Diversion Books, 2022
ISBN: 9781635767735
This review appears in issue 29:2 of Quest: The History of Spaceflight Quarterly.
Spaceflight and particularly human spaceflight have gone through some major changes in this third decade of the 21st century. In 2020, the first crews flew aboard the SpaceX Dragon spacecraft and the Falcon 9 rocket to the International Space Station, and since then Dragon’s flight manifest has included the first purely private flights of humans into space.
The rise of SpaceX to its commanding position in the space business of course owes a great deal to the drive and vision of Elon Musk and the team he assembled, but it also got a crucial assist from NASA when it overcame its traditional way of doing business by putting the private sector at its heart.
Arguably the person at the center of this major change at NASA is a woman who wasn’t even born when the first American rocketed into space in 1961, Lori Garver. After serving for nine years as the executive director of the National Space Society, Garver went to NASA in 1998, serving for three years as Associate Administrator under Administrator Daniel Goldin and President Bill Clinton.
Out of office in 2001 and 2002, Garver gained public attention from her attempt to become the world’s first “Soccer Mom” to fly to the ISS, an effort that ultimately fell short. During that decade, she advised the John Kerry, Hilary Clinton and Barack Obama presidential campaigns on space issues. Under President Obama, she served as Deputy Administrator of NASA from 2009 to 2013.
During those four years, Garver championed private sector solutions to the difficult spot NASA found itself in as the Space Shuttle program neared the end of its run. That left the agency without a viable replacement to get astronauts into space and back home aside from hitching rides aboard Russian Soyuz spacecraft.
SpaceX had been saved from financial ruin by short-term support from NASA in the final days of the George W. Bush administration, but Garver moved to strengthen this support through a Commercial Crew Program that was opposed by many in NASA and in the old-line aerospace contractors that had lost their way under inefficient and expensive cost-plus contracts.
In contrast to the growing library of books on Elon Musk and the rise of SpaceX and other new firms, very little has been written about the NASA side of this story until the recent publication of Garver’s memoir, Escaping Gravity: My Quest to Transform NASA and Launch a New Space Age. Like the author, this book will inspire a whole variety of reactions among readers, depending on their viewpoints.
The recent successes of the new commercial spaceflight providers such as SpaceX and Blue Origin have inspired many people to take credit for these advances, including some unlikely candidates who are more strongly associated with longtime military and NASA contractors. Garver’s account gains credibility from the controversy that followed her in the days when the successes of today were far from assured.
Garver is not afraid to call out people with whom she locked horns, including the Obama era NASA administrator she served under, former astronaut Charlie Bolden, and today’s NASA administrator, former senator Bill Nelson. In spite of her association with Democratic administrations, I found that her account handed out both praise and criticism on a bipartisan basis.
Once the urgency of Apollo had passed, Garver accurately argues that NASA had become focused on preserving jobs in favored congressional districts at the expense of exploring space in an efficient manner. Many national defense programs suffer from the same problems that have troubled NASA, she says, and so taxpayers get little security for their money. Other social priorities such as public health suffer while the military-industrial complex that President Eisenhower warned of continues to grow.
“Government policies should incentivize individuals, nonprofit organizations, and corporations of all sizes to drive innovations that will respond to today’s challenges, instead of spending massive public resources to prop up outdated infrastructure and weapons systems aimed at fighting past enemies,” Garver concludes.
I found this book to be especially valuable because so little has been written about the political history of U.S. space programs since the beginning of the Clinton administration. Many of Garver’s assertions will spark controversy and disagreement, but this reviewer hopes that they will inspire others – including the targets of Garver’s criticisms – to write about the policy initiatives of the last 30 years that have transformed today’s space programs.
No comments:
Post a Comment