Letter to the House Committee on Science and Technology - 2010-02-05 12:09:22 Feb. 5, 2010
Chairman Bart Gordon and Members Committee on Science and Technology 2321 Rayburn House Office Building Washington, D.C. 20515 Fax: (202) 225-3895
Dear Mr. Chairman and Honorable Members of the Committee:
I am the author of Rocket Boys on which the film October Sky was based. The book and the film are both still enormously popular because the American people love their space program.
Yesterday, I wrote Lori Garver, Deputy Administrator of NASA, and John Holdren, chief of OSTP, asking them to resign. They are the principal architects of the decision to cancel the American lunar spaceflight program known as Constellation. The manner in which the end of Constellation was announced represents a failure of basic Management 101 principles. A good manager never shuts down a large program without having a sound plan on what to do next. Instead, what we got from Mrs. Garver and Dr. Holdren was whimsical, airy drivel without any worthy NASA goal. This decision is essentially a body blow to the American economy since spaceflight is one of the primary drivers of our technological prowess. Garver and Holdren are political activists and gadflys who have no business making serious space policy. They should leave.
Please be assured that I am in favor of commercial companies such as SpaceX, Boeing, Lockmart, etc. taking over cargo duties and even human spaceflight in low earth orbit. This decision, however, must be managed carefully by mature NASA managers with solid technical credentials. I also ask you to work to bring Constellation back in the form of a stated goal to return this country and its International partners to the moon for the purpose of building a laboratory similar to the South Pole Station in Antarctica. This goal would, as President Kennedy so eloquently put it in 1962, "serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills." Putting our engineering and scientific talent to tackle this task will also stimulate our economy in ways no other federal program possibly could. I would be happy to testify before your committee concerning this situation.
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