NASA Headquarters Oral
History Project
Edited Oral History Transcript
Robert
M. Lightfoot
Interviewed by Sandra Johnson
Huntsville, Alabama – 18 December 2018
Johnson: Today
is December 18th, 2018. This oral history interview with Robert Lightfoot
is being conducted by phone in Huntsville, Alabama, and Houston, Texas,
for the NASA Headquarters Oral History Project. The interviewer is
Sandra Johnson. I want to thank you again for joining me today for
this interview so we can wrap up your NASA career.
At the end of the last interview we were talking about the transition
after Charlie [Charles F.]Bolden left, and you were there as the [NASA]
Acting Administrator before President [Donald J.] Trump named a full-time
new Administrator. You actually hold the record for being there longer
than any other Acting Administrator. We were talking about the National
Space Council. You said that there was a genuine interest from Vice
President [Michael R.] Pence and that you had a seat at the table
as if you were the actual Administrator.
You also said that Congress worked with you as much as they could
until—and this is a quote from your interview—they got
pretty frustrated near the end. I was just curious. Do you feel that
the frustration that they felt was from not having an actual named
Administrator? Or was it something else that might have been going
on?
Lightfoot:
What I took out of it and actually got on that and where that really
came through for me was in my last hearings on the [NASA] budget.
The last ones I had to do. Most of the people on the committee made
comments at the time, “It’s time to get the actual Administrator
in here.” It was mostly on the House [of Representatives] side,
by the way, where they stated that the Senate needs to act and confirm
the President’s choice. I think it was more frustration associated
with the fact that a nominee had been picked, had gone through committee,
and hadn’t made it to the floor yet for a vote. That’s
my take on it.
It definitely wasn’t frustration with me or frustration with
NASA. I even said it in my testimony, I didn’t feel like I was
slighted at all because I was the Acting Administrator. But clearly
the Agency needs an Administrator that was selected by the President
of the United States was how I put it. I think that was what they
were getting to.
The record before me was 222 days, and I was there for 458. Not that
I was counting, but that’s a pretty big difference than what
they normally had seen.
Johnson: It
was quite a big difference in length at the time, that’s for
sure. You mentioned that was one of your last acts as Administrator,
to give a statement to Congress about NASA’s fiscal year 2019
budget request. Would you talk about that experience just for a minute?
Asking for a budget for an Agency that you were leaving. I’m
assuming you knew you were leaving at some point, but did you have
any idea that it was at the end of that month?
Lightfoot:
I can’t remember if I had announced my retirement or not. I
think I had. Everybody knew, but I still had to present the budget.
Honestly, Sandra, I’ve always been able to compartmentalize
a little bit. As far as I was concerned, whether I was leaving or
not I was still the NASA Administrator, and the NASA budget needed
to be presented to Congress. I didn’t treat it any differently.
I did use the opportunity in my final budget to thank a couple of
members of Congress in my opening testimony that I felt had been very
supportive. Chairman [Lamar S.] Smith was very supportive, and I knew
that he had announced he wasn’t going to run for reelection,
so I thanked him, just as an example.
I didn’t know Chairman [John A.] Culberson wasn’t going
to win, but I thanked him as well just because he’d been such
a staunch supporter and had reached out to me numerous times to make
sure things were going okay. That’s the part where people don’t
see behind the scenes with some of these folks. Some of them are really
trying to do the right thing.
Johnson: You’ve
touched on that a little bit before. Like you said, people don’t
understand that behind-the-scenes work that goes on to get things
approved for NASA. Since we’re a federal agency, we do have
to have things approved by Congress. Those individual members of Congress
do the work that help to get those things approved and support NASA
all the time.
Lightfoot:
Yes. I think it goes even into their staffs. There’s some just
amazing staffers that support these folks. Whether it’s the
personal staff for the members or actually the committee staff. Some
of the committee staff that I dealt with were as knowledgeable of
NASA as me, they’d been doing it for so long, about what we
were trying to do. Which makes it very helpful, because those are
the people that can really influence the discussions. They’re
the ones that would call and ask questions. We have to maintain a
relationship with those folks because you wanted them to call you
when they had questions as you moved forward.
