laptop, you know, every day our life is now touched by space. and it's become even more vital to our economy, to our national security, um, to our environment. and yet we face four immediate challenges in space when we first came in if to office. you know, first we faced a sputnik moment. and it's fitting that the president used a space metaphor to describe where america was, in fact, at that moment. and, you know, we came in the midst of a recession. um, we're focused like a laser on creating the jobs and new industries of the future. of we knew that coming out of world war ii half of economic

growth came from innovation, but at the same time i think we were concerned that we had fallen behind in a few key indicators. so, for example, american 15-year-olds ranked 25th in the math and 21st in science when compared to other nations around the world. and so we knew we needed to crapg up the innovation engine. two, we are in retirement of the space shuttle which the bush administration had set for, you know, kind of a date certain at the end of 2010. gao had highlighted, um, for either, you know, whoever won the election last time that this would be one of the key 13 issues that any administration would need to take a look at under the hood and figure out because there wasn't an adequate strategy going toward. forward. third, the other issue we faced was that critical environmental science and technological

innovation efforts had been really crowded out within nasa's budget by an ever-growing human space flight effort and other challenges. and it was, you know, costing us in the terms of some of the great opportunities, i think, that we saw in space. and on the national security side after, you know, 50 years of increasing use of space, um, space was getting more congested, contested, increasingly competitive. in fact, 60 nations now have a presence there. by 2015 there'll be 9,000 satellites with transponders in the skies overhead. are so cluttered, you know, that if you have major collisions, you can actually render orbits unusable. at the same time, we knew that, you know, as others have described, you know, we had big space programs that were, you know, they have these tendencies to have these huge cost growths go way out in years.

and we knew we needed to partner with the private sector in new ways, partner internationally. and we're also focused on bringing a new openness and transparency to what we did globally, um, in space. .. >> and outeducate the world and so the president set a goal of

boosting our efforts in r & d to 3% of gdp for folks who don't remember. that was the amount of research we were doing at the height of the space race and we haven't come back to that level yet. and so we set this broad goal and he made historic investments in that area to back it up. and he laid out plans for us to move from the middle of the pack to the top of the world of education. i think people forget the average aid was 26 years old and now at nasa it's 50. we had take a look at the new generation of space leaders and scientists to get involved. and, unfortunately, today the average middle school kid would rather, you know, take out the trash go to the dentist before doing that are math homework or

instead of doing their math homework and we knew we needed to do better and we launched a couple initiatives along. we brought the space community and others to change the equation. 100 ceos to transform the ways teachers teach and students learn to create more makers, doers and dreamers. the president hosted an astronomy night on the front lawn of the white house to get kids focused but our biggest focus was on the civilian side in space in addition to building blocks. the congressional business office both highlighted a growing number of challenges with nasa's constellation program but i don't think we knew yet the breadth of the challenges or the scopes of what our challenges would be facing up ahead. i think brett alluded to some of the challenges. and so we took a page out of the clinton administration and out

of bush 1 and the clinton with the challenges of the space station freedom and the cost gro grove. and there was outside experts to get under the hood to take a look at it and i think mark also referred to. and we put him back into service and we brought together astronauts and engineers and space experts to really take a look at this program and get under the hood. they held meetings all across the country, sought input all over the place. and, you know, they came back to us and they said houston we have a problem. and we were budget years behind schedule. unable to get us back to the moon and the programmed been fundamentally unexecutable. so even though we were surprised

we knew -- we knew it was our job and we knew we could do better. and so the results of the augustine committee we embarked on a new effort. to explore new worlds. create new jobs. and strength in international partnerships and increase our understanding of the universe and their recommendations drew lessons from the decisions of many of these administrations that passed before. and first and foremost was the shuttle. as brett mentioned the bush administration decided to retire the shuttle in 2010. it was a tough decision on their part and as mark pointed out, it's very difficult to fund an operational program and you can't really fund the replacement program on top of it. it's a challenge. sometimes they have to be done sequentially and that was part of the challenge, i think, that led to the set of challenges that we face when we -- when we

