TRANSCRIPT OF ADMIRAL RICHARD TRULY TALK BEFORE NASA EMPLOYEES
FRIDAY, SEPT. 21, 1990.

Good morning. I am delighted to have the opportunity to speak to the NASA
family around the country today.

I think the last time that I spoke to you I was about 90 or 100 feet up on one
of those launch pads at KSC back in May, and frankly, in the interim since we
got to talk to each other back in May, this has been a busy, and a long, dry,
and sometimes vexing Summer for me, and also for some people, all of you in
NASA.

There has been a lot going on. Budget fights, successes, some setback, and some
failures, and I would like to talk for a few minutes about each of those
things.

First of all, let me just say that I believe that we are continuing to do
business in a measured and professional manner. That some things haven't gone
right this Summer, but you are doing the right things.

I would also like to point out that I have enjoyed, and you have continued to
enjoy the tremendous and unwavering support of the President, and of the Vice
President, both of whom have come to NASA and made major speeches since I last
talked to you.

And also, despite what you read in the newspaper, from our friends in Congress.
We have a lot of support. They know we are on a cutting edge business every
day. We need their support, and I would like to report on some of that to you.

I would like to review a little bit about what has gone on since we last
talked, and then talk about a little bit about some of the things going on in
Washington just to share them with you.

First of all, the Columbia, we have scrubbed it more times than I like, and
more times than the people in the Shuttle Program like, for hydrogen leaks that
we haven't found, but frankly it just shows again that we are in tough
engineering business, and it also shows that we are doing it right.

We are not going to fly until we are ready and when we are ready, and when we
believe we are safe, Columbia, of which I flew the second flight when it was
the first space shuttle in the fleet, will be back flying again.

Discovery is on the launch pad, and is going to be very early in the Ulysses
window, in just a few weeks, down at the Cape in October, and next up will be
Atlantis scheduled to fly a crucial, especially these days, crucial national
security mission on around the first of November, or early in November.

By that time we will have cured the problem in Columbia, and we hope to get it
airborne in late November or December before the year is out.

Hubble Space Telescope bringing back today excellent and superb sound, and
great picture too for people on Earth to see. Fantastic photographs already
despite the problem that we found in the mirror that was discovered this year,
but occurred over a decade ago.

Within a day or so of finding the problem, we set out to review it, and Dr. Lou
Allen from JPL has conducted that review, and we expect his report very
shortly.

We are lucky that Hubble was placed into orbit by the capabilities of the space
shuttle because in a very short order, and it is very simple to fix, we will
not only be getting the good science we are getting, and we are, but we will
have the system up to a 100 percent capability, and everything that you have
looked forward to about learning in the universe from Hubble are things that
will come true by that team.

Magellan had some hair-raising excitement out of JPL after we got the space
craft into orbit around Venus earlier this month, or last month, when we lost
contact with the space craft a couple of times.

But I was out in Pasadena, California, on Monday of this week to make a speech
about our people in the tracking networks, about 5:30 or 6:00 in the morning,
though, I went out to JPL, and since last Saturday, Magellan has been mapping
the planet of Venus and it has started its mission.

Believe you me, the only words that I can describe for the science that is
coming, and those radar images is, it is absolutely superlative. You have seen
a couple of those pictures, and you will see a lot more.

Pioneer X, today the farthest robot away from Earth, and farther out in the
Solar System than any other man-made object, and still sending back data to
NASA so that we can learn about those great distances.

Galileo, now within 50 million miles of the Earth coming back to pick up speed
on her way to Jupiter.

So across NASA and with these programs, the crest that we launched, and
recently did her on orbit work, the cosmic background explorer, all of these
things have launched, and are working, except for Pioneer X, since we started
flying again since the accident.

So challenges are nothing new to NASA. The payoffs continue to be great, and
let me just remind you that today's challenges, and successes will be tomorrows
successes in the commercial world here on the Earth as we achieve our goals.

Let me talk to you a little bit about the 1991 budget that is on the Hill.
Today, as I talk to you, we have less than ten days until the start of the next
fiscal year. There is no agreement today on the budget summit yet.

And I wanted to tell you, however, that despite these uncertain times, that we
have planned for this transition into the new fiscal year, and if the budget
summit can be accomplished here in the next few days, we believe that we can
ride into the new year, and not lose our momentum, and that is certainly what I
hope to do.

