NASA at 50 Oral History
Project
Edited Oral History Transcript
Michael
F. O'Brien
Interviewed by Rebecca Wright
Washington, DC – 21 March 2007
Wright: Today is March 21st, 2007. We
are at NASA Headquarters in Washington, D.C., to speak with Michael
O’Brien, the assistant administrator for NASA external relations,
for the NASA at 50 Oral History Project. Interviewer is Rebecca Wright,
assisted by Sandra Johnson. In preparation for the space agency’s
fiftieth anniversary the NASA Headquarters History Office commissioned
this oral history project to gather thoughts, experiences, and reflections
from NASA’s top managers. The information recorded today will
be transcribed and placed in the history archives here at NASA Headquarters,
where it can be accessed for future projects.
Are there any questions that I can answer before we begin?
O'Brien: Ready to go.
Wright: Well, thanks again for taking
this time for us. In your current role you’re responsible for
NASA’s interaction with the nation’s executive-branch
offices and agencies, international relations for each NASA enterprise,
administration of export control and international technology transfer
programs, the NASA History Office, and the NASA advisory councils
and commissions. Could you tell us please how you came into this position,
and briefly describe your background?
O'Brien: Sure. I’ve been
at NASA now for thirteen years, and in my current position as Assistant
Administrator for External Relations for three and a half years. Almost
ten years prior to that I was the deputy in this office. My background,
I spent twenty-eight years in the United States Navy. I was carrier
pilot, and the navy was very, very good to me.
In between assignments operating off aircraft carriers they sent me
on a variety of very interesting tasks, most of them overseas. These
were to go overseas to learn a foreign language, to get a master’s
degree in international relations, to study physics for a while, to
attend the French Naval War College, and then in one assignment for
the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff I spent a couple of years
traveling to the Persian Gulf, before the first Persian Gulf War,
negotiating agreements in Kuwait, Bahrain, Oman, Saudi Arabia, etc.
All of that experience apparently was of interest to NASA when I was
ready to retire from the Navy, and it ended up in my coming here to
get involved in international and interagency relations in the early
nineties.
Wright: How has NASA changed over the
time since you’ve been here?
O'Brien: Well, I think the biggest
change that I’m sure others have talked about has been the Vision
for U.S. [United States] Space Exploration, which was announced by
President [George W.] Bush on January fourteenth of 2004, and it was
a long process that I’m sure Mike [Michael] Griffin and others
will go into greater detail on, but it represented a strategic shift
in direction for NASA with a very significant aspect, in that for
the first time in decades NASA was going to make plans to build vehicles
to go beyond low-Earth orbit again back to the Moon to establish an
outpost, and then ultimately to explore beyond low-Earth orbit, not
only with robots as we’re doing now, but with humans.
So that change was brought about initially, and sadly, by the loss
of [Space Shuttle] Columbia [STS-107] several years ago, after which
NASA, as a result of the Columbia Accident Investigation Board’s
report really had a soul-searching several months, during which it
not only reacted to the recommendations of the report related to the
accident itself, but also looked at its long-term strategic plan,
and what its real mission in support of space activities, and ultimately
support of the American people should be. That led to this change,
and to me that’s the biggest change that’s taken place,
and now it’s going to be with us for decades. It’s a pretty
exciting place to be right now.
Wright: How did that vision change your
job specifically?
O'Brien: Very good question. My
job, as you mentioned some of the aspects, really breaks down into
four things, the NASA History Office, support for NASA advisory councils,
interagency relations (relationships with the State Department, Department
of Defense, the White House staffs, etc.), and international relations.
The international relations portion of it is about half of what I
do, and this change in strategic direction came with a direction from
the president to pursue international cooperation in this new vision,
this new set of activities. So since 2004 we have been very, very
active going around the world explaining the details of this new plan,
explaining the fact that the president has directed us to cooperate
in the implementation of the plan, and trying to work out with basically
thirteen or fourteen different countries the details of what that
cooperation would mean.
I might add that that is new, because there are new things that we
are going to do in the next several years or decades, as we move off
the surface of the Earth beyond low-Earth orbit to the Moon and Mars.
It is new but it is not necessarily different. NASA is extraordinarily
international, and has been since its inception fifty years ago. The
[National Aeronautics and] Space Act that created NASA also had language
in it that basically said, “NASA should cooperate internationally
in the implementation of its vision.”