came into office. but the bush administration made this decision to retire the shuttle. we said, okay, well, instead of just putting a time stamp on there, one of the things we sought in safety programs, we decided to add more money and we added a couple of flights but we're nearing the end of that incredible program soon. and $100 billion space station again we drew upon i think some of the lessons from previous administrations. i think reagan had initially kick off this effort was when this thing started. this program was going to have to be dumped into the ocean to be able to pay for a follow-on program and after all this investment in time in putting it

together before we had actually turned it into a scientific lab while also enhancing its utilization. and beyond the lowerth orbit it's always one of the holy grails in space. and, you know, we set out to go in places where man has never gone before on a flexible path which is what the augustine committee had talked about while also matching and also the new technologies that we needed to go beyond the earth/moon cradle. and we went back and we looked at one of the reports that the first bush administration did and we looked at all the new technology that is they would

need to go to mars. and we found holy cows these are exact same technologies we needed today. we hadn't invested in these new technologies to take us further faster, farther in into space. there's a chart if we wanted to go to mars it would take the lifting weight of 12 international space stations and a combined weight was what it amounted to. and again one international space station had required all of these space shuttle flights. twelve times that was massive but with new technologies, you could dramatically reduce that weight that you would need equivalently to lift from 12 down to 2 international space stations but that took and other new technologies that we hadn't

really focused on or pushed for. so -- so we sought to push the frontiers of innovation in the space program and develop these new technologies before making a decision in terms of what type of heavy lift architecture and they laid out some new goals for accomplishing some new human space flight including visiting an asteroid and eventually going to mars but with this looming gap in the time between the shuttle retired and between the news successor system which wasn't going to be launched until 2017, two years after the space station would have had to have been dumped into the ocean. it really had nowhere to go. we knew that we needed to both extend the space station and find a way to accelerate that time that we could get access to lowerth orbit so the augustine

committee safely transported astronauts in an american spacecraft and ending the outsourcing of this work to foreign government and remitted a new commercial crew effort to harness american entrepreneurship and competitively fund the safe and affordable vehicles creating jobs and enabling full use of the space station. now really this amounted to a new acquisition strategy. making payments based on milestones rather than cost-plus contracts which is how things went before. now, this commercial concept got a lot of attention in the press. where did you come up with this idea? how did it come forward? and, frankly, this genesis of this program is really -- was long in the making. you know, it began in the carter administration when they first embraced commercial and international space policy and the reagan administration where

i think, you know, they did -- they created the faa office of commercial space and an e01 in space in the first bush administration when they signed the launch services purchases act. and in 1998 when president clinton signed the commercial space act and contracted out shuttle operations to private companies. and as brett mentioned in 2004, i think the second bush administration in the alderidge commission and elsewhere recommended using commercial enterprises for access for both crew and cargo to lowerth orbit and soon by 2008 actually congress had weighed in actually pushed nasa to develop a program for cargo and crew access to the international space station. and so we built on that history of harnessing our

entrepreneurial energies to help serve to that nasa could -- we have more money for jobs for industry and more competition in space, more investments in innovation. by extending the space station, it was 3500 additional astronaut days in space over the next decade. we saw it more as more rockets sooner, more destinations for a really ambitious space program while allowing nasa to really focus on the hard things that it is best at. new technological developments and getting beyond low-earth orbit and the technologies that we need here and while this is really seen as big change there's a lot of continuity, i think, with what folks have put together before. and to be sure there's been critics. as there have been at every major turning point in space

policy. but within six months, we sought bipartisan legislation in the works to move much of the administration's plan into law. congress passed it. the administration signed it. and it was really an important milestone and critical step in our space strategy for achieving the president's goals. and it really happens sooner this we ever thought possible. and it's really thanks to the leadership of senators nelson and hutchison and others in the senate for making that happen. and indeed much work lies ahead but -- and the history is still being written but there's really some exciting stuff that is happening today because of the work that these gentlemen have done and what nasa is doing today and i think it's really exciting progress in space. and, you know, in the coming months, nasa's poised to announce more details on the heavy lift rocket that's going to eventually take man further and faster into space to places

we haven't gone before including asteroids beyond the earth moon cradle. yesterday, there's $2 billion alpha magnetic spectrometer for science's search for dark matter and any matter finally really fulfilling the space station's goal as having a science component and turning it into a research lab that's orbiting 250 miles above us. that was something that was 15 years in the making. and nasa is taking us further into the solar system. last month the messenger spacecraft went into orbit around mercury. in a few weeks dawn is going to begin orbiting vesta juno will take us to jupiter in fall. the largest mars rover.

