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A Message from NASA's First Administrator

By Keith Cowing
NASA Watch
October 1, 2014
Filed under ,

Keith’s note: Today is NASA’s 56th birthday. This video contains NASA’s first Administrator T. Keith Glennan delivering a message to employees of NACA about “N – A – S – A “. Is it just me or does this guy sound like Heywood Floyd during his moon base speech in “2001 A Space Odyssey”? Just sayin’.

NASA Watch founder, Explorers Club Fellow, ex-NASA, Away Teams, Journalist, Space & Astrobiology, Lapsed climber.

12 responses to “A Message from NASA's First Administrator”

  1. Lowell James says:
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    Thanks for sharing that Keith. I noticed that the focus was on research, development, technology, and on the conversion of scientific knowledge and data into space vehicles.

    Today we have built a BIG bureaucracy around the logistics of operating a (one) manned spacecraft in orbit and it appears to me that we have let the rest go by the wayside at least in the human space field.

    • Bill Adkins says:
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      Bingo. Lowell is exactly right.

    • david says:
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      I didn’t get that out of it, I heard the scope of N-A-S-A compared to NACA was much bigger and for all the civil servants to read the first two pages of the Space Act that includes: (3) The development and operation of vehicles capable of carrying
      instruments, equipment, supplies, and living organisms through space.

    • Michael Spencer says:
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      It’s probably not a good time to be a NASA manager. Lots of qualified people with nothing to do, really.

  2. mfwright says:
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    Maybe Kubrick modeled the character after Glennen.

  3. Rod Burton says:
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    Yup. Heywood Floyd.

  4. Craig H. Williams says:
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    I enjoyed the video. People have forgotten that the first NASA Administrator was the President of Cleveland’s Case Institute of Technology, near the Lewis Research Center. And for those who are confused by my usual “old school” reference to working at “N-A-S-A”, this video is a wonderful resource.

  5. ChuckM says:
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    having grown up in the fifties, the clip reminded me of the many government films we were shown at school. All of the characters spoke in a very ROBOTIC tone. My classmates and I would have a field day imitating their speeches. Ho hum

  6. dogstar29 says:
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    He was excited about space being utilized in nonmilitary ways, but I did not hear any specific reference to NACA’s original mission of acting as a partner with industry in continuing to build US economic competitiveness in commercial aviation. This might have been the beginning of NASA’s disconnect with aviation. A more compete perspective of the origins of NASA can be found in “Engineer in Charge” by James R. Hansen http://history.nasa.gov/SP-

  7. Lowell James says:
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    I think that the shame is that there are so many capable people sitting idle when so much money is going into trying to operate a system that is so costly to operate; or is it? It wasn’t as costly early when we were in the midst of Shuttle flights and assembly activities which required a lot more ground test, integration…..so is it that we are trying to keep people getting paid and a few select managers in power, but producing little or nothing of value? While we should have been able to reduce the workforce focused on ISS and get the remainder engaged in DDT&E?

    They keep telling us that only the contractors can design and build a spacecraft, yet that was not how they started Mercury and it was not how X-38 was being done, and look at the ridiculous costs in time and money associated with Orion and Lockheed and a minimal NASA workforce.

    And I guess the idea is that NASA is now a “space force”, like the USAF or the USN. Buy spaceships from the contractors to operate them, except there is little left to operate.

    Spend more, get less.

    There is something wrong with the NASA management scheme.

  8. Richard H. Shores says:
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    I remember reading an interview with Dr. Bob Gilruth quite a few years ago that said originally that NASA would be spelled out as N-A-S-A, as NACA was spelled out as N-A-C-A. Fortunately, some bureaucrat in Washington thought it was a bad idea.

  9. NASAdude says:
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    Uh, hate to ask but has anybody checked the subtitles for this? They should…it looks like someone was having some devilish fun with the captions or was really incompetent! Or maybe ran the audio through a autotranslator that needs work…..