As a result, over the last fifty years we have had about four thousand
international agreements, and this surprises people, I think, sometimes
to hear those numbers. Now, I’d be hard pressed to produce all
four thousand of them, but for the last several years we’ve
been doing a very good job of taking these agreements and putting
them in a database, and we know, for example, in the last ten years
we have signed nine hundred agreements, with 75 percent of those coming
from ten countries around the world, Germany, France, Italy, Russia,
China, the U.K., Australia, India, etc., which leads us to today,
where we have currently active 256 international agreements, with
the number of countries about sixty.
So that’s in position, active right now, which keeps us very
busy just either negotiating new agreements, updates to those agreements,
or maintaining them. So the fact that we’re going to have international
cooperation in this new plan is exciting and it allows us to do new
things with partners we’ve had for a long time. It doesn’t
represent much of a change in what I’m doing, just a change
in emphasis.
Wright: You recently traveled to China
with Administrator Mike Griffin. How do you believe that that trip
and those discussions will enter into NASA’s future?
O'Brien: Well, it’s going
to be a slow process. The Chinese have a space capability of some
significance. They’re only the third nation in history to have
launched and recovered human beings into orbit safely. The trip came
about as a result of a summit between the two presidents a couple
of years ago, during which President Bush basically said as one of
the many outcomes in the summit, that if the Chinese National Space
Agency, CNSA, invited the NASA Administrator to visit, then we would
consider that invitation and perhaps would accept it, which we did.
The idea was to have a visit without a firm agenda for cooperation.
It was a get-to-know-you visit, during which we visited several locations
of the Chinese space activities, both in Beijing and in Shanghai.
Interestingly, we didn’t go to their human spaceflight launch
facility in the Gobi Desert. We were going to go there, but at the
last minute they told us that we were really only going to go be allowed
to see the launch pad, and we decided that we would do other things
instead of being restricted, which was interesting, and it’s
a reflection of the fact that unlike the United States, China organizes
its space activities either under the military, which is where the
human spaceflight activities take place, or under the civilian agency.
So we only saw what the civilian agency could show us.
Things have changed a little bit since our return. We came back, reported
back to the president and his staff the results of the trip, and thought
we would perhaps be having more visits, which we may very well, to
look at ways we could cooperate, first on the easy things, data sharing
etc., for Earth observation. But the Chinese in January, as you may
well be aware, destroyed one of their own satellites in an ASAT [Anti-Satellite]
test, which was a great concern not only to the United States but
to the rest of the world, because it created orbital debris that has
increased the risk to satellites and even humans that—including
Chinese—may be launched.
So the U.S. government and the Chinese government are talking to one
another about that. We’re not involved in those conversations.
Even before the ASAT test there were other, there are other existing
issues having to do with nonproliferation, human rights, etc., at
a government-to-government level, and we’re a technical agency.
We don’t get involved in those discussions.
But the results of those discussions will have an impact one way or
another on whether or not we can pursue cooperation. So for a variety
of reasons, existing issues between the two governments, as well as
the more recent issue of the Chinese ASAT test, tell me that we will
be going rather slowly, which is fine, with the Chinese in terms of
discussions about cooperation.
Wright: What do you believe to be NASA’s
impact on society?
O'Brien: Well, I’m probably
not the right guy to answer this question. There are lots of anecdotal
stories about everything from Tang [orange drink] to microwaves to
pacemakers, etc., that some claim came from NASA, and a lot of those,
as I look at it coming from a non-technical position, there’s
a kernel of truth in a lot of those things. NASA is at the leading
edge of technology development and exploration, and doing those types
of things that no one else is doing or can do forces us to develop
technologies in order to accomplish those tasks.
As it turns out, many of those technologies are directly applicable
to what humans do on Earth. Now, the argument is, and it’s a
subjective one, maybe those things would have been developed anyway
in the absence of a space program. I don’t believe that. Well,
I shouldn’t say that. They may be developed, but not as quickly,
and some of them may never have been developed, because we didn’t
even know they were applicable to life on Earth until they were developed
in space.
So I think in terms of making life better for Americans and people
around the world there’s been a tremendous impact, if you just
talk about products. If you talk about things that you can observe
from space that we all take for granted now, such as weather satellites,
the ability to monitor the weather, that has a huge impact on the
nation and on the world, as do communications satellites, some parts
of which were developed by NASA, some of which were not developed
by NASA. On occasion it’s difficult to draw a distinction between
the two.
The other impact I think that we have that is even more subjective
than things that have come from space technology that we use in our
own lives is the exploration aspect, and that’s what we’re
embarked on now. We came from explorers that immigrated to this country.
I think we have an explorer spirit. There is always debate about how
much is enough, and why are you spending money to go there when the
money could be spent here to do other things. It wasn’t any
different four or five hundred years ago when this country was being
explored and discovered.