it will be lowered on a sky crane down to the surface of mars. and nasa is working on a hubble replacement. there's another big program and it's seen some cross groves and challenges but it will allow us to see 10 times farther than the hubble telescope and further back in time into ever before. but this new commercial space has really been going gangbusters and has -- we've seen more results, i think, faster than we had expected. and it's just amazing progress. and last month nasa just announced four new contracts for competitors ranging from, you know, boeing here in nevada. blue origin. these are the faces of the new frontier where the commercial sector is stepping up. in this case there's four different capsule vehicles. some are lifting bodies. some are capsules all competing.

two rocket systems. there's the space x's falcon and launch alliance would serve three of -- you know, atlas 5 would serve 3 of the 4 potential capsules and their atlas 5 just made the 26th consecutive flight likely to be a workhorse in this new area. on commercial cargo, something that the bush administration launched for access to the space station is moving along like gangbusters, too. a new rocket is likely to have its first launch this summer. i think they're planning potentially on getting cargo all the way to the space station. or their signus all the way to the space station later this year. we'll see if that works. space x likewise is about to launch their first cargo mission all the way to the space station. and in suborbital space, another dynamic space where things are happening, just last week,

virgin galactic just had another breakthrough test and as early as next year, i think we're going to see human space flight in the suborbital change. these are all, i think, big and dramatic things that are happening quickly and swiftly. it's a dynamic time. an exciting time, i think, to be in space. and i'm reminded that, you know, this is really only the beginning. you know, i want to come to this panel 20 years from now and see where we are. but this week marks the 50th anniversary of when jfk went to joint session of congress and said we want to go to the moon. and it launched our modern human space flight here. i think it's exciting that we're still reaching for new heights 50 years later. we're still at the beginning of unlocking what space can bring and the boundless opportunities that lie ahead. and, you know, i frankly still

think that the best is yet ahead and with that i want to go to peter marquez who has been just -- was instrumental within the obama white house on helping us draft our national space strategy. peter? [applause] >> well, first thanks to david and jeff for putting this panel together. for me it's been great just to be able to sit here in the audience and just listen to what's happened and how we got to where we are. it's been fascinating for me so i appreciate the opportunity. one thing i wanted to talk about really doesn't have to do with the content of policy or how we

got there but it's why do you have a policy? at the white house it used to be joked about on my colleagues on the nsc, we don't have a policy about this and we don't have a policy about that. there's no land policy, there's no air policy. why do you special needs need a space policy? and the answer in my opinion is fairly clear. space is a place. it's a place but it's a lot more than. it's everything we go. it's in everything we do. if you go to the atm space, check your email, space. check the weather, space. have you ever driven in ireland or italy? definitely space helped get you around. even just the most arcane uses of space. i went skiing a few months ago with my father-in-law and brother. i decided to load an app on my phone that was able to track where i was, go down -- show where i was on the ski trails. my speed, velocity, my elevation gained and lost. all this stuff and then i was able to dump it on google earth

and do a fly through from all the things i skied. i'm sorry that's how air force was going to be abused but it sure was fun to watch. so you look -- and in space with the way we do trade, warfare, completely modern warfare, intelligence programs and science efforts. space is in everything we do. so somebody says why do we have a space policy, just ask them to pull out their phone and asked them if they checked what the weather was and that's why we need space policy. i'm going to -- i think jim did a great job capturing the nasa activities so what i want to do is really focus on how we developed the obama space policy and some of the other content that was in there besides some of the scientific and nasa activities. part of it was framed by my experience in the latter years of the bush white house. there were a few activities that occurred in there that really shaped my opinions on how we should do the next administration's space policy. one of those is i came in right

