NASA - National Aeronautics and Space Administration

A wide range of topics was on the menu when NASA Administrator Mike Griffin addressed a breakfast gathering of Women in Aerospace (WIA) in Washington.

Image left: NASA Administrator Mike Griffin at the Women in Aerospace breakfast in Washington on May 3. Photo credit: NASA/Bill Ingalls.

About 200 people from industry, government, academia and the media attended the sold-out May 3 event, commemorating WIA's 20th anniversary. It was Griffin's first public speech since taking the helm at the Agency, and he covered everything from Return to Flight to NASA Culture to the Vision for Space Exploration.

Naturally, Women's representation in the aerospace industry and in NASA was a key topic. Griffin said that in the future there will be more women in senior positions in NASA. "I am just looking for the best people. I'm not concerned with what package they come in. I just want to access their brains," he said (Full Transcript -- 52Kb PDF).

This resonated with WIA members. The organization was founded to expand women's opportunities for leadership and to increase their visibility in the aerospace community. It was the answer to what the aerospace community was like in those days: "an old boy's club." WIA would be the "old girl's club."

But, WIA was, from the beginning, open to men as well as women, because, as NASA Deputy Associate Administrator for Space Operations Lynn Cline said, it was recognized that "given the demographics in the aerospace field, (1) there was no point in women exclusively networking among themselves, (2) many of us have benefited from male mentors or advocates who have assisted our career development, and (3) discrimination is illegal for such a non-profit group." Cline added, "the thought was that men could be equally devoted to the advancement of women in aerospace and the organization should welcome both genders in that cause."

Griffin, who has made clear that he's focused sharply on Return to Flight, told the crowd, "the first step back into space for NASA is STS-114." He said "nothing is more important to our future than flying the Shuttle successfully, because we're going to be relying on it until 2010." He added that flying into space "with the technology we have will continue to be expensive, difficult, and dangerous." He added during his watch no Shuttle flight will be considered routine.

He also commented on his decision to postpone the mission from May to July, saying it was the right thing to do. "There were too many open items," he said, adding that making the right decision takes patience, not a trait he is known for. "Mike not only has no patience, you'd have to add patience to Mike just to get up to zero," he quipped.

"People need to know that there is encouragement and not retribution for having something to say which is different from the common thought of the common herd," -- NASA Administrator Mike Griffin, to the Women in Aerospace breakfast

About the NASA Culture, Griffin said this: "What I see we need to focus on in NASA in terms of mending the culture, to the extent that it needs to be mended, are traits we were taught in kindergarten: listen to what people have to say, pay attention to their opinions, give them the respect of hearing them out, hearing them through, and encouraging them to speak and make sure all the viewpoints are heard."

"People need to know that there is encouragement and not retribution for having something to say which is different from the common thought of the common herd," Griffin said, adding that, "There is no question that managers must make decisions. It is what managers get paid to do."

He joked, "I often define management as the art of making decisions with less information than any fool would like to have. But in order to make good decisions, with less information than you would really like to have, it is important to hear all of the information you can get."

Griffin reiterated his enthusiasm for the Vision for Space Exploration -- a plan to return humans to the Moon and eventually travel to Mars and beyond. "The human spaceflight portion of the program," he said, "has been redirected toward a goal that is judged, I believe, to be more worthy than sending astronauts to circle the Earth time after time and at most to be aboard the Space Station."

He also spoke in somewhat philosophic terms about the need for American preeminence in space exploration. "I don't know when it will happen, or exactly how it will happen, but I know it will happen that one day there will be as many people living off the Earth as living on it. And that may be a thousand or two thousand years in the future. But when that occurs, it is my belief that we want their ideals, their culture, their thoughts to be those of western civilization because I believe that for all of its flaws, that the civilization that we have evolved in Western society is the best we've seen so far in human history. I think it needs to be improved upon, but not replaced. If we are not the preeminent space faring nation it will not survive because the future for human kind is in space not on Earth. We can only do our small part today."

Elvia Thompson
NASA Headquarters