There are benefits that will come from that, but you don’t know
what you don’t know. It’s like performing research in
a variety of areas that 99 percent of them don’t come to fruition,
but the one percent that does changes everybody’s life for the
better, and I think that that’s an aspect of this exploration
program that we’re on that will pay dividends when we get out
there and see things that we don’t even know exist.
Wright: NASA has a history of itself,
and it’s not just been exploration. It’s also included
other aspects. Can you share with us your thoughts of how that’s
going to be part of your vision?
O'Brien: Sure. I think one of
the things that in our enthusiasm for this new vision that I’ve
tried to be mindful of is that NASA has been doing a lot of things
for forty-eight years before the vision changed our direction in a
strategic sense, that we will continue to do. One group of these activities
is very international, and I mentioned it a little earlier in another
context, and that has to do with Earth observation, for a variety
of reasons.
Our science program at NASA is split into two categories. They used
to be separate; they’ve been joined together under the science
mission directorate. One of those has to do with planetary probes
and planetary exploration, the Rovers on the surface of Mars, for
example. The other very important aspect of it that is not beyond
low-Earth orbit is within low-Earth orbit, close to the Earth, is
those spacecraft that observe the Earth for a variety of reasons,
not just weather, but basically to understand the Earth as a system,
so that we can understand the changes that take place that are caused
or determined by the actions of man, or those that are natural phenomenon
like weather, for example, that is not necessarily caused by man,
but we still need to understand.
Currently NASA has forty-four missions on orbit, both interplanetary
and those that are in low-Earth orbit observing the Earth. I don’t
know the split between the two exactly. The reason I know that number
is because 25 of those have a significant international component.
So of those 256 agreements that we have, there are a subset of those
that involve our cooperation on these 25 active missions that are
either interplanetary or are some sort of Earth observation, very,
very important for the nation and the world, either for the weather
forecasting that comes from NOAA [National Oceanic and Atmospheric
Administration] , or for the understanding of the Earth so that we
can, we meaning the global we, can make good decisions based on our
understanding of the Earth as an entire system.
The reason that international cooperation is so important in that
respect is that you have to have buy in from other countries, for
a couple of reasons. One is, if you are taking measurements from space
and you say that deforestation is taking place at a certain pace in
the Amazon or in the Middle East, you need to be able to go into the
country and calibrate those measurements from actual instruments on
the ground, so you know that what you’re seeing from space reflects
reality on the ground. Therefore, the country that you’re interested
in has to agree to let you come in, and has to cooperate with you.
So that’s one aspect, so that you know that the measurements
you’re taking from space do, in fact, reflect reality.
And then the second, maybe even more important aspect is, if there
are decisions to be made to counter those changes that are caused
by the actions of humans, and these types of changes don’t respect
national boundaries, those countries, large countries, perhaps China
and India and Brazil as very large countries, would have to agree
to make some of those changes as well as the United States. Otherwise
the effect will not be as important, or it won’t be as effective
if you’re trying to change a process that may be, in fact, negative,
such as deforestation is one example, or pollution in the oceans,
etc.
So there’s a lot of ongoing activities that don’t really
fall into the category of exploration beyond low-Earth orbit, but
they’ve existed for a long time and they will continue to exist,
and are, in fact, part of the vision. Part of the vision, the words
are to the effect of an integrated plan of Earth observation and exploration
and aeronautics as we move forward. The focus generally in the last
couple of years has been on the new kind of interesting stuff, the
new stuff we’re going to build, and the fact that we’re
going to retire the shuttle, etc., and it’s a much bigger program
than that.
Johnson: We were talking about the vision.
Let’s talk about the lessons learned based on your experience
in NASA, or based on the history of NASA. What do you feel are the
lessons learned?
O'Brien: It’s a pretty broad
question. Let me focus in a little bit on one aspect of lessons learned
that is of great interest to me, and that would be the next kind of
big thing for NASA right now is the retirement of the space shuttle,
and the corresponding development and production of a replacement
vehicle. That is going to, unfortunately, result in a four- or a five-year
gap, similar to what we had between Apollo [Program], maybe hopefully
a little shorter, between Apollo and the Space Shuttle, gap in human
spaceflight capability for the United States.
We will get beyond that, and we will, as I mentioned earlier, cooperate
in the implementation internationally of this new exploration plan,
so that we will hopefully end up on the surface of the Moon a decade
or so from now, with an outpost of some sort that is constructed by
some sort of international consortium. It could be two, could be ten,
don’t really know.
