Griffin Quotes from Shuttle Summit
Editor’s note: The following is taken from a Powerpoint presentation circulating at NASA KSC. The quotes are from a shuttle summit held at NASA KSC last week.
“If we design another space launch system that requires $4.5B per year to do no launches at all … just to own the system, then we will be put out of business … we will be put out of business!”
“I’m counting on, and I am pleading with, the engineers on the design side and with the engineers on the operations side to work together!”
November 16, 2005
Michael D. Griffin, Administrator, NASA
Kennedy Space Center, FL
“I’m counting on, and I am pleading with, the engineers on the design side and with the engineers on the operations side to work together to find ways to have fewer manual checkpoints and more automated ones, and fewer swing arms; fewer fluid loading ports. We need to make things as simple, as clean, and as automated as you can in the vehicle design and in the ground processing, so we can get about our business in a more efficient manner than before … Hear me when I say, that the design centers can’t do it by themselves, and the operations centers can’t do it by themselves. You will never get a good design if it is all dictated by the operators – you will never get a good design if it is all dictated by the rocket designers. The overall design of the system has got to include all the knowledge and skill and understanding of the people who integrate, operate and launch the design, as well as the knowledge and skill of the people working with the rocket equation.”
November 16, 2005
Michael D. Griffin, Administrator, NASA
Kennedy Space Center, FL
“We need a system that needs a smaller support base to keep it alive, if we expect to keep alive. The only way to do that is to use fewer people on any given thing. Now, we’re still going to have the same overall budget – we want to use that budget to buy other functions. Again, I want you to do more things – other things than have everybody crowd around one space launch vehicle … and that’s what we’re going to have to use high tech for.”
November 16, 2005
Michael D. Griffin, Administrator, NASA
Kennedy Space Center, FL
“I firmly believe that if a few officers and enlisted men can launch a Trident D-5 [tactical missile] out of a submarine that stands off-shore from the Cape here, that we ought to be able to find a way to have a comparable number of people to launch our space vehicles … and that will only happen if we design it in on the front end … and that will only happen if we (appropriately) use a high tech approach is what we need to accomplish that.”
November 16, 2005
Michael D. Griffin, Administrator, NASA
Kennedy Space Center, FL