Johnson: I
know that once President Trump announced his pick and the Senate had
a chance to approve him, maybe you can just talk a little bit about
that transition of handing over. Were you there while his staff was
there as part of that transition? How close did you work with them?
Or did you at all?
Lightfoot:
Very little actually. Jim [James F.] Bridenstine finally got confirmed
I want to say April. It was basically a week and a half before I retired,
so we had a very small overlap time. He and I had been talking a lot
as part of him being prepped. I checked on him every once in a while,
made sure if there was anything he needed from me. Just a very respectful
transition.
One of the coolest things about our democracy is we transition from
one to the other. Frankly everything I saw and every time I talked
to him I knew he was going to bring, in my opinion, the type of passion
and the type of understanding of what we need to do as an Agency.
I was very encouraged actually to get him on board.
I wish I’d had a longer transition with him because I think
we could have done a lot more things. Depending on how you read it,
when I announced my retirement is when one of the senators had been
kind of holding up his confirmation actually said, “Well, looks
like we need to go ahead and confirm,” in a tweet. I don’t
know if that’s what caused it to finally happen or not. By then
I’d announced my retirement, so I was done. That’s the
way it worked.
My conversations and my handoff with Jim, even after I left. I told
him, “I’m here. Just reach out if I can help with anything.”
Obviously early on we talked more than we do now, but even now I’ll
check on him.
I think probably one of the most poignant moments was with the Soyuz
abort recently. I immediately sent him a text and said, “Hey,
if I can help in any way let me know.” That’s the kind
of thing no Administrator wants to deal with, or have that on their
watch. That kind of thing.
Johnson: You’ve
had a chance to work under a lot of different Administrators, while
you were in those leadership roles at Stennis [Space Center, Mississippi]
and at Marshall [Space Flight Center, Huntsville, Alabama] and then
again at Headquarters. Maybe if you can just take a moment and talk
about some of those Administrators. Not only their leadership style,
but maybe some of their differences, or the effectiveness of their
leadership style. I know a lot of them are formed by things that they
have to go through. A lot of them had to go through tragedies and
that sort of thing. Maybe talk about that, but also the differences
in their background. The new Administrator doesn’t have that
typical background of an Administrator for NASA. Mike [Michael D.]
Griffin was an engineer. Charlie Bolden was an astronaut. Sean O’Keefe
came from OMB [Office of Management and Budget] and the Navy. Their
backgrounds are pretty diverse, but they were leading the same Agency.
Lightfoot:
The first Administrator I really remember I guess I would say having
any kind of interface with was O’Keefe. Obviously knew who all
of them were before that. I had a little bit of interaction with Dan
Goldin, but I was probably a GS-14 [General Schedule pay scale] maybe,
or maybe a 15. He was not in my chain, he was too far removed from
my chain to pay attention. O’Keefe was probably the first one
that I got to know in some shape, form, or fashion.
That was a case where you had a gentleman that knew government really
well, how to maneuver in government very well, and didn’t have
the technical background but clearly had the chops to deal with OMB
and the [Capitol] Hill. Honestly as an Agency the biggest thing that
happened with him is Columbia [Space Shuttle disaster, STS-107]. Columbia
happened when he was the Administrator. As I think I told you guys
before, leading during easy times is not that hard. Leading during
tough times is very difficult. You exercise muscles you don’t
even know you have. That’s what we saw from O’Keefe when
he did that. He seemed to have the ear of the White House and the
administration at least at some level.
Mike came in, Mike Griffin. I’ve known Mike for a long time.
Just a brilliant, brilliant engineer. He set us on the pace for going
back to the Moon with Constellation [Program] and the other activities
that were going on. Obviously we had an administration change and
then Charlie came. Charlie was a Marine general, an astronaut, had
a different skill set than the other two in there.
