Charles F. Bolden Jr. is the Founder and CEO Emeritus of the Charles F. Bolden Group, a consortium of accomplished leaders founded in 2017 to foster international collaboration in making life better for all humanity. Appointed by the former president, Barack Obama, Charlie served as the 12th Administrator of NASA from 2009 to 2017, making him the first African American to hold the position permanently. Charlie is a retired U.S. Marine Corps Major General and former astronaut who has flown on four Space Shuttle missions.

Charlie speaks with Kathy about his perspective on NASA’s transition from space shuttle operations to commercial space flight. You’ll gain insight into the real inside workings of Washington, DC, as well as his journey to becoming the 12th Administrator of NASA. Charlie also discusses what the future holds for space commerce and exploration, and the surprising who he'd like to take to space.

“OUR PURPOSE IS TO MAKE THE EARTH A BETTER, MORE SUSTAINABLE PLACE. I THINK WE’RE UP TO THE CHALLENGE.”

- CHARLIE BOLDEN

This week on Kathy Sullivan Explores:

• Charlie’s last shuttle flight and the formation of the new space age

• NASA’s state of play and Charlie’s road to Washington DC

• His first experience with the National Space Council

• The time Charlie had to convince the Congressional Black Caucus of the need for a space station

• What working with Russian cosmonauts taught Charlie

• My experience interacting with Soviet astronauts and cosmonauts

• Charlie’s meeting with the former president, Barack Obama, and his nomination to NASA

• The birth of the SLS, Orion, and commercial crew and cargo

• Why NASA will remain the leader and catalyst for discovery

• The advantages of developing a vibrant commercial space sector

• The James Webb Space Telescope and what gives Charlie hope for the future

Our Favorite Quotes:

       “EVERY CREW BECOMES A FAMILY.”

- CHARLIE BOLDEN

       “STUDY HARD, WORK HARD, AND NEVER BE AFRAID OF FAILURE. LISTEN RESPECTFULLY TO YOUR PARENTS, BUT FOLLOW YOUR PASSION BECAUSE IT’S YOUR LIFE.”

- CHARLIE BOLDEN

Connect with Charlie Bolden:

• Inter Astra

• Inter Astra on LinkedIn

• The Charles F. Bolden Group

• The Charles F. Bolden Group on LinkedIn

• The Charles F. Bolden Group on YouTube

• Charlie Bolden on LinkedIn

Credits:

Executive Producer: Toby Goodman

Audio & Sound Design: Lee Turner

Production by CxS Partners LTD

Spaceship Not Required

I’m Kathy Sullivan, the only person to have walked in space and gone to the deepest point in the ocean.

I’m an explorer, and that doesn’t always have to involve going to some remote or exotic place. It simply requires a commitment to put curiosity into action.

In this podcast, you can explore, reflecting on lessons learned from life so far and from my brilliant and ever-inquisitive guests. We explore together in this very moment from right where you are… spaceship not required.

Welcome to Kathy Sullivan Explores.

AI TRANSCRIPT:

This podcast is brought to you by the InterAstra Institute, the global public square for the business of space.

Join us at interaastra.space

And, you're on commission. And when you come back, I want some products that, tell the story that these damn astronauts have been struggling to, you know, for since the beginning of time. And some of them do it okay, and others don't do anything, but they all have to use these damn pictures that they took with a camera. Come back and give me word pictures and some pictures also.

And music.

And music. But but come back and and tell me in your genre or in your vehicle, what was it like?

I am the only person to have walked in space and gone to the deepest point in the ocean. Hi. I'm Kathy Sullivan, and I'm an explorer. Exploring doesn't always have to involve going to some remote or exotic place. It simply requires your commitment to put curiosity into action. So join me on this podcast journey as I reflect on lessons learned from life so far and from my brilliant and ever inquisitive guests. We'll explore together in this very moment from right where you are. Spaceship not required.

Welcome to Kathy Sullivan Explores. Before we take off, I have a gift for you. I believe that no matter where you are today, an active thirst for knowledge will help unlock your ability to live a life of meaning and happiness. So I'm sharing some lessons I've learned on my road less traveled. Over at catthesullivan explores.com, you'll find my 7 astronaut tips to improving your life on earth. When you sign up, I'll send them to you and also make sure you're the first to discover future podcast episodes and learn more about exciting adventures ahead. Just head on over to kathysullivan explores.com. I hope you enjoyed the first part of my conversation with former NASA administrator Charlie Bolden.

If you didn't catch it already, you can find it at kathysullivanexplores.comforwardslantpodcast. Look for episode 65. In part 2, we'll get Charlie's perspective on NASA's transition from space shuttle operations to commercial space flight on the real inside workings of Washington DC and what the future holds for space commerce and exploration. So let's launch with Charlie Bolden. So your last shuttle flight, I think, was in 1994, if I recall.

That's right.

Yep. 4th flight. And you then went back to your beloved Naval Academy as the deputy commandant, the base superintendent for a stint, and then back to the marine corps for another long stint. And there's tons of stories there, but we're in such an interesting time in the space arena, really watching the birth of information of a new space age. So I'd like to fast forward to going back to NASA when President Obama asked you to serve as his administrator. Give us a sense of the state of play where where NASA itself was at that time. You you've been there through some interesting times all the way up to the start of what NASA's doing now with commercial crew and and the Starliner and Orion to go back to the moon and beyond. Give us a sense of that time.

And

Well, I I first of all, I I will tell you, and you know this because I talk to you a lot when you came to Noah. I was not prepared for Washington DC. I I was not a political junkie. I love the marine corps and everything. I I almost came back as the deputy administrator once before, and and I got spared that, and so I escaped. And, I had sworn in 1992 after my fight when I went up to NASA headquarters for a year working as an assistant to Dan Golden that I would never set foot in Washington again.