But I think it’s fair to say that we have a lot of international
experience in embarking on these types of activities. International
Space Station is a perfect example of that. So what we are doing now
is looking at lessons learned from a variety of past activities, so
that we can put our best practices forward in implementing whatever
arrangement comes out of our plans to go to the Moon, not alone but
with other partners.
We need partners that have the interest in space exploration, the
capabilities to partner with us, and the resources to do that. We
have all three, and we have greater resources than anyone else in
the world by a factor of two or three. We’re very, very lucky
in that respect. What we’re looking for is other countries not
as big as us, not to do the same things as us, but to do complementary
things.
We have a history with all of our potential partners, perhaps save
a few such as China, if we can resolve the issues I mentioned earlier,
and we will look at our history of operating both bilaterally and
multilaterally in groups with these likely partners, in order to avoid
some of the mistakes of the past, but also capitalize on the good
things that we’ve done.
Johnson: As far as NASA’s role
with the nation, you’ve touched on the human and robotic spaceflight
and the number of actual missions that are ongoing. What about the
importance of aeronautics in NASA?
O'Brien: Well, aeronautics is,
of course, the first A in NASA. It is very important to NASA. It does
not get the same level of resources of some of the other mission directorates,
and that’s a decision made way above my pay grade. And, of course,
I’m sure you’re asking Dr. [Lisa J.] Porter the same question,
so I’ll only go into it from my perspective, which is one that
will be the following.
Of the mission directorates that we have, science, space operations,
exploration systems and aeronautics. Aeronautics is the least international,
and it’s probably the least international because it involves
developments of technology that could be used for military purposes,
of course, and jet aircraft, or could be used for or related to commercial
aspects of civil aviation and competition. So there is very little
international cooperation in the Aeronautics Research Mission Directorate.
There are some studies that have to do with safety and things of that
nature that would not impact our ability to apply those things that
the Aeronautics Research Mission Directorate does to either civilian,
civil aviation capabilities, or could be related maybe to the military
later on in some aspect. So from my perspective it’s, of course,
an extremely important aspect of what NASA does, but this office has
a relationship with the Aeronautics Research Mission Directorate,
but not as much as others.
Johnson: Let’s talk about NASA’s
culture. There’s been a lot of talk about NASA’s culture,
especially after Columbia. What is your perception of NASA culture?
O'Brien: Well, that’s a
tough one, a tough one in the sense that it’s subjective and
you probably get as many opinions about it as there are people that
you ask the question. There have been surveys done and it ranges from,
“NASA is the best place in government to work,” which
a year or two ago came out among fifty agencies or whatever the number
of agencies, or to other surveys that have shown a large proportion
of folks in NASA don’t believe what their bosses tell them,
which is of great concern.
When it gets to the point of which I think we did get to in both Columbia
and [Space Shuttle] Challenger [STS 51-L], where there was some reticence
on the part of individuals in the chain of command or parallel to
the chain, to use a military term, that were reticent and hesitated
to mention safety concerns that they had, or did mention safety concerns
and felt like they were discounted, that’s a real problem. It’s
a problem that was, I think, and I forget exactly how it was characterized,
but was pointed out as one of the causes of the accident by the Columbia
Accident Investigation Board, that there was a failure to communicate
at very specific times throughout that horrible incident and build
up to it, that led to the launch and the failure of the wing when
the foam came off the external tank.
There’s been a lot of effort to address the culture through
a variety of mechanisms. For me, in an organization that has only
fifty-four people, and less than fifty are here in this building,
it’s a little bit easier. I won’t say we do a good job,
I’ll just say that it’s easier to communicate with folks
when you’re only worried about fifty folks and people around
this town that I communicate with as well, much easier to deal with
that than it is to deal with seventeen-thousand that the Administrator
has to think about, and he’s got his own thoughts on it, I’m
sure.
Now, one of the things that helps very much in our current environment
with our current Administrator is that he answers questions very directly,
makes it very clear what he wants to do and where we are going. That
is helpful as you communicate down the chain of command, because generally
speaking, I think that his direct reports will tell you, they don’t
have any doubt about what their objectives are and what their guidance
is from the Administrator. That’s good because that allows you
to be more direct with your subordinates, so that this loss of a clear
idea of objectives and the ability to transmit back up the chain of
command becomes a little bit easier than it might have been in the
past.
So I think we’re in a pretty good situation from the point of
view of leadership being clear, but it’s a tough, tough issue
to deal with when folks that are working on the Space Shuttle or on
other hardware feel like they can’t communicate with their supervisors.
That’s a tough one. It almost needs constant supervision by
others in the agency to deal with strategic communications, for example.