I think that the story or the message I would tell people is that
NASA can survive, and prosper actually, not just survive. NASA can
advance what we’re trying to do regardless of who the Administrator
is. What the Administrator does is help to be that bridge between
administration and Congress to make sure that they help us, because
we can’t do anything without all of them supporting. I just
saw many different styles.
Think about any leadership position. There’s different people
that have different styles. They all seem to work for the time that
they’re in there. I don’t think there’s a style
that works, and I think Jim coming from the Hill brings his own set
of strengths. He’s probably a lot more technical than people
ever gave him credit for, at least in my conversations with him. What
I would say about Jim that impressed me the most is he listened. He
listened to things that I talked to him about and took it all in.
He didn’t have an “I’m not going to do it that way”
attitude. He was very much in the learning mode. I think that’ll
bode well for the Agency going forward.
Johnson: Listening
of course is an important part of being a leader. You talked a lot
about leadership in the first two interviews. Maybe we can talk about
your leadership style and method. You mentioned before that you had
always been a bridge builder. You just mentioned again that the Administrator
was the person to build that bridge between NASA and Congress. You
described yourself as a communicator.
Let’s talk about how you developed that leadership style throughout
your career with NASA, and if you had any specific mentors along the
way. You have mentioned some people before. You talked about Roy [S.]
Estess in your first interview and how special he was. If you want,
please talk about your style, and where you felt like that came from,
and how you feel that you developed it.
Lightfoot:
It’s interesting, Sandra, I’m not sure that I ever thought
I had a style. I believe in servant leadership, and that’s got
a pretty specific definition. I’m here to serve my team more
than my team is here to serve me. I believe in situational leadership,
where not everybody responds the same way, so I as the leader have
to change the way that I talk to different people to maximize their
potential going forward.
I think the best way to say it for me is I never thought I deserved
the position I’m in. That keeps you grounded. It keeps you always
trying to be better. I think that’s the way I’ve always
thought. Where did that come from? That comes from my dad. My dad
was a schoolteacher. I witnessed him my whole life growing up. Everybody
he talked to, he talked to them exactly the same way. It did not matter.
It’s a trite saying: from janitor to CEO, as far as he was concerned
there was no difference in the way he treated folks.
I watched that and I watched him be successful. I also knew he wouldn’t
put up with it if I did anything different. He is my hero for a lot
of reasons and still is today. I think he just taught a humbleness
that goes with that. That’s what people tell me, I’m approachable
and humble. That doesn’t mean I don’t have an ego. It
doesn’t mean I don’t want to lead and run. But I also
recognize there’s people that are smarter than me in every room
I walk into. The key leader is the one that can get that brilliance
out on the table in a way that we can actually do something with it.
I love leadership. I love talking to people about my scar tissue that
I have because I’ve had plenty of unsuccessful leadership moments
and I’ve had some pretty successful leadership moments. I tell
people I never set out to do any of this. I never set out to be a
Center Director or an Acting Administrator or Associate Administrator.
It was never on my to-do list. I didn’t really have a to-do
list. I just did the job that was given to me.
I gave a speech when I was presented with the [Dr. Wernher] von Braun
[Space Flight] Trophy here in Huntsville. My speech was about how
I said “yes” a few times when I probably should have said
“no”. A lot of my mentors said yes a few times when they
probably should have said no. That’s how it works. That’s
my style. Being approachable and vulnerable lets people let their
hair down with you and really tell you what’s going on. In this
job as Administrator you need people to tell you what’s going
on. If you don’t know, that’s when we get bit. That’s
when something bad happens. I don’t know if that answers the
question, Sandra, but that’s the way I’ve thought about
it.
Johnson: Yes,
I think it does. You’ve talked about leadership, and I’ve
gotten a good sense of how you felt about those things all the way
through in the different quotes that you follow. The [President] Teddy
[Theodore] Roosevelt quote and the one you mentioned already today,
it’s easy to lead when things are good, but leadership is when
things are hard, that’s true leadership. I feel like we have
a good sense of the way you feel about it, so I appreciate that.