So you gotta learn to this adage of never say never, Charlie.

Yeah. Well, I did. I said I said never again will I set foot in Washington DC because it was it was such a miserable experience, of dealing with the hill and all the politics and everything. So, you know, I had done nothing in the Obama campaign. I was not looking for a job. I was I had retired from the marine corps in 2003, and it was now 2,008, 2,009, and names kept coming up to be the NASA administrator. I think president Obama must have gone through a half dozen people.

Did the president himself call you?

No. He did not. So and and I I did not expect to hear anything because everybody knew that I I had not lobbied or anything. And I and every I think most people knew I had no desire to go back to Washington, but but I did get a call one day, and I wanna say it was probably April ish, from White House personnel asking if I would be willing to come back to Washington, for a day to talk to someone. And I said, who is it and for what? And they said, well, we really aren't at liberty to tell you. And I said, okay. I'm gonna pay my way to Washington DC and come back and talk to someone, and you can't tell me who it's gonna be or what the purpose is. I said

how they play the game.

That's sort of it. I said, I can't come. And I said, thank you very much for the call. And and they said, well, hold on a minute. And and there was silence, and then they said, well, the president's science adviser, doctor John Holdren, wants to kinda pick your brain about your experiences in NASA. So I said, okay. I can I can do that? And I went back, and I spent up about a day with with doctor Holden, with John, and he was incredible. We agreed on some things about about space and exploration.

We talked about everything. And, we vehemently disagreed about the National Space Council. You know, they they had an intent of standing up a space council and everything. And

Say more about that. This would be a White House body that oversees what?

It would be the National Space Council that exists today that actually generally, up until this administration, only only Republican presidents stood up the National Space Council. It's an organ of the White House of the executive office of the president, run by the vice president of the United States that is supposed to be the vehicle that brings together civil and military space so that everybody's speaking from the same sheet of music. And although at NASA, we're not supposed to get involved in national defense space, and in the Pentagon, they're not supposed to dip into civil space. This was the place where everybody came together, got synced up, and, and and policies were made, if you will.

So when you say synced up and singing from the same song sheet, that's usually shorthand for giving the talking points and told to, you know, stay on message. But it sounds like it does more than just align messages. What's the substantive stuff it does?

Substantively today, you know, my first experience with the National Space Council and and the reason I had a bad taste in my mouth was in the Bush administration. I was on orbit in 1990 2, flying my 3rd mission as the commander of of one that you will be very familiar with, STS 45 Atlas 1, the atmospheric laboratory for applications in science. And you may also recall that we were on the flight deck one day, April Fools'

Day. We were supposed to land that day.

Yeah. When we got a call from the ground telling us that we weren't coming home, but, oh, by the way, we have a new NASA administrator. And we looked at each other and went, what? Because there had been no talk about a new NASA administrator or anything. And I went, okay. I got it. It's April Fools' Day now.

Yeah. I I remember that.

Let's move on to another topic. And they said, no. This is not April fools. We we actually have a new NASA administrator. So the president has has selected, Dan Golden to be the NASA administrator, and he's being sworn in this afternoon or tomorrow morning or something. And admiral Truly is gone. And so Dick Truly was a dear friend of both of ours and and somewhat responsible at I would say for both of us and some of our successes in the astronaut.

Been in the astronaut course since the late sixties, early seventies. He'd flown the one of the test flights before the shuttle was actually launched, and he'd flown the 2nd shuttle mission and, one other after that.

That's that's correct. And so I said, oh, well, wow. Okay. I got it. And when we landed the next day, you and I had agreed since you were the payload commander and responsible for all the all the payload activities, you and I had agreed that, okay, contrary to practice by every shuttle crew before us, we'll lay on a gurney and be wheeled off the shuttle like wimps, and we will not go down and kick the tires and all that kind of stuff.

Yeah. I I my recollection is they brought a Dulles Airport kinda crew transporter

up That's right.

And matched up with our hatch. I recall we were allowed to walk over into our big old recliner chairs in the transfer van, but we we didn't get to go kick the tires.

But we got into we got into the recliner chairs and and on the gurney, right away, we didn't get to go down and walk around the vehicle. Right. Because they didn't want us to reacclimate. And as we're laying there, I saw this face come over and lean down and say, I want you to come to NASA headquarters to work for me. And I I looked up, and I won't say it on on your podcast, but I said, who the f are you?

Yeah. Because none of us knew nobody at NASA knew who Dan Goldin was and had never seen a picture.

George Abby, who was our boss at the time, well, he wasn't. He was gone. Yeah. But he was at the National Space Council, and George is leaning over, and he went And so he's like, this is the new NASA administrator. This is mister Dan Golden. So I said, well, I'm I apologize. I'm very pleased to meet you, mister Golden. And when we got back to Houston and, Fin was supposed to The

other thing that should be noted about that moment in the crew transfer van is 40 minutes before you were floating around the ceiling of your spacecraft.

And Exactly.

The last thing in the world you want right after you've landed is any mucky muck administrator in your face. You wanna pat each other on the back. You wanna, you know, relax a little bit. It's, you know, great mission. Got everything done. We're home alive, and let me get out the shower as soon as possible. And and even the biggest mucky muck in the agency, you're getting right in your faces were like, who are you, and why do you think I care?

And why would I ever wanna go to Washington DC? But long story short, at George's behest, I ended up going to Washington to have dinner with Dan Goldin.

And George Abby was another just because out of the blue.

Legendary. George Abby is

a legendary figure, in NASA circles and long, big, huge influence in the astronaut course.