after the china a/sat test. i wouldn't call it a test. when you blow something on orbit you did something. that changed the whole dynamic. to be considered to be strategic and not just for nuclear deterrence and any type of warfare activity we conducted. so it really was a shot across the bottom. what we thought had been a peaceful environment up to that point was now a threatened environment. that that's the framed part of it. the bush policy had been put out in '06. i came out shortly after that and told to implement the policy as we know we can trace failures in policies not because of the words written -- we got other stuff to go. good luck implementing our policy and to get the agency

together and let's go do this, difficult if not near impossible to do. not a fault of the guys who wrote the policy. i think the policy is a fantastic policy. it's just a matter of timing so part of that also shaped my desire to get an obama policy out early. other things that brett touched on that the change of environment of how space changed. the war on terror space was a strategic and tactical capability used exactly at the same time and coalition warfare, now we'd done coalition warfare since, you know, before world war i. but things were different, you know, people on the ground wearing different flags on their shoulders, rely on the same communications and same precision targeting to accomplish missions. and then one thing that also shaped it and jim touched on that was the constellation program and where we needed to go after that. the constellation program was a concept looked fine and great. the augustine guy said hey, it looks great on paper. it seems to be doing well but

the way you're funding it and we needed to start over from there. the other was burnt frost 193 satellite engagement. that really was a defining moment for me. i'd been on the job just a few months and you get a phone call that says, hey, military thinks it wants to shoot down a satellite and you think somebody in a suit room is having a joke with you. but that one to me -- everybody had mentioned the obama had an openness and transparency. the seeds for openness and transparency is a key tenet of space policy is sown out of the usa 193 policy. when the president decided to take down the satellite, we were going to share everything we were doing while we were doing it and the engagement profiles everything it was that we could tell we would show everybody in the world why we were doing it. and that came out of the bush white house and i think the obama white house did a very faithful job in continuing on that idea of openness and transparency. so those were the things that in

my mind shaped where we went on the national space policy. so one of the things that jeff and david asked us to talk about, well, what changes were in the national space policies from previous administrations? one thing we did add was a chappeau with flowery language. and they wanted poetry and it just blew my mind. but really in the end, it turned out to be a very helpful exercise because policy does serve two purposes. the one that we all normally care about is what guidance is it giving the u.s. government and what guidance is it giving to the u.s. government and departments and agencies? the other thing that we also lose sight of is policy is actually an external communications device. it tells other that'ses and tells other people what the u.s.' intents and goals and policies are. and i believe the chappeau sets that landscape and tell

everybody why we're doing space. this is what we believe and the rest of the policy goes out and says, this is how we're going to execute it and i think the chappeau was a nice way to document it. the principles and goals, i think as all my colleagues and predecessors have mentioned. those have stayed pretty much the same since the eisenhower administration. one thing that was interesting in the development of the obama administration policy is, maybe it was arrogance on my part. my friends tell me i have it in spades. and those are just my friends. but i went in and briefed the senior leadership and said here's our goals and here's our principles and that's fine that you think that but why? well, because we have been doing it since eisenhower and one very senior person said, i don't care that eisenhower said it and they weren't being flip but it was more a questioning of why are you doing these things? why are they there and all these goals and principles. while it would have a lot of

continuity, this administration was doing a lot of sole searching and why are these principles here? do they need to apply and be updated. the core values remained some of the words have changed and we went through a clean sheet approach yeah, you know what? these principles are nearly universal and they stood the test of time and we did go back and take a very hard look at the goals and principles. some other dramatic changes to the policy in my opinion was the ascendency of the state department's role in the policy. this was just a realization that space is an international activity now. the u.s. is not the only player. it's not only a -- you know, a multi -- it's not just the u.s. and the soviet union anymore. there's many players, commercial, nonstate actors, industry, there's many people that come in to play and we believe that the state department needed a very strong role in working through that with us. and then one of them is just near and dear to my heart with a an explicit discussion of the role of gps. it just acknowledges that there is -- that gps really is a