You have heard a lot of talk about the possibility of furloughs, and it is a
possibility if, in fact, we have to go into a full sequester. We happen to be
lucky in NASA, frankly, compared to some of the other agencies, because it
turns out that in anticipating this possibility in the first two weeks of the
new fiscal year, we have planned for it to reduce the number of furlough days
for our people because as soon as J.R. Thompson and I realized that this might
be necessity, we put people to be our number one priority.

The budget situation is unclear today, but I can guarantee you that I am
watching it closely, and I have made my concerns clear to the Congress.

Again, we are luckily because we have before the Congress a very positive
budget with a good increase for our program, and one that will take us to the
future.

The President, the Vice President, members of the Administrations, and our
supporters in Congress are working hard to make sure that the budget that we
get is one that will be very positive for NASA. It will be an increase, and I
am trying to work to make sure that it is as close to the President's budget
level as I possibly can. So I will keep you posted as these days come along,
and we move into the new fiscal year.

Let me talk to you a little bit about my thoughts about the progress in Space
Station Freedom during this past year. About a year ago, we got a new
management team in, and we went to the Congress, and to the people, and we
said: here is what we plan to do in the next twelve months, the twelve months
that we have just experienced.

In fact, and I have great pride in you who are working on the program, we have
done that. I think we have made a year's progress toward flight in the Space
Station Program within the last twelve months.

We have a lot of challenges, and we have been in the newspaper, but frankly
don't forget, every one of the problems we are working -- power, weight, EVA
time -- are problems that NASA and you found, and each of those are well in
hand along to a solution.

So I think Space Station Freedom is strong, and I believe when this budget
process is complete, you will find that we have gotten good support.

I would like to talk to you a little bit about Norm Augustine's Committee on
The Future of the Space Program.

I worked with the Vice President, and we selected what I believe to be a
dedicated, intelligent, experience, and very interested group of people, and
they have a tremendous chemistry between them because they bring a lot of
things to the table.

Their job is very simple. Not to look at the past, and the plateau of budgets
that NASA has been on the future, but look to the future of the Civil Space
Program to help us, to give us ideas in any area that they wish to talk about.

They are very experience, and they will be visiting each of the centers during
the next couple of months. I hope that some of you get to talk to them
directly, tell them what you are doing, be pleased to tell them your problems,
but also your successes, because they are interested in it. I expect a report
from them in December.

I met yesterday afternoon with Norm Augustine, and with the Vice President for
about a half-an-hour, and the three of us see this as a very positive thing for
NASA, and I am particularly please that Norm was willing to spend his time with
it.

Another group that is looking forward to the future for us is called the
Synthesis Group, headed up by a person that everybody in NASA remembers, and
knows, General Tom Stafford.

Frankly, I have been over there, and watched what they are doing, and there are
days that I would love to trade this office, and go back and deal with the
kinds of things that they are doing with the help of the NASA people working on
exploration.

They are talking about trajectories. They are talking about the future. They
are talking about the way that these technologies, and these dreams, can pay us
back here in America, and the response that we have gotten in this outreach
effort is really beginning to pour in.

They are having a lot of fun. They have a hard job, and a lot of work to do,
but they are going to bring us their thoughts on technologies and architectures
for the future of that program.

The Space Exploration Initiative is real. The President supports it. It is
going to happen. America, and other nations in the world, I believe, are going
to do it. It is a long range vision, and even in tough times I believe that we
are certainly going to keep the support within the Administration, and in
future Congresses.

Space has turned into a international challenge. Since I spoke to you in May, I
have made two trips out of this country to Japan, and to Europe. I have visited
the space agencies in Japan. I visited the Royal Aeronautical Establishment in
England where they are doing space technology, and aeronautics technology.

I have also visited industries both in Japan and in Europe. Mitsubishi in
Magoya, and also the Air Bus Industries in Toulouse, France.

I can tell you what I have been reading in the paper, and what you have been
sensing, and that is that the space world of tomorrow is going to be different
than the space world of yesterday.

It is not just going to be America and the Soviet Union. It already is, and
more importantly in the future it is going to be an international endeavor, and
we are in the middle of it.

We have started some initiative in NASA so that we can help ourselves. The
space classroom, once it gets on orbit with Astro, is ready to go teaching kids
from space about math, and science, and astronomy and how that is done in
space, and I think that it will intrigue you, and them.

We have an initiative to revitalize NASA select television, the very satellite
link that we are talking with each other today over, in order to bring
educational programs, to communicate better, to do our business better, and I
think you will see our use of NASA select television in the next year take a
real spurt forward.

I also, on