So He hired both you and me and as the director of flight crew operations and then rose to become the director of the Johnson Space Center. And then after leaving, became sort of the assistant to the executive director of the National

Space. State. And as a general rule, if you ran on those circles at all, whatever mister Abby asked you to do was understood to be a vow shell.

Yeah. So because George was such a dear friend of ours and my family's, I said, okay. I'll come up. And and I did. And I was impressed with Dan Golden's visionary spirit and everything. Didn't know anything about him, didn't know what kind of leader he was or anything. But because his vision was just so great to me, I said, I'll come up for a year and I'll do this. It was the worst year I ever spent.

How so?

I can't say that about a lot because I was, you know, I worked with each of the acting deputy administrators, but my number one job was to spend time on the hill and try to convince people that we needed a space station. And my number one target audience was the black caucus. Congressional black caucus. And and I remember that privilege turned out to be one of my greatest experiences because of the people I met, none more impressive than than the late John Lewis. And I had 15 minutes on John Lewis' schedule one day to go over and talk to him because the the vote for the space station was coming up. And this is not the International Space Station. This is just a space station that NASA was trying to get going.

Much different than what we have in orbit now.

Exactly. And everybody knew it was gonna be a pretty tight vote. So I went in and introduced myself to congressman Lewis, and I sat down. And and before I could say a word, he started talking about the the incredible value of NASA and exploration. And and he went on and on and on about inspiration and blah blah blah blah blah. And, my 15 minutes turned into about 50 minutes. And I finally looked at my watch and I said, you know, congressman, you have been incredibly kind and I've really overstayed my welcome. So can I thank you and then I'll I'll get out of your hair? And he looked at me, he said, I can tell by the smile on your face that, you you feel you've convinced me to vote for the space station.

And I said, well, congressman, after listening to you for the last 50 minutes, I was kinda hoping that I didn't need to convince you, that that you were you were convinced yourself. And he said, you know, let me tell you. I meant every single thing I said to you over the last period of time you've been here because I really believe in that. He said, but I sit in a place called the US Congress where if I'm not reelected, I don't get to serve my constituents. And he says, if I go out and I cast a vote for a space station that takes dollars out of a program from my community back in Atlanta, because NASA doesn't have a single thing in the state of Georgia. And if I go back and vote to send money to NASA that's gonna be spent outside the state of Georgia and don't bring stuff into the state of Georgia, I won't be here to help advance what you wanna do, and you're gonna be okay. You know, you you guys will you'll get this vote. He said, but I will not vote for the space station.

And and he said, but thanks very much for coming in anyway. And I left. I mean, I was demolished, that I had not accomplished my mission, but I was incredibly impressed by this guy called John Lewis that I had not met before. And, and I didn't learn until about a year or 2 ago when I was talking to Dan Goldin, and he said, you know, you you probably don't know this, but John Lewis did vote. He cast his vote in favor of the space station, and it was the deciding vote in the house. Wow. So he said, you may not think you did it. You did your job, but said he was he probably just needed a little encouragement to do the right thing.

Or do you think do you think maybe he did because his vote was gonna be a throwaway because it was solidly favor of the space station. He could protect his interest at home. But if

it came down to probably

Yeah. I mean, the passion he expressed to you, if he saw all of that Yeah. Will go down the tubes.

In listening to him, it was not something that he was just saying to exercise his voice. He he really meant it. And so I was I left incredibly impressed with him, and I and I always have been. And I think, you know, we lost, an incredible American hero when he died. Yeah. I just hope that we can do something that that will put his memory in, you know, in in posterity. So, anyway, enough enough of that.

So that was, like, your only high point here in Washington and the rest was just torture?

That was it. That was it. That was my that was my one high point. And so even after meeting John Lewis, I went back home, and I I told I told Jackie. I said, I would call her sometimes. I said, you know, all I wanna do is take a shower. I said, I I feel like I'm filthy. I you know, all the back and forth when you went over to the hill and the negotiating and the bargaining because, you know, that's just the way that's just the way Washington works.

And I finally got home, when they sent me home to take the reins for, for STS 60, which was gonna be the 1st joint American shuttle mission, which was an incredible disappointment to me to not and it wasn't a disappointment to get assigned to be the CDR of SDS 60. But when I was told they wanted me to go back to Washington, Dick Covey and his crew had not been named yet for the Hubble servicing mission.

You were hoping for that.

I said, is there any chance that this is gonna be Hubble so I can go back and finish up the work that, you know, that I started? And they said, nah. Not so fast there. Jose, we already have a crew for that. And and they told me that it was gonna be Dick Covey and and, Sox and the crew, and I went, okay. I said, well, what do you want me to do? And they said, well, we've got 2 Russian cosmonauts who are here in town, and we're gonna fly a mission with a Russian cosmonaut as a test to see if we should think about flying Americans on Mir and then later trying to bring them into the internationals into the space station program. And I said, forget it. You know, you got the wrong guy. I said, I don't wanna fly with any damn Russian.

I'm a marine. I've trained my life to kill them, and they've trained their lives to kill me, and I have no desire to fly with any damn Russian. And George again came to the fore, and he said, hey. Look. Calm down. Because he was up there as a special assistant to Dan Golden at the time. And, he said, just go to dinner tonight at John David and Donna Bartol. And so I went over to to John's house.

There was Sergei Krikalov and Vladimir Titov, and I met them. Vladimir spoke zero English. Sergei spoke fluent English. And we met and, went down, went in and sat down, had a glass of wine, had a wonderful dinner. And the conversation over dinner among all of us, the 5 of us, was about families and kids and everything. And, Sergei had a 2 year old daughter, Olga. Vladimir had an 8 year old son, Yuri, and a 17 year old daughter, Marina, who had already come to the US, had moved into a place in Houston and had enrolled in San Jacinto Junior College because she wanted to major in business and become an international business specialist. So, you know, we we spent the night talking about our families and the future and what what kind of world we wanted.