foundational piece of international infrastructure. and that there is starting to grow this interrelationship between cyber and space and those that work both industries will tell you the tie is very tight. and gps is one of the enablers of the cyberdomain. and the fact that we're able to include gps language at the national level i thought was important. so one thing i will go through is the process. how we got to the policy. this white house, you know, i think -- i think most of you are through the interagency policy. and frustrations talking about two space transportation policies having 50 people in the room with 50 different opinions and those reflect the departments and the agencies that they represent and sometimes they represent their own opinions. and dr. john logson referred to my role in the obama policy as a traffic cop. i refer more to it as road kill. people came with a lot of opinions but once we figured out that the president was series

and we're going to have to start writing the policy the mood changed and i will tell you it was one of the most exciting experiences of my life to sit in a room with a group of people who had a similar idea and had their a game. and really all worked together. it was -- it was one of the most enlightening experiences. i wish everybody here could -- i wouldn't say spend several years in the white house 'cause i wouldn't wish that on a lot of people but i wish you could see the camaraderie and the unity and vision. the process using the obama white house i think reflects a lot of the process that was used in previous white houses, the use of the pc and the dc process to get principles, committees and deputies committees to get the issue on the table and have a senior leadership buy off on them. there was a campaign discussion, the obama campaign, about the reestablishment of the space council. we did actually have that discussion at the white house as to -- well, do we need to re-establish the space council and the discussion went something like this.

who was going to be on the space council? well, the following departments and agencies okay. and let me set the scene for you. we're sitting in the sit room with all the departments and agencies sitting around the table. and i pretty much said well, this guy guy, this lady, okay. and what are we going to talk about? we're going to talk about space issues. okay. what are we doing here right now? okay. and the discussion was kind of well, the process and people were already in place. we're already sitting here talking about space things and why do we need an additional space council on top of it. along the system worked there wasn't a real strong need for the space council and i think the system did work. we put out a space policy in 18 months, you know, one of my personal goals to try to best deal to get the reagan administration and i think we beat the reagan administration by just a couple of weeks. and speaking of which, i think everybody here has mentioned that we all stands on the shoulders on the guys who wrote the policies before us.

this is my own personal not professional opinion. it's the reagan policy it took all the things that the carter administration put together. the carter administration did a great job of taking the disparate parts and the reagan administration says great we now know what the parts are and how do we know what we have in front. the reagan administration policy sat on my desk during the entire writing of the space policy, dog-eared, underlined scratched through and everything else if there's any failures in the obama policy -- [laughter] >> no. it's a great policy and i ask folks to go back and take a look at the policy and take a look at the obama policy. you know, it's not one for one. there isn't a whole lot of textual similarity and i think you'll see some tone similarities there. yes, sir. hope and change. [laughter] >> the actual writing of the policy took place in a matter of five months, an extraordinarily exciting time, painful at times.

the policy writing phase is preceded by a presidential study directive known as ps3. the president said go study these areas and get back to me and tell me whether or not we need a space policy. i think when a president says go write a space policy we know what it was. it was finished in december and it was outbriefed at the end of december. senior leadership took about a month to chew on it and then february they said, all right, get the crew together and start writing. so from february to june we wrote the national space policy. and for those who have written national space policy they will tell you that in order to write a policy in five months, it's hard. it's very hard. and there's only one way that gets done if everybody in the room work together. the other thing we benefited from was extraordinary top-down guidance. and i don't mean there was micromanagement. what i mean the senior leadership whether it was the secretaries or the vice president or the president was very clear as to what they wanted out of space. a lot of time is wasted at the working level in trying to

define what the heck the bosses mean? you can waste weeks and write a line down and what does that line really mean but to have the senior leadership involved in the beginning really helps shortened the timeline for getting the policy out and that was a critical role. so i think really -- you know, i want to leave some time for questions. that was the really the rundown of how we wrote the obama policy. that's just the national space policy. the implementation is still going on right now. we'll come back 10 years from now and figure out whether or not it was a success or a failure. if it's a success, i'll be back. if not i'll have my successor at the white house come back and say why it was a miserable failure. so i do think we tried to captured the issues, there's some, iss and good wins in there. i think we tried a real concerted effort to get the message out to get the policy out and have press releases and engagements to make sure we did that. we'll see. the rest is yet to be written on