One of the other things I wanted to talk about while you were at Headquarters,
and this is more a cultural question. Earlier in your career in propulsion
and the different fields, you were coming up in a time in NASA when
there were more women moving into NASA, into those types of positions,
but still there weren’t as many as men. Still aren’t.
You served under two different Deputy Administrators who were women,
Lori [B.] Garver and Dava [J.] Newman. Then Lesa [B.] Roe served as
your Deputy Administrator while you were Acting Administrator, and
Krista [C.] Paquin.
It’s interesting to me that you had these women in highly visible
roles at NASA. Talk about them for just a moment and your feelings
about maybe women at NASA, especially with the push for STEM education
[curriculum based on Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math] and
the work that people are doing to attract more women to the fields
that NASA deals with.
Lightfoot:
Part of it for me was early on, I guess 2007ish, when I was Deputy
Center Director at Marshall, I asked Dave [David A.] King if I could
be the champion for diversity and inclusion. In so doing I started
learning more and more about things, enablers, disablers, the kind
of things that come into play, mainly on inclusion, and how easy it
is to pick somebody that’s like you to help you and do the things
that you do.
That was my early lesson. I had lessons before that. My father, I
told you, he would knock me upside the head if I didn’t respect
everyone the same way. What I found, honestly, it’s kind of
interesting, I never thought about that I was working with a woman
or an African American. I don’t want to say that I was blind
to it because that’s not true either, but it wasn’t like
the focus of what I was doing. I just had people that wanted to do
a good job. If I was working for them I wanted to help them do a good
job. If they were working for me I wanted to help them grow and enable
them to be the kind of folks they are.
If you take Lori Garver and Dava Newman for instance, just like the
Administrator conversation we had a minute ago, totally different
skill set, but both incredibly passionate about the Agency and where
they thought the Agency should go. Whether you agree with either one
of them or not, but that’s what they thought.
In my job I worked for them. My job was to do that. Lesa Roe, who
was my first Deputy and then Krista Paquin, who was my second, I didn’t
pick them because they were women. I picked them because they were
the most qualified to do the job. I felt that very strongly. Now look
at Jody Singer who’s the first female Center Director at Marshall.
I could not be more proud of her. Worked with Jody for a long time.
I get asked the question, “What do you think about Jody being
the first female Center Director?” I said, “I’m
really proud of her for that but I’m more proud of her for being
the fourteenth Center Director at Marshall because she’s the
right person for the job.” Not because she’s a woman,
because she’s the right person for the job. I’ve always
thought about it that way.
I’ve had help along the way, you need to know. I’ve had
a couple mentors. One of the first female senior executives at Marshall
Space Flight Center was a lady named Ann [R.] McNair. Ann helped me
a lot when I was younger in terms of some of the decisions that I
might make that were not intentional, but they could be looked at
as unintentional biases. It’s just funny to watch the difference
as you go forward. I learned some things on my own in particular for
women about the way women respond to things versus men. I think you
have to take time, and again, it’s that situational thing. You’ve
got to realize they’re not going to respond the same way a guy
does on some things. That’s not good or bad, it’s just
different. Unfortunately sometimes we bucket that as good or bad.
I never saw it that way. The only time I remember distinctly pointing
something out was I was in a meeting with the head of the NRO [National
Reconnaissance Office], Betty [J.] Sapp, at the time the Secretary
of the Air Force Deborah Lee James, and Charlie Bolden, head of NASA.
These three people were running the meeting. I looked at them and
I said, “This is pretty cool; two women and an African American
running three of the most powerful organizations in this country.”
I thought that was pretty cool. That shows we’ve come a long
way. That’s always been my take on it. Get the best person and
let them do their job, then help them.
Johnson: Yes.
That’s definitely important. It is interesting that you asked
for that job to be in charge of diversity. You learned your lessons
well from your father.
Is there anything about that Acting Administrator time or any other
time when you were actually with NASA that we’ve maybe talked
a little about but not enough? Or anything you wanted to add about
that time?
