Mars Win Gives Goldin Political Leverage

Washington, DC – July 8, 1997 – The whole world went to Mars this weekend, and
nobody was happier than Daniel S. Goldin. The NASA Administrator literally
has bet the future of his civil space agency on producing cheaper space
missions, reduced manpower levels, and advanced technology without the
responsibility for mission operations for such budget eaters as the shuttle – and just possibly the space station, too.

The Mars Pathfinder was perhaps the most visible of the space chief’s
“faster, better, cheaper” missions in which low cost probes are sent to
gather data from destinations in the solar system once the territory of
larger, more complex spacecraft. Goldin’s philosophy has been that it’s
better to send a robot with a few instruments today than wait for decades
for the funding to support launching more purposeful craft.

The only problem with such a view, critics have argued, is that cheaper
doesn’t mean necessarily better. And that more complex spacecraft just
might be a better value. Goldin, though, has seen his agency’s budget
shrink nearly 40% in five years, so he could reasonably argue that the
funds for more advanced craft will in fact never be forthcoming, from
either this Congress or this administration. The success of the Pathfinder
will now give Goldin a stronger hand in dealing with a growingly
recalcitrant Congress threatening to impose increasingly complex reportage
requirements over the Russian participation in the International Space
Station. He has resisted these moves, and the heat on Capitol Hill has been
rising on the generally popular space chief.

And the administration finds itself wedded to the administrator that it
desperately tried to dump back in 1993. Goldin, however, knew that the key
to his survival was taking the administration’s policy and bending the
agency to fit -a move that some have said has cost NASA jobs, area
competence, and capabilities that it may never get back. The agency in fact
is now about the size it was in May, 1961 when Kennedy embarked upon the
Apollo path. Goldin says that the size is about right, given today’s
political climate. Sending a robot the size of a suitcase to Mars may just
show the political world that, in this climate, size doesn’t matter if you
get the job done.