11/18/2023 0 Comments Escaping gravity lori garverSometimes it even takes a Pearl Harbor or 9/11 event to traumatize the federal bureaucracy into dramatic change. Just ask people who have devoted their lives working to achieve criminal justice reform, or universal civil rights, or major overhaul of the federal government acquisition systems. It often takes decades of fits and starts and dedication by waves of reformers, overcoming occasional missteps, some self-inflicted, some because of government-imposed barriers to entry, to achieve modest, let alone, occasional major public policy reform.Įven then, there is no guarantee of success. ) Of course, he was the first person of color appointed NASA Administrator, 2009-2017, by the nation's first Black President.) (Like Fred Gregory, Bolden achieved an incredible military record in Vietnam, senior leadership positions in the Marine Corps, multiple Space Shuttle missions, including as commander, the list goes on and on. I did write "more persons of color" in the top leadership position" but I should have been explicit in noting the precedent set by Charlie Bolden, a breathtaking hero, by any definition. and (b), most egregiously, in referencing how Fred Gregory was the first person of color to assume the position of NASA Deputy Administrator I indicated that one would hope to see a woman or person of color in the top slot. “A scathing memoir that shows the ugly side of NASA while offering hope for a better future for the space agency.[Author's note: This latest version rectifies two errors: (a) I mistakenly recalled Lori saving an executive in a skiing mishap in Colorado - when, in fact, it took place in Banff, Canada. Don’t take my word(s) for it read this book.” -Bill Nye, CEO, The Planetary Society It wasn’t rocket science, it was much harder than that. or was for a woman effecting change at NASA despite men of the military industrial complex-and their cost-plus contracts. “We are living at the most exciting time in space exploration since the Apollo era, in part because the world’s largest space agency, NASA, got around to trying something new, the funding of commercial crews. Bring popcorn, as you bear witness to an untold slice of space history.” -Neil deGrasse Tyson, Astrophysicist and author of Space Chronicles: Facing the Ultimate Frontier “Former NASA official Lori Garver offers a front-row seat to the decades-long struggles within and among space bureaucrats and space billionaires. Including insider NASA conversations and insights on how the US space industry has been transformed to become the envy of the world and is ushering in a new space age, Escaping Gravity offers a blueprint for how to drive productive and meaningful change. The result: more efficiency and greater progress. She was determined to deliver more valuable programs, which required breaking the self-interested space-industrial cycle that, like the military, preferred to spend billions of taxpayer dollars on programs aimed to sustain jobs and contracts in key congressional districts. The success of Elon Musk’s SpaceX, Jeff Bezos’s Blue Origin, Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic, and countless other commercial space efforts were preceded by decades of work by a group of people Garver calls “space pirates.” Their quest to transform NASA put Garver in the crosshairs of Congress, the aerospace industry, and hero-astronauts trying to protect their own profits and mythology within a system that had held power since the 1950s.Īs the head of the NASA transition team for President-elect Barack Obama and second-in-command of the agency, Garver drove policies and funding that enabled commercial competition just as the capabilities and resources of the private sector began to mature. A former NASA deputy administrator recounts how she battled greed and corruption to revolutionize the agency and usher in a new space age.Įscaping Gravity is former NASA Deputy Administrator Lori Garver’s firsthand account of how a handful of revolutionaries overcame the political patronage and bureaucracy that threatened the space agency.
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