And, and I just changed my mind. And I went in the next morning, and I told Dan and George, I'm in. I'm ready to go back to Houston, and we'll get started on this thing. And and that began the next 2 years of what it was an incredible experience from a life experience for me and my family. You know, we as you know, every crew becomes a family. And so that was my family for the next 2 years, was Sergei and his family and Vladimir and his family. And then the, I forget what it was, but, like, 200 or some odd Russians that we brought to Houston because they were their training team, their flight control team, the medical people, and everybody because we really did wanna shake this thing out and find out whether we could work together. And the mission was incredibly successful, and everybody decided, okay.

Let's press, and let's go with with the MIR program. And and so after that, 6 of our fellow astronauts went to Russia 1 at a time and flew on Mir as crew members.

Of course, nowadays, the exchanges has been quite well oiled. So Russians' cosmonauts come over, train, and fly for the United States without importing their whole team, and and American astronauts go over to Star City and train without importing the whole NASA team.

Exactly. The other thing is it it is a time in my life that makes today especially difficult because Sergei, who was my crewmate and taught me quite a bit about flying in space. At the time that he flew with us, he was the most experienced person on the planet.

I wasn't at Sergei who was he was actually in orbit when the Soviet Union fell. So he he had the experience of launching from the Soviet Union and landing in the, what eventually got named Republic of Russia. Different flag, everything.

He was he was supposed to be there for 4 months, and they asked him to stay for an extra 2 for some reason. I think they just didn't wanna have an all new crew, and and he did. And the wall fell, and Russia disintegrated. And the reason he didn't come back until 10th month was because, as you say, you remember, the Russians launch and land in Kazakhstan in a different country. They don't even land in Russia. And so they had to go through

bargaining used to be one of the SSRs under this Yeah.

Exactly. They had to go through bargaining with the Russians and the Ukrainians, by the way, because the Ukrainians provided engines and other components for the spacecraft. So they had to arrange to get a spacecraft, a Soyuz available to bring a crew up to get Sergei and replace him and and get him back. And and that finally happened 10 months after he launched. And today, Sergei is number 2 in the Russian Space Agency and Roscosmos. I don't get a chance to talk to him, and and I would not you know, my my hope is that he's safe and everything else and but that's what makes this so difficult for us because, you know, you and I worked with Russian people and not the Russian government. Mhmm. And, and and they are different no matter what we think, and we just hope everything turns out for the better over in Ukraine.

You know, just real quickly, my bit of experience to that regard was 1985 when it was still the Soviet Union. Yeah. Paul Weitz and Dale Gardner and I were the astronaut representatives at the Paris Air Show. And we we're not just eye candy, but we're definitely props for the American presence there. So we're told at one point we need to be up and ready to go super early in the morning because we're gonna be snuck in a backdoor of the French Pavilion. The Soviet cosmonauts are gonna be snuck in the other backdoor because at the time, United States and Russia had severed formal diplomatic ties over the war in Afghanistan. But the 2 agencies had gotten clearance to let the astronaut and cosmonauts meet and share some experience. From the Soviet side, I think what it was really about is picking our brains about a reusable vehicle, the space shuttle, because they they did not yet announce theirs.

Their Buran that later came out. But it was, you know, I I felt like I suddenly was a player in a Jean Lucret spy novel

sneaking in

backdoors and, you know, But once we got there, it was, Sasha Sarabarov met Sergei years later. But it was just as you say, we instantly had everything in common as flyers, as space explorers, as human beings, and just chuckled a little bit frankly about the nonsense going on 43 levels above our heads.

No. You're absolutely right. So, yeah, hey. You know, we started talk this conversation about space council. So that was what John and I disagreed on, doctor Holder, because they honestly believe that they needed a space council. And I and he said, why you know, what what's the problem with the National Space Council? And I said, well, the primary problem is for the NASA administrator, you now have pushed him one layer down in the hierarchy. And so it means that instead of working for the president, he now works he or she now works for the National Space Council.

For the Space Council.

Yeah. And so it's a it's a layer that I don't think you all need to need to get into right now because of some of the stuff that I understand you want to do. And he said, well, thank you very much for your visit. Go home and thanks. And several weeks later, I got another call saying, hey. Can you come back again? We we really wanna talk to you one more time. And I said, okay. Who am I gonna talk to this time and what about? And they said, well, we can't tell you.

I said, look. We've been through this drill. You're not if you're not gonna tell me who I'm gonna talk to I've already talked to doctor Holdren. So either tell me who I'm gonna talk to, or I'm not coming. And they said, well, the president would like to talk to you. And I said, I can't give you an answer now because I have to ask my family. Now my family says this never happened, but it did happen at least with my wife. But we had a chat, and she said, don't go because he's gonna ask you to do something and you don't know how to say no.

And I said and I told her, I said, Jackie, I cannot not go. I've gotta meet president Barack Obama. I said, this is a this is probably a onetime opportunity that will never come again, so I can say no. He's besides, he's not gonna ask me anything. I was right because I I went back. I was supposed to meet with him one afternoon. It was a horrible day for him with Benjamin Netanyahu, the prime minister then prime minister of Israel. And their conversation went well into the night.

And so they asked me if I could stay over and talk to him the next morning, and, I said, shoot. It's the president. I can I can stay as long as you want me to? And I got in to see him for about 25 minutes the next day. You you've been with him probably more than I have. He was mesmerizing. The depth and breadth of of his conversation and everything, and we didn't I don't know whether NASA came up more than once or twice. He talked about his vision for the future and exploration, but the main thing was wanting to inspire kids and how, you know, NASA was a tool that did that better than anybody else. And the fact that he also wanted to expand our outreach to international non what do you call nontraditional international partners and everything? Never said anything about the NASA administrator's job.