the obama space policy but i think we're on good footing because the gentlemen that came before me so thank you very much. [applause] >> thank you, peter. well, not bad. nearly 40 years of space policy in two hours and 40 minutes. i'm sure there's an enormous amount of questions for the panelists but i will use the host prerogative to ask the first and that concerns implementation. peter mentioned it and others mentioned it as the forum has gone on, the policies themselves are interesting exercises and the processes and procedures that are put in place in order to draft them are fascinating to study. but in the reality of the implementation of those policies, the translation of an idea into thought and action influencing budgets and programs is where the rubber hits the road. so i would ask the panel to think about for a moment and comment on the implementation

observations that they had from their various administrations. how did you see this policy get implemented? and where were the failure points -- the points of failure if there were any and how -- if it did happen, did subsequent administrations improve upon or not recognize those lessons? and i'd invite anyone to jump in on that as they see fit. >> do i have to press a button? >> i'm steve moran from the clinton administration. i'm sorry i had to step out for a phone call. i stepped out and missed the entire clinton administration. from an implementing perspective, i can talk about a good one and a bad one. gps, i think, it clearly is a good implementation of a good policy. you know, we had that -- we started that policy from scratch. there was nothing that preceded

it although he didn't take credit in the follow-up to the loss of kall 007 but we put the policy in place and then we spent an inordinate amount of time and a lot of time of vice president gore's adding to that and making sure that that policy was going to stick and get implemented, you know, we added the second and third civil signals. we put in place the financing package to make sure that that was going to happen. we set in place the turning off selective availability and put in place the program with the military that would allow that to be turned off. but we started all the international consultations on gps. starting out with the european

commission and the japanese. we had a joint -- president clinton and the president obuchi we had a joint communication before we left. that was a very good implementation in what i thought was a very strong and forward-leaning policy. and, you know, speaking of the policy process, if you look at one of the top goals in the first gps policy, it says -- i'm paraphrasing here, but it talks about enhancing economic competitiveness and productivity while protecting national security and foreign policy interests. i can tell you every word of every space policy that ever has been debated ad infinitum through the interagency process and there were a lot of people who wanted that to be worded the other way around and enhance national security process while

enhancing productivity and it comes out as a reflection of the clinton's administration focus on it's the economy, stupid, and we knew that that impact the policy would have on jobs, growth, productivity, technology, competitiveness and all that. and i think that's reflected in the fact that that they had present a award for the single space program that has had the greatest impact on human lives. and that's coming from the international community and that's going to be gps. it will be awarded to the gps program. so that's a pretty important deal. i'll just use one word to talk about the bad implementation of what maybe was a good policy, maybe not, to be determined in the future, and post.

[laughter] >> questions from the floor. sir? >> would you distinguish between the states and when you look at the communication so my question is, by cyberand space together are we missing something at the policy level and exactly sending supply to cyber also and we know both of these have far reach and you can do things from remote distance so should we have a more consolidatetive integrative approach at policy level? >> you know, if i can jump in on that. one of the things we did in our national states policy we integrated our innovation strategy. we integrated our manufacturing

strategy, our s.t.e.m. integration policy into our open government strategy into the national strategy. and we talk a lot -- there's so many parallels between cyberspace and outer space in terms of things that span borders. and the kind of things. but i do think it's tough because in the -- at least in the cybersecurity space which i also spent a lot of time on, the challenges are hugely different and i would hate to move cyber security which is a very fast-paced type of operation into space policy which by nature is very slow-changing dynamic. i think the cyberspace things takes a more dynamic -- you know, 85% of the critical infrastructure is owned and operated by the private sector. and it requires interesting

partnerships between the government in the private sector to be able to solve in outer space even though there's a lot of linkages. i think if you combine the two structures and had it run by one, i think we would slow both efforts, frankly. >> yeah, if i could follow on as well. there's also maturity level issue, right? so you've got folks here from carter on up but, you know, we're also missing the eisenhower on up from there. we've been doing this for 50-plus years. we have a good idea as to what the space world looks like. we still have to evolve the dynamics but it's not there yet and to try to marry that up is tough to do and when we're writing the national security portions for president obama it was informed by the guys on the cyberside. they spent a lot of time with the cyber folks working through this stuff so we would at least have some cohesion and, you know, where the diagrams would overlap we would have cohesion but the cyberside just isn't there yet. i mean, i'll tell you, from a personal standpoint the days it

