Bolden Urges JSC Workers to Look to the Future, Not the Past

NASA Administrator Charlie Bolden called on workers at NASA’s Johnson Space Center (JSC) to “look to the possibilities and opportunities available as we continue our 21st century march beyond our home planet” in an “all hands” meeting at JSC yesterday.

Insisting that he was not trying to shoot the messenger, he also admonished the media not to misrepresent statements by members of the NASA workforce just to get a headline:

“But you are not a friend of the space program when you misrepresent the statements or actions of our dedicated, loyal workforce for the sake of a headline-winning story. Again, please don’t take this as an attempt to blame the messenger for NASA’s problems. That is not the case nor my intent. Rather, please realize that this is a major change in trajectory for our Nation’s space program, and that such change is bound to be turbulent in the formative stages.”

He portrayed President Obama’s new plan as the only way to ensure that humans will travel beyond low Earth orbit in the next two generations. The Constellation program, he said, could not do it.

“Over time, due to funding short falls, Constellation Program Management and the NASA Administrator began making trades to preserve our ability to get humans back to the Moon, but the capability to provide lunar landing systems, surface systems, and any real hope of going beyond the Moon evaporated except in the minds of many of us holding on to one last hope.”

Bolden expressed confidence that the aerospace community could work together to change the trajectory of the U.S. human spaceflight program, laying out what he believes are the four core values of the “NASA family”: safety, excellence, teamwork, and integrity.