Lightfoot:
It’s funny, Sandra. I may have already touched on this, and
if I did I apologize. But I’ve done a couple speeches in the
last month. When you guys first started talking to me I will admit
I was probably still coming out of being burned out. That last year
and a half was pretty tough being the Acting Administrator and still
having to do the other job too. But I’ll end this whole thing
with this.
Never underestimate the power of mission. As I get further and further
away now—I’m eight months out of the job—I’m
missing the mission. I love my job today but when you look at what
everybody tries to do and when you look at the mission focus the Agency
has, even other organizations have, you can’t underestimate
how powerful that is, and how great it is to be part of something
bigger than you.
I was able to accomplish things that I could have never done by myself,
but only because I was part of a greater team. I will tell you I’m
growing more and more appreciative of that the further I get away
from it.
Johnson: We’ve
heard it described that way from others. But it is important. It’s
important that people reading this know that being a part of that
mission as you said is something greater than yourself.
When you decided to retire, I’d read that there was some speculation
on how long you’d actually stay actually retired. You mentioned
LSINC [Corporation] before in your other interview. It was ironic
that when you were at Marshall you had worked with them. You had asked
for help outside of NASA after the cancellation of Constellation when
there was that risk of losing that engineering capability at NASA.
They helped you work out some of the strategies that led to that National
Institute for Rocket Propulsion Systems.
I was just curious how you chose or how you moved into this new position
and what you were bringing to it and maybe what you think you learned
from your tenure at NASA that’s helping you in this new adventure.
Lightfoot:
Oh, man. Good question. The reason I chose it is because first of
all I knew the CEO [Chief Executive Officer] really well. I consider
her a good friend. We had traded mentoring moments for probably the
last 10 years. Never thought I’d go work for her, by the way.
I’ll just tell you what I had. I could have gone several places
I think. I had a logic that I was trying to follow in terms of what
I wanted to do next. I was not ready to quit working, but I needed
to get out of the pressure of the job I was under. Pressure is probably
the wrong word. At least the pace. Maybe that’s a better word.
If I wanted to live very long, I needed to get out of that.
It became very clear to me as I was going through some of the potential
offers I had and potential thoughts I had on where I wanted to go
that people were important. I’ve said that as a leader forever,
that people are most important. I should have known that, but it’s
actually fascinating when you start meeting people you’re going
to be working with. If you meet some people that you go, “Oh,
man, that didn’t feel right,” it’s probably not
right. I was just very lucky to meet the team here at LSINC. There
was a good connection, so that was one thing, people.
The other thing was when you come off of a job like the Administrator
at NASA, whether you’re Acting or not, you’re still doing
it. I in essence was serving as the CEO and COO [Chief Operating Officer].
Position became important for me. Not necessarily title as much as
position. What I mean by that is at NASA I was able to really influence
the direction we were going, and influence our message to the next
administration. I wanted to be part of that at the corporate level
wherever I went. If I’d gone to a larger company I’d have
had to pay some dues for a while before I could ever even think about
getting into the corporate structure, and this job offered the opportunity
to jump right into the corporate structure.
The variety of the product that the company was involved in was important
to me. I don’t mean offense to anybody out there that loves
this kind of work, but you could have given me the presidency of a
large IT company and I would have just died. I don’t know IT,
I’m not interested in IT. It’s got to be something I can
put some passion around. Here we had a really cool opportunity; we
do government work and commercial work. The commercial work has nothing
to do with aerospace and defense. It’s just purely commercial
work. That gave me a chance to grow. I want to be able to grow as
well.
What did I bring to that job? I brought probably leadership experience.
The company is growing. It’s a very small business. When you’re
a small business you might not have the processes and structures in
place because you don’t need them. But as you grow you got to
start putting those things in place so that you do that. Clearly I’m
going to know that from those days.