Never hinted that, you know, I want you to think about coming to work for me or anything. At the end of the conversation, you know, he had to go to another meeting, I guess. So he said, thanks for coming, and good to meet you. And I left and went back home. And I said, Jackie, it was unbelievable. You know? He didn't ask me a thing. So I think we can go back and

and clear.

Yeah. Free and clear. I'm, you know, I'm I'm done done with that. And, couple of weeks later, we got the call saying, hey. We understand the drill. This time, the president wants to nominate you to be the NASA administrator. So can you come back to Washington and start going through the prep for your senate hearings and everything? And I talked to the family again, and they said, what the heck? You know, just let's do it. So my plan, if confirmed, was to come back, spend the 1st 6 months by myself.

And then after that, we'd see how things went, and then I could probably commute back and forth. And, that went out the window after the 1st 6 months when I was struggling. So I mean, I was struggling mightily just to just to keep my head above water and in the environment because I having not been in the campaign, having not known anyone in the transition team, nor all the plans that had been put in place by the transition team, I had my hands full with with trying to do things that, you know, like, okay. Announcing we're gonna retire the shuttle, announcing that we're gonna do all these other kinds of things, and, you know, we were gonna give all the money to the commercial sector and let them go do stuff because we didn't know how to do it.

How much were you able to dissect or debate or push on those? How much of those were just pre it's cooked, man. This is what you're doing.

Yeah. I had free reign to debate, to to push back. I had a I had a a meeting with the director of OMB and

the The budget office.

Science adviser and all other kinds of things. But when when the in the end, when the 2011 budget was rolled out, they said, hey. This is your budget, and, you go defend it. So we had put together a pretty good package that we sent over to the White House. And the big thing that we had plead for but lost was if we're gonna retire the shuttle, and this is not our decision. This decision was actually made back in 2003 by the Bush administration. I agree with that because I've always said, shuttle is not gonna get us to Mars, and I wanna go to Mars. So I I agree with this.

We need to retire shuttle, but we need to have something suitable to replace it. And And I wasn't convinced that Constellation was the right program, but there were some people who who were out for

That was the NASA plan at the time to be the successor to shuttle.

Yeah. Constellation was 2 vehicles, 1 heavy lift launch vehicle, much like the space launch system of today, and then a smaller Ares 1 that was gonna carry the crew to orbit, and that came from the Columbia Accident Investigation Board. When that board recommended or not recommended, suggested or directed that NASA should no longer fly crew and cargo

On the same platform.

Which had nothing you know, really, that had nothing to do with the accidents of Columbia or Challenger, and so I don't know where that recommendation came from. But the NASA administrator at the time accepted it, lock, stock, and barrel and said, we'll we're gonna do all that. So when I came in, I said, you know, with the guys from the office of management and budget, talking about terminating shuttle is really gonna get us in trouble because termination is a legal term. And we're gonna end up with cost that we don't we can't afford for one thing and that we don't wanna incur, plus we're gonna incur the ire of the world. And, and we were absolutely right. What I didn't know, and the thing that caused me the most heartburn was when I got called in to see, senator Lauren Hatch Orrin Hatch from Utah was we were gonna shut down

the solid rocket boosters are

gonna shut down shut down the solid rocket industry because shuttle I didn't realize it, but the shuttle solid rocket boosters use more solid rocket fuel than everything combined in the US inventory, civil and military.

Which is a lot, by the way. A lot of expendable launchers have much smaller solid rockets strapped on them Exactly. To add up to enough thrust.

Yeah. You're talking about a little rocket coming out of the the wing of an airplane versus 2 big old solid rocket boosters with £2,000,000 of of propellant in each. So in my first hearing after for the budget, I forget who asked, but, I mean, it hit me like a ton of bricks because it wasn't one of my prep questions. But the the senator or representative, whichever one I was in said, did you, at any time prior to this budget, have a conversation with the secretary of defense about the impact of this decision on DOD? And, I mean, you could see me turn white.

Duh. Yeah.

And and I looked out at my the legislative affairs guys and everybody went, duh. And I said, no, sir. I

I didn't I mean, how did they miss that? That's huge.

And, and they said, did you not think that it was important for you to go and talk to the secretary of defense about this industry that you're about to shut down before you made this decision? And I said, no, sir. I did not. And that was that was an error on my part. So I went out of the meeting, and that was what began a quarterly meeting that we had with the secretary of the air force, the head of the US Space Force where we compared notes. And, you know, before any of us made a decision about anything, we at least knew what everybody else was doing. That was one of the ways that when we went back to the drawing board and, decided what we were gonna come up with and contrary to to what people say, the senate did not send us a launch vehicle. They didn't send us the plans or anything. We spent a little bit more than a year evaluating the constellation program and what pieces of it we could pick because we wanted to be efficient and effective in making the transition, and we didn't wanna throw away the baby with the bathwater.

And we ended up keeping Orion pretty much in total.

Which is the capsule, the crew capsule?

Space capsule that crew goes in. But we had two problems with the constellation vehicles, Ares, and the constellation capsule, Orion, in that the 2 were incompatible from a vibration standpoint. And I and I don't wanna get technical here, but but the 2 vehicles had a different resonance, if you will, how how they vibrated due to all kinds of stuff going on around them. And most people predicted all the analysis showed that the astronauts would arrive on orbit, and and they'd be so shaken that they would be incapable of doing anything for days.

Yeah. And

so that was unacceptable to me. We could not get either of the prime contractors, Lockheed or Boeing, to say, I can fix this. Both said, no. My vehicle's good. You gotta fix it. And and so the the bottom line for me was, okay. We gotta get rid of this. We we'll just scrap it, and we'll start from scratch is what you want.

