Categories: NASA

“Feelings” Are Back at NASA

[/caption]
Steely-eyed missile men may still be a part of NASA, but the space agency’s newly sworn-in administrator says he is an unabashed hugger and admits to crying easily. “One more thing you’ll learn about me, I cry,” said Charlie Bolden at an all-hands video meeting with the NASA centers. “I think it’s important to be passionate.” Bolden’s Deputy Administrator Lori Garver said she’s a hugger, too and as Bolden and Garver hugged on stage, Garver exclaimed, “Feelings are not something that were popular in the last few years at NASA, but they’re back. Feelings are back!”

Garver was obviously referring to former administrator Mike Griffin, who once said, “I don’t do feelings, just think of me as Spock.”

Bolden, a retired Marine Corps general and four-time shuttle astronaut, spoke at length about himself and his hopes for NASA’s future. He asked NASA employees in attendance to raise their hands if they didn’t think NASA should go to Mars. When no one raised their hands, he said, “We all agree we want humans to go to Mars, we don’t agree on how to get there. The challenge is to figure out the most efficient, most cost-effective path to get there. We can’t get there the way we’re doing it right now, with a whole bunch of different people thinking we’ll do a little of that and a little of this. We need to come together with a coherent plan.”

A presidential panel is reviewing options for the NASA’s human space program and is expected to issue its report next month. Bolden told workers the review is “nothing to be afraid of.”

Also, a second review encompassing all areas of space — military, commercial, civil and scientific — is under way by the national security advisor, James Jones, a retired four-star Marine general.

“There needs to be a coherent policy and so President Obama has asked General Jones to put together a group to take a look at the national space policy,” Bolden said.

Bolden said he wants working at NASA to be fun. “I will make mistakes, but I’m going to have fun, and I want all of you (NASA work force) to have fun,” he said. However, he cautioned that working in space is a risky business, and not everything is fun. “NASA is in the news every day and there’s always the potential for it to be bad news when we have people in space.”

Showing that she is in touch with the public’s views of NASA Garver shared some encouraging poll results about public opinion of NASA. Of those polled, 72 per cent have a positive impression of NASA. That’s better than Apple, Garver said, which got only a 63 per cent rating.

“We are more popular than your iPod,” she said.

Both Bolden and Garver said they were incredibly proud to be working at NASA again. “I look forward to working with you all,” Bolden said, “and we have some important things we have to do.”

Nancy Atkinson

Nancy has been with Universe Today since 2004, and has published over 6,000 articles on space exploration, astronomy, science and technology. She is the author of two books: "Eight Years to the Moon: the History of the Apollo Missions," (2019) which shares the stories of 60 engineers and scientists who worked behind the scenes to make landing on the Moon possible; and "Incredible Stories from Space: A Behind-the-Scenes Look at the Missions Changing Our View of the Cosmos" (2016) tells the stories of those who work on NASA's robotic missions to explore the Solar System and beyond. Follow Nancy on Twitter at https://twitter.com/Nancy_A and and Instagram at and https://www.instagram.com/nancyatkinson_ut/

Recent Posts

We Understand Rotating Black Holes Even Less Than We Thought

The theory of black holes has several mathematical oddities. Recent research shows our understanding of…

4 hours ago

Habitable Worlds are Found in Safe Places

When we think of exoplanets that may be able to support life, we hone in…

4 hours ago

New Glenn Booster Moves to Launch Complex 36

Nine years ago, Blue Origin revealed the plans for their New Glenn rocket, a heavy-lift…

4 hours ago

How Many Additional Exoplanets are in Known Systems?

NASA's TESS mission has turned up thousands of exoplanet candidates in almost as many different…

8 hours ago

Hubble and Webb are the Dream Team. Don't Break Them Up

Many people think of the James Webb Space Telescope as a sort of Hubble 2.…

15 hours ago

Scientists Have Figured out why Martian Soil is so Crusty

On November 26th, 2018, NASA's Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy, and Heat Transport (InSight)…

23 hours ago