was tough being a space guy at the white house, i'd just say at least i'm not a cyber guy. [laughter] >> sir? >> thank you. i don't think anybody in this room in 1989 would have super impressed if i told you we were going to be relying exclusively on the russians to put us in space. i don't think anybody would have been particularly impressed with how costs have gone up, not down even with things like lift. and industry has continued to struggle. it might be going in a good direction now but it hasn't been i don't think a good two decades. i don't mean this as a partisan question because it's 20 years of both republican and democratic administrations but what went wrong? particularly with policies i think we can all agree that money has been scarce. and interest has gone down. but this hasn't been a good two decades. what did we do wrong? what policies, what choices did

we not make or what wrong choices do we make? i hope everybody can answer that. >> i'll take that one. it's complicated. part of it is, i think, everything has been sort of said here different administrations and start something new. and the interests have become -- stakeholders have become so powerful and ingrained to start something new is an overwhelming objective. everything we're doing and now we're adding and with president reagan and basically in order

for me to that and old and bureaucratic. and that's true when you look at the aerospace industries that are doing this and building this. we'll be able to see whether, you know, these -- i was country before country was cool. you know, you go to space x, there are a lot of young people and orbital and there are a lot of young people around but the guys who are doing this are 60. they're like retirees. they're past that and they're going back and reliving old hits. so it's really a complicated problem. it's, i think, a huge problem in the space program. it is a huge problem for the

united states space program moving forward, can be become nimble, affordable and efficient and fast again in space or is space just going to become the auto industry of the 21st century? >> good question. complicated and i'm not sure how we get out of it. >> it does, i think, highlight the dependence of implementing the space program on the economy. in one sense it's a miracle that any major program survives through this many administrations with the ups and downs of the economy. and i think that really highlights one of the contributions, the commercial private sector space program is offering to the health of the space program.

it wasn't too many years ago that dave thompson and i at orbital formed a company called orbital energy corporation and we really pioneered the commercialization of high resolution imagery from space that you see now and what peter and others referred to as the google earth and other things. that's where policy can really be important in marshalling the resources of the government to helping the private sector capitalize on the entrepreneurship and the technology that's sitting out there 'cause the government cannot do it all itself. so we have to rely more and more on creativity and capturing the genius that this country has in meeting some of these goals for the future. >> i'd certainly echo that. i think what the fundamental problem has been trying to do

the same thing for too long. because space programs are hard, because they're expensive and we had success early on because we went from nothing and landing on the moon and coming back, 12 years, you know, by contrast operated the space shuttle and done the space shuttle since the mid-'70s, first launch in '81, 30 years, it's a remarkable achievement but it doesn't allow for dynamic growth or change or a learning curve where, you know, new folks come in. they design systems. they move on to design other systems. if you come in now, even on the national security side, you can work one program, you know, for 20 years instead of, you know, being in your late 20s in mission control for apollo 11 and have worked mercury, gemini, and apollo and then to go on and

do skylab, shuttle, station. if we don't have a dynamic cycle that is more akin to the business cycle of, you know, innovation, new product, 3 to 5-year time frame instead of 30 years that's a problem. i think one of the things on the implementation of the vision for exploration that i did not like was that one of the drivers was -- if we're going to go to mars in 30 years, we have to design that vehicle now. like if we're using the same vehicle 30 years from now to go to mars, then we're fundamentally doing it wrong, in my view. and that's part of the, you know, lack of innovation, lack of dynamic activity. and, you know, we've got to get out of that. commercial crew, commercial

cargo that was started under administrator griffin and the commercial crew program now under this administration, those can change that and allow nasa to do the bigger things that take longer because that dynamic part of the sector will be there to inform it. >> let me add one point to that starting again on this end of the table. one of the things that has emerged over the actually decades that we're talking about in the space procurement arena has been an incredibly large and cumbersome bureaucratic procurement process. i mean, you look at -- when you try to offer a solution in the -- whether it's come from a commercial provider, industrial provider of long-standing, the oversight and the procurement requirements overlaid add