I brought—I think, but you’d have to ask my boss—my
goal is to bring a sense of hey, we got this, we’re OK. I think
I used the phrase with you guys before about “reality-based
optimism”. That’s something that I’ve tried to always
do with our teams. Don’t be an Eeyore down in the dumps all
the time. But also don’t be sunshine and rainbows that everything’s
perfect, we’re going to be fine. You need to bring a reality-based
optimism to this space. That kind of balanced approach is what I brought
to this team as they’re growing.
I can tell you, doesn’t matter whether you’re going from
30 people to 90 people like we’ve done or 3,000 to 9,000, growth
is growth. It brings some interesting challenges and you need some
people at the top that know how to manage that.
Johnson: It’s
interesting because you worked as a civil servant for the government
for a good number of years. Now going into a company that is out there
I assume looking for work. As you said, you work some with private
industry but also with the government. I’m thinking those are
probably government contracts. So, now you’re on the other side
of that. Talk about that for a moment, that difference in being on
the other side of the civil servant system.
Lightfoot:
We do some government work, and it is government contract work, but
it’s usually we’re a sub. We have recently won a prime
job but it’s not really technical, it’s more of a support
job for the Missile Defense Agency.
What I would tell you and what I’ve learned is we civil servants,
they think we’re a lot more strategic than we actually are based
on when we put out a proposal. There’s a lot of guessing about
what do you think they really meant. Which I find interesting, because
sometimes I go, “Wow, I wish we were that good as civil servants.”
On the other side what I find is there’s an immense amount of
talent out here that we got to figure out a way to get involved in
our national missions. The talent is unbelievable. I’m very
fortunate to work with some people here that while it’s not
aerospace and defense work, I can tell you I’d put them against
anybody I know at NASA from a technical perspective, based on the
way they think and the innovation they bring to the table for some
of the commercial solutions we build for our clients. It’s pretty
impressive. I would say it gives me a broader view of the talent pool
this nation has.
As a nation that has big challenges, we just got to make sure we get
that talent pool, get them in the game.
Johnson: I
read an interview with you. In it you made a statement. It was in
relation to NASA, and the question I believe was about robotics versus
human spaceflight. But I thought the statement itself was interesting,
going back to more of a philosophy of work and leadership. It was
the power of and versus the tyranny of or. If you don’t mind,
talk about that for a minute and how you apply that and what you mean
by that.
Lightfoot:
I teach that in my leadership talks that I do. I also talked about
it when it came to commercial spaceflight versus government or traditional
spaceflight. Everybody wants to drive you to an or, and oftentimes
the better answer is and.
People will say robots versus humans. Why not robots and humans? Why
does it have to be an or? I have three tyrannies I talk about. That’s
one of them, and versus or. I used to tell people from a leadership
standpoint if you find yourself being given the challenge of an or,
just replace it with an and and see if it changes the way you think
about the problem.
There’s power in and. A lot of power. You can actually get different
solutions to something. If we do this and that we’re that much
more safe. If we do this or that—why does it have to be an or?
That was the reason I talked about it. I’m quoted probably in
every speech I did as Acting Administrator that this is an and, not
an or. Probably every speech. I’ve said it forever.
There is room for all of us in this global endeavor. So quit making
it an or and cutting people out.
Johnson: It
seems to be a theme going through your career. I thought that was
an interesting quote. I’ve also read other articles where other
people have been quoted as calling you a visionary and that you can
see the future well and plan for it years in advance. They were talking
about you as you were Acting Administrator at the time. I think that’s
interesting and something that would be nice to be described that
way. But do you feel that you can see things maybe sometimes that
are down the road that maybe some other people maybe stuck with those
ors instead of choosing the and or something else like that?
Lightfoot:
I don’t know. I think visionary might have been a stretch. If
I have a skill, Sandra, and it’s not unique, there’s several
people that have it, and by the way the people I surrounded myself
with, always I tried to surround people that had this ability. It’s
not visionary as much as it is think about a game of chess. Good chess
players—I’m not one by the way. I’m going to be
really clear, I’m a terrible chess player. But they’re
usually three or four moves ahead if not five or six moves ahead.