NASA administrator doesn't just study some materials and get some briefings in his office and then make that decision.

That's right.

Surely, you have to walk around and talk around to a lot of different folks to be sure the budget office and the White House and the space counsel, they know the what and the why and the where for, and and they'll back you. Right? Or it's a lot of mother, may I?

You're absolutely right as you know very well from your experiences at Noah. And so I engendered some incredible long lasting friendships in the house and senate, particularly with the staff, but also with the members and and always with the chair and and ranking member.

Of the appropriations committee.

Yeah. And the other thing was Jack Lew, who was I forget what his position was at the time, but he came in as the director of the office of management and budget and then eventually became Obama's chief of staff. Jack Lew was incredibly helpful and congenial in everything. His predecessor who had written the budget the first time wouldn't even answer the phone call from the NAS administrator. But Jack turned out to be a totally different animal, and the president had an a legislative affairs adviser, and, his name escapes me right now. But he became my lifeline for my entire time there at NASA because he had been both on the house and senate side as a staffer. He was imminently qualified and unbelievably respected by members and staff in both the house and senate. And he was perhaps the only person in the Obama administration that they would listen to and believe.

Yeah. That's how bad relationships had gotten early on.

Between NASA and the White House, you mean?

No. Between Between

the White

House and the Congress.

Ah, okay.

No. So this was way above NASA. This was way above NASA. But this was a guy who, when he came in and spoke, they listened because they they knew him and respected him, and he was a colleague of theirs. Got it. And so he kinda shepherded me through all these difficult times. And, we ended up having a meeting, a critical meeting just before they wrote the 2010 authorization act. And for people who don't know, the house and the senate do 2 particular things for every organization in the government.

They write an authorization bill that is subsequently signed by the president, and that lays the groundwork. That's the the road map that they think an organization ought to follow to to to comply with whatever amount of money the congress appropriates or gives them out of the appropriation committee.

And and just to flag that, some people seem to think Fed head of an agency is like a CEO who decides what they

Yeah.

Agency ought to do and Yeah. The the authorizing committee lays out that road map that you are gonna do because it it ends up having the force of law.

You're gonna do it whether you like it or not.

You're gonna do that. And then the appropriators

You may be the CEO Yeah. But your board is gonna fire you

That's right.

If you don't do it. So, I mean, think of it that way. You know? Even a single can't go off willy nilly doing stuff.

The authorizers approve your strategy largely because they wrote it with a lot of conversation.

Exactly.

And then the appropriators basically decide how much money you're gonna get to go how fast. And Exactly. Sometimes, you know, which thing the authorizers said you could do that they don't give you any money for.

That's absolutely right. Yeah. Yeah. But we reached an agreement, Thanks to president Obama's legislative affairs guru. He and Jack Lew Jack Lew? Jack Lew? Jack Lew? I wanna make sure I get the right the name right because there's a Jack

Lew The head of the head of OMB.

The head of the office of management and budget who became the president's chief of staff. He, we had a meeting with the president one day about the budget and where I had told him what I thought and everything else. I told him that we had this meeting arranged with senator Nelson and senator Kaye Bailey Hutchinson, the the ranking member and chairman of the of the senate authorization committee, and we've had a plan for going in. We had worked with him, and we thought we had a pretty good authorization bill ready to be signed. And, Jack Lew and the and the legislative affairs guys said, we agree, because we've all been involved. We all know what it is. We think you ought to sign on to this. And so we went over and had a meeting in in senator Kay Bailey Hutchinson's office.

And, and we talked it through, and and the question asked was, when we sign this bill, is the president gonna sign it and support it? And the statement that that the legislative affair guy said, I'm he and Jacqueline said, I am here speaking for the president, and you got our word. We're gonna we're gonna execute this authorization act.

That's pretty cool.

That was what became the birth of SLS and Orion, commercial crew and cargo, and everything else that NASA is doing today. And it was a it was a civics lesson for me, the NASA administrator, as I sat there kinda mesmerized by by all this magic going on and by the fact that somebody could really say I'm speaking for the president. Because as the NASA administrator, I did not speak for the president.

You you gotta defend what the president has told you and says, but you don't get you don't get to put his words in your mouth. That's right.

Absolutely.

Same with Noah.

That was among the experiences that I had.

So let's fast forward again a little bit. We really are my take is watching the emergence and the slow maturing of a very new space age. And there are a lot of folks that say you can kinda encapsulate it by noting that the the future is gonna be in space. The future is gonna be increasingly congested, contested, and commercial. But I'm interested on, you know, your take on the big drivers that are really pushing that future and the the big issues that are not yet solved that are real, you know, hurdles and potential roadblocks to some of these visions. So talk us through that. What how would you characterize summarize the new space age?

You did a pretty good job. You know, the the one thing is that NASA remains the leader and the catalyst for discovery and everything. A lot of a lot of people worry or ask me, are you worried that NASA will become irrelevant? You know, that the commercial sector is gonna take over exploration, is gonna get to Mars. You know, Elon says he'll be there in such and such. And my my answer to people is the private sector, 1, can't do that. And 2 Why? They don't well, the private sector without government leadership doesn't have the staying power to run an exploration program. The private sector is driven by the market, and the market will not tolerate the kind of exploration, research, and development experimentation that the federal government does that you do at NOAA and that I did at NASA because there's no return on investment. You know, investors look for look for something to come back this year.

How long were most of your NOAA programs where you would And we didn't you and I never saw a a monetary return on investment. That was that was not our return. Our return was betterment of the planet, blah blah blah blah blah.

Benefit of the public and all.

Benefit of the public, and you can't attach a dollar fee to that. We

So it's kind of patient capital.