incredible cost burden to these protracted procurements whether it's a small instrument in space or a major procurement activities such as a space launch vehicle or space station. so it's a -- the infrastructure that we've overlaid and required has been a significant contributor to that and it's something that can be redressed and cut back. it's not -- it's not a need to require to have that overlaid over the process, in the space in particular. >> so one last thing we tried to do is subtly is a performance of what art just mentioned which is when we did the presidential study directive 3 we were told to go look at the acquisition system and find out why it was broken. a report came back and the report was surprising. the report was the acquisition system was not broken. it serves as a computer. if garbage goes in the system, garbage is coming out of the system. and he found that the requirements process in management was seriously flawed.

now, that's on the civil side and the national security side. the only place that seemed to be some glimmer of hope was on the commercial side. because they were driven on short timelines and were driven by profit and i don't have a problem with profit, and it should be harassed by the government side and that's why you saw the full embrace of commercial crew and cargo which had been started in previous administrations. that's why you see the national security side where it's appropriate looking to service models to acquire services rather than platforms. the thing that suppresses programs is budget. there's nothing that suppresses the appetite of policy and requirements and what we're trying to do is putting some appetite suppression into the system. >> i'd be remiss if i didn't follow up on mark comment that our human space exploration program was dying a slow death. and in particular, at least the inference that i took from it was that the end of the cold war

lifted the rationale for human space flight. and we've been struggling thereafter to find a new reason to do it, a new reason to animate support and initiatives and budgets behind it. so i would ask in particular, art and gil to comment on the thinking of president carter and president reagan of the human space flight program. did they see reasons to do it aside from the space race with the soviet union? and then perhaps some of the others might want to chime in about what they see as the ongoing rationale for human space exploration. >> on the front end, let me comment that was a driving force. clearly the aspirations of the nation to be a manned orbiting -- an orbit capability, it was a driving force for being first to do that with man. and also even in the early years

there were high expectations that there would be a bigger role on a return of having man in space for the space station with industrial manufacturing and things of that nature, which, unfortunately, have not matured. >> i think the president saw the manned space program as being the face of the space program. it's what gave visibility to the program. it's what got money on the hill for the space program. it was hard -- it always has been hard to rationalize the manned space program on the basis of its cost-effectiveness because it isn't. the military came to that conclusion back in the late '60s. they had a program called the manned orbiting laboratory that was eventually cancelled in 1969. the military concluded that there was no mission in space

that was needed to support the battlefield commanders that couldn't be done by an unmanned satellite system. and so when it came time for president reagan to make the decision on the space station, department of defense said, we really don't have a vote here. we don't -- we think you, mr. president, ought to make the decision of what's in the best u.s. interest for other reasons, not for the military. so it's hard to argue with what mark says. and it's a shame. it's a real shame, that we can't do more but the problem is that putting man in space is a very, very costly enterprise. and in a time when we got people

on the hill now arguing about how much we cut, not whether we cut, i wouldn't want to be a policy guy today in the white house. i think it would be kind of depressing, really. because i think it's a real heartbreak for those who have been involved in the space program going all the way back to mercury and gemini to see where we are now in a couple months ending with a string of programs that have been so important to our country. it's something to lament. >> can i take an alternative view? i do believe that we're at an exciting time. that we really are at just still the beginning of a bright new age of humans in space. i don't disagree with, i think, the precepts of the budget challenges that we face. augustine committee, for example, looked at why we do

this. and found that, for example, just on the scientific basis it's not there. we can send robots and other places further out in space much more. there's something about driving new technologies that lead to economic opportunity. but one of the things that i find that is incredibly exciting and the reason why i think that there's a bright new future is i back to you at 1969. two incredible governmental accomplishments in 1969. we landed on the moon. but we invented the internet. and one of the things that we -- but they took two different fundamental paths. now, the internet is a huge -- a bigger part of our economy than is space. every day there's a dynamic new thing that's happening in the internet that is being discovered. there's an ipo yesterday, billions of dollars for linked in, incredible things. but the