If I had a criticism of me from some of my colleagues it would be
I would get hung up on thinking about the fifth and sixth chess move
before I’d make the first one.
That would drive some people crazy because I would be too slow on
making that first decision, because I was already thinking “Okay,
do that, then this and this.” I think I told you guys I just
look at everything as a systems engineering problem. What are the
components of my system? What has to work together? Then how do I
influence all those components of the system to work together? Sometimes
that takes looking at things completely differently than you would
in a normal way.
That’s really the way I think, the way I process information.
Because I process that way sometimes that lets me pick a different
path than maybe is the real obvious black-and-white path right in
front of you. If that makes me visionary, okay. But I’m not
sure that’s visionary as much as it is just thinking ahead a
few steps.
Johnson: It’s
an important quality though to have I think if you’re going
to be a leader.
As you look back over your career with NASA—and you’ve
mentioned a couple things, but I just wanted to see if you had anything
else. You talked about that time after Constellation as a very difficult
time but also something you were proud of. Is there anything else?
Is there anything if you look back over your entire career that you
would say you are most proud of?
Lightfoot:
I don’t know if I have anything I’m most proud of. If
there was anything really it would be mentoring some of the leaders
that are in place today, or hiring people that I see thriving today.
Not all of them that I hired did great. Not all the ones I selected
are doing great. But those that I did, and I watched them grow. Seeing
a person grow and trying to enable them to grow, that’s a pretty
cool thing, because somebody did that for me. That’s your giving
back.
There’s way too many things that happened in my career for me
to just pick one that I would say was the biggest thing. There’s
so many. Maybe I don’t even want to say that. I’m not
going to go there.
Johnson: That’s
okay. It is a hard question. That’s why we always save these
till last.
Lightfoot:
Sandra, I want to say. I’m going to say the thing that probably
means the most to me. Coming out of Columbia and flying out the Shuttle
safely and the colleagues I got to work with during that time and
bringing all the crews home safe, that to me if I had to pick. There’s
a lot of anxiety and pressure, even though you have done everything
you can do, and you feel good about what you’re flying. We were
really good near the end, and didn’t drop our guard down. I
attribute that to [N.] Wayne Hale and John [P.] Shannon. These are
great people to work with and we were very fortunate. To have gone
through that to me is probably the—if I had to pick, I can’t
imagine having lost another crew. I just can’t even imagine.
That was probably the biggest.
I would say Shuttle did its job. We got the [International Space]
Station built and we got everybody home safe post Columbia. That would
be the one, if I had to pick something, if anybody asked me someday,
I would say, “Yes, I was part of that team that did that.”
Johnson: Sometimes
it’s the same thing, but the other question we like to ask is
what was your biggest challenge?
Lightfoot:
Yes, I think my biggest challenge—I don’t know. That’s
a good question. There’s three that pop in my head.
Johnson: You
can talk about all of them if you want.
Lightfoot:
One is the Constellation cancellation. One is the Shuttle fly-out.
Making sure we did that, and did that well. I think the last one probably
from a challenge perspective, the biggest one, and it’s probably
because it’s the most recent, was just the Acting Administrator
job. I was so worried that I would hurt this great institution that
I believe in so much that I just felt like I had to really jump in
with both feet, make sure we didn’t have that happen. Yes, it’s
not just me, it’s the whole team that does that, but when you’re
at the top you kind of feel like it’s you. I didn’t want
to hurt the team. I wanted to make sure the team was left with a good
mission and good plans to go forward. Felt like I did that, but boy,
it’s constantly on your mind.
Johnson: Is
there anything we haven’t talked about that you’d like
to mention before we go?
Lightfoot:
I don’t think so. I think you guys have covered the waterfront.
Johnson: We
like to cover as much as we can. I do appreciate you talking to me
again, I really do, and just wrapping this up a little bit from our
last interview.
Lightfoot:
I appreciate it, Sandra. Appreciate everything you guys are doing
to capture all this. This is important.
Johnson: We
feel so. We definitely feel it is, and we enjoy doing it.
[End
of interview]
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