Exactly. Exactly. And so that's where NASA and NOAA and federal agencies will always be. They'll be upfront sending the first people to Mars. The good thing is because we had the patience to develop a very vibrant commercial sector that can now provide the launch capability, so NASA doesn't have to worry about that anymore. I don't you know, the NASA administrator I worried about launch vehicles when I was the NASA administrator. Bill Nelson may not I I he he knows what a launch vehicle is, of course, because he launched on 1, but he doesn't have to worry about launch vehicles right now.

It's kinda like if you need to send your people on a business trip or a government trip from LA to New York, you don't need to be worrying about the tire pressure on airplanes and Exactly. Buy a ticket.

We we buy a ticket, or if we don't wanna put them on a commercial airplane, we go to NetJet, and we charter it.

Charter 1.

Yep. And so that's what we do with book with SpaceX and hopefully soon Boeing. We charter it. We go and we tell them, or we get it like a rental car. We say, we need 1 spacecraft for this amount of time to get these many people to space. Can you do that? And if you can, tell me how much it's gonna cost. And we generally go out and we give the contract to the to the to the best bidder, the people that we can work with the most. And so that's something we don't have to worry about.

As we move toward the lunar surface, going back to the lunar surface, the private sector is really looking good as they're developing landers and proposals for for components to what NASA calls the gateway. So at one at some point, NASA's not gonna have to worry about that. And their focus will turn to vehicles to get us to Mars, vehicles to get us to the Martian surface, and then drag the private sector along once the government has spent the money to do that.

But, Charlie, those are commercial companies, private sector companies worrying about a rate of return. But I wanna ask you this both about going to low earth orbit and about going to the moon. Government's role in spurring that and sort of anchoring it with the first investments and the first contracts. But if you think about the parallel to airlines, airlines no longer rely on some big old government contract to keep them afloat because so many people wanna travel by plane for so many reasons. There's a there's a huge demand function that's as varied as human beings are. Do you see that emerging in going to low earth orbit or going to the moon? Something that kind of truly vibrant a market?

No. Not in your and my lifetime.

Okay.

My hope is that somewhere down the line, and I don't know where that somewhere down the line is, People like Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos and people that we don't even know about yet with other space comp launch companies that we don't even know about yet, they will have succeeded in perfecting reusability and everything else such that the cost of getting, you know, a kilogram of mass to space is like putting it on FedEx. That day is long from now. If we can't get a kilogram of stuff at a reasonable cost, we don't stand a snowball's chance in hell of getting a human body, a human being to space with any guarantee that we're gonna return them safely. So that's always gonna be much more expensive than cargo, and we're just not there yet. You know, if if Branson can send somebody, and I'm not sure what his price is today. I think it's 250,000 a seat. That is out of that is out of reach, the average man and woman on the planet.

And he sends you from one part of New Mexico to another.

To another. Now, you know and, I think what was the price for, Axiom was 50,000,000 per seat.

5,000,000 per seat.

Yeah. That's out of reach of the average man and woman. And I think of something being practical and usable and public when every man and woman stands an opportunity to do that, and that does not exist today. And and it angers me when people say, you know, I'm gonna put a 1000000 people on a starship and send them to Mars. We don't have a 1000000 people who can afford one seat.

When we reach the price point that people can afford by at least the 100 of 1,000 or or 1,000,000, what's your take on on what their purposes will be?

Very. I mean, you know, I if if I were king for a day, I'd load up the next dragon crew dragon with a bunch of artists and poets and say, you got a week. And, you're on commission. And when you come back, I want some products that, tell the story that these damn astronauts have been struggling to, you know, for since the beginning of time. And some of them do it okay, and others don't do anything, but they all have to use these damn pictures that they took with a camera. Come back and give me word pictures and some pictures also.

But And music.

And music. But but come back and and tell me in your genre or in your your vehicle, what was it like? So those would be the first people I'd sent. And my guess is if you send Amanda Gorman to space for a week

Oh, yes.

With with Nikki Giovanni, I mean, 2 generations of incredible poets, we'd have kids from Harlem and

You'd have kids from every ZIP code with those poets.

You'd have people lined up, to go to space. People who say, I don't wanna go to space. It's too dangerous. Blah blah blah blah blah. What am I gonna do?

Well, and they all said that about aviation in the back and early days.

So I know. I know. Yeah. But that would be my that would be my king for a day. Give me Amanda Gorman and Nikki Giovanni.

Oh, I'm right there with you. I'll I'll chip in for the ticket. I wanna read those poems. Oh, that yeah. That's fabulous. Yeah. I wanna ask you when they're odd a little bit of a left field question because everyone keeps asking me, and you were way closer to it at the time. But anyone who knows I worked on Hubble and was part of building the toolkit that let it be maintained and serviced and has kept it alive for more than twice its lifetime.

The first thing they asked me about the James Webb Space Telescope is, you know, know, what were they thinking? That it's it's a 1000000 miles away from Earth, kind of in the wrong direction, the opposite side of the sun, and not built at all to be maintained. You know, how's it ever gonna last? You presided over a key period of James Webb, and I didn't quite make well, you maybe were there, but not as administrator for the launch. What's what's your answer to that question? Isn't it devastating that it's not maintainable?

No. Not really.

Why not?

It has a purpose, and we were I say we. People who brief me were confident enough in the technology that we would not have a Hubble travesty because it doesn't have the it's not the kind of observatory that Hubble is. You know, Hubble's an observatory that has 6 new telescopes on it now because we could visit it and everything, and and James Webb is not that kind of observatory. So unless we're planning to change out the 18 segments, which provide the big

18 segments of the mirror?

Yeah. Yeah. Maybe we'd wanna change them out as technology improves, and we have the capability of gathering even more energy from more distant places. I mean, so we can guarantee that we can really go back to the beginning of time. I just don't think it was worth it when we're already developing follow ons to James Webb right now. And what we're I think what we found with James Webb and I'm way out of my league here. You can help me here. You know, it's an in infrared imaging telescope, and it has one purpose, and that's to grab energy that other other instruments cannot detect.

I mean, we send it where we send it, and we freeze it. I mean, it's almost zero it's almost, you know, absolute zero.

Yeah. It's hyper, hyper cold.

The way I explain it to people who are like me, like marines, I'd say, you remember the first time you put on a set of night vision goggles, and the world just lit up and you could see stuff you couldn't see before? I said, that's James Webb.

That's Webb.

Yep. It's a set of night vision goggles, 1.5 kilometers away from Earth that are enabling us to see stuff we couldn't see before. Because

And remember when you put those night vision goggles on, everything sort of shimmer?

Oh, I did. I do.

Because of the heat, the ambient heat, and the way it affects the detectors. That's why we froze it. Yeah.

Yeah.

Get rid of all that.

And I think it will more than fulfill its purpose. The data we're gonna get is gonna be voluminous and will be generations before we even look at one inkling of the data. So let's let technology come along to replace it. And, I mean, I think it you know, in some future life, we may wanna have something that's a 1000000 and a half kilometers away that's that's serviceable by by human beings, but will James Webb last long enough for us to be able to reach one and a half kilometers away from Earth with a human being? We can't do that right now.

Right. We you might have an outpost there, a scientific outpost there at some point like Antarctic Research Station, but

kind

of a little further away.

Yeah. But that that's my take on it. My my uneducated take.

Oh, yeah. Uneducated. My you know what? Well, I we ought to bring this to a close. This has been a great conversation. Do you a little bit of a lightning round of questions?

Sure.

Would you go back? Yes. Would Jackie let you?

That's the only thing that I'm not I could convince her. Yes.

And if the offer came up, if they both were on the table at the same time, moon or Mars?

Mars. I'll take either, but but if given a choice, I wanna go to Mars. I and here's my reason, and I know this is the lightning round. We really are not gonna learn very much that benefits humanity on Mars from going back to the moon. We're gonna be able to do all kinds of technological stuff. The moon has no atmosphere. Mars does. The moon can't be terraformed.

Mars maybe I'm not a big terraform person, but if if people wanna try it, you know, over time, God may do like he's doing here on Earth. He may terraform it on his own because we get wild and crazy when we go up to Mars and and, you know, all of a sudden, it starts heating up again, but let's hope not.

Your 3 best nuggets of advice for a young person listening to this today.

Study hard, work hard, never be afraid of failure.

Ah.

Never ever be afraid of failure. Don't let anybody tell you what you cannot do or what you should do. Listen respectfully to your parents, but follow your passion because, you know, it's your life.

Why is there so much fear of failing?

Because we're told that it's not acceptable. That's the only reason. I I think left to their own designs, kids will they'll try everything and fail and get up and go back and do it again until they get it right. They they just do that instinctively. It's parents that tell them you no. You you can't do that.

You Yeah. Watch out.

Be careful. Even try until you're ready.

What's your hope for the future? What gives you hope for the future?

Oh, I'm an I'm the eternal optimist. I am a I'm a person of faith. One of my priests told me one time when I was telling her I was really struggling right now, she said, well, you know, some people say that the eternal optimist is a person of faith. So I I think my eternal optimism is explained by my faith. I just think, we are created by an omnipotent being, male, female. I don't think it matters or what it is. And I I think our purpose is to make this earth on which we live a better place and a sustainable place, and I think we'll do that over time. I just think there are too many good people on the planet to let evil overcome us, you know, and it doesn't take a lot of evil people.

It's gonna take a lot more of us good people, and I'm taking the liberty of classifying myself as a good person, but but I think we're up to the challenge. So I'm very hopeful that we'll get things straightened out. Life will be better. Life was like I started out, I did not come from humble beginnings. A lot of people, you know, like to think that because they like to see somebody like me and and not believe that we could have had a really rough time, but thought it was good. Yeah. I thought my childhood was incredible. I didn't have the same quality of education as everybody else, but I learned far more than I think a lot of my white kids across town did because I had better teachers.

My my teachers were all dedicated and passionate and focused and knew how difficult life was gonna be for me and prepared me adequately to go out into a world that wasn't gonna treat me fairly. And they, they educated me very early on that life is not fair, so get over it. You know, if you're looking if you're looking for somebody to call you in and hug you and tell you, oh, baby, everything will be okay, push them away.

Ain't gonna happen.

Life is not gonna happen. How did they say it back in the old days? You pay your money and you take your chance.

The other version I liked is shape your future or suffer your fate.

That's it. I like it. I watch people like you, Kathy, and I I mean, I and I've told you this before. I watched you get abused in in all kinds of funny ways, and you didn't seem to let it bother you at all. It just you let water roll off your back. And, I've I told you about Alex Lee, but I've watched too many people who went through much more than I did and come out on the other end really good. And, and it's because they're good people, and good things happen to good people every once in a while.

From your lips to God's ears. Well, Charlie b, this is as it always is for me, such a delight to chat with you, and thank you so much for being so generous with your time that we could wander and cover this great waterfront in such wonderful, rich detail and color. And thank you for being my commander on my flight and, most of all, for being my friend.

Hey. Thank you so very much. Take care of the dog. I see him moving around, Meg.

He is working on it.

Love you, Kathy, and,

take care

of yourself, and we're looking forward to seeing you in person again.

Likewise. Thanks so much for joining me on today's mission. For more solo shows and deep dives with incredible guests along with all the ways to get the podcast and much more, head over to kathysullivanexplorers.com

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