I don’t know if you’ve talked to the communications and
public-affairs folks. They think about that every day.
Johnson: If someone asked you, if they
were thinking about joining NASA and becoming an employee with NASA,
what would you say to them?
O'Brien: Well, I’d tell
them that this is a terrific place to work, and I’ve been doing
this for, it’s hard to believe, thirteen years now, and every
day I get up I literally look forward to coming to work. Just look
at what we do. You go down and watch a Shuttle launch once—I
don’t know if either of you have had the opportunity to do that—and
then realize that even if it’s only a small piece, that you
have had a piece of the action, you’ve had a part of that incredible
achievement, and it’s not just—the Shuttle is probably
the most visible, but all of these other forty-some missions that
I mentioned, very few of them launched on the Shuttle. They launch
on other expendable launch vehicles of our country or of other countries.
You can really get a feeling for what the impact that you’re
having on something that’s real, and you know, somebody that
works for other parts of the federal government I don’t think
could possibly get the same feeling, although I’m sure they’re
proud of what they’re doing. I know that myself personally I
wouldn’t get the same feeling working for—I hesitate to
give an example, but I will—for the IRS [Internal Revenue Service],
for example, a very important organization, but I doubt that I would
get the same day-to-day satisfaction that I get working for NASA.
So I’d give an unqualified endorsement on trying to work for
NASA. It would also come with a caution; if it’s not a caution
it’s advice, if it’s a younger person in college or graduate
school, it’s that you’d better do well, because it’s
a high bar.
I’ll give you an example. We have what we call desk officers,
and about half of those that work here are international program specialists.
They generally, a lot of them have Ph.D.s or significant international
experience, speak languages, etc. When we were hiring a couple of
years ago, we put out a call to fill three of those desk-officer billets.
We got four hundred applications. [laughs] So that tells you that
people want to work for NASA. We have no problem getting qualified
people. The problem is finding enough space to keep all the qualified
people that want to work here. It’s a neat place to work.
Johnson: I agree with you. Is there
anything else that you’d like to ask?
Wright: I don’t know if you had
a chance to ask about looking at the next fifty years, what do you
believe the role of NASA will be, and in your case not just in the
nation but internationally?
O'Brien: Well, I think that, and
thankfully whoever wrote the exploration vision for the president,
and some folks here were involved, but it was a fairly small group
of folks in the U.S. government that did this, they put in the direct
guidance that—it’s only a three-page document—that
directs NASA to, “pursue international cooperation in the implementation
of the vision.”
That’s a very powerful statement for a person in my position,
because I now have a piece of paper with the president’s signature
on it that says that I need to go talk to people and give them the
opportunity to come up with a mutually beneficial way to cooperate.
Given that building a transportation system is going to be extremely
expensive, and we are one of only a couple of countries in the world,
Russia, Europe, maybe India and China, that have the capability to
do that, not all of them have the resources.
We’re going to expend such a large portion of the NASA budget
on building a transportation system, it’s going to be almost
mandatory to have cooperation on the international scale in order
to be able to actually do something when we get to wherever we are
going. So, part of it is just common sense. The sum of the parts is
greater than the individual sum of the individual parts. We can rely
on capabilities that others provide that we would not have to provide,
and vice versa. All of the others will be relying on NASA, for example,
to provide transportation. In return we’ll get the use of some
of the capabilities that they provide.
So it was laid down in the actual direction in 2004, the program is
going to go for the next twenty or thirty years, so for a good portion
of the next fifty years that you mention, NASA is going to be in the
business of international cooperation for these exploration activities,
and as I mentioned earlier, we’re already, in a very huge way,
in the business of international cooperation with respect to robotic
interplanetary probes, and robotic spacecraft that are observing the
Earth from low-Earth orbit. That I expect to continue as well, and
probably even expand.
Johnson: Is there anything you’d
like to add before we end?
O'Brien: Not that I can think
of. It’s a privilege to sit down and talk to you all. I’ve
probably got the best job in NASA, other than maybe the Administrator,
and not too many people know that, because our little organization
touches just about everything that NASA does, whether it’s international,
interagency, the history office, advisory committees, and so we’re
involved in everything in a supportive way. We’re not in charge
of anything.
We only support the mission directorates and the execution of their
programs by providing a little international expertise, and the contacts
and the context, negotiation and maintenance of agreements for the
mission directorates, so that as they do their very difficult technical
jobs they don’t have to worry about some of these other things
that we worry about. So it’s a good, I think, division of labor
for all of us, seems to have worked fairly well, and I appreciate
the opportunity to talk a little bit about it.
Johnson: Well, thank you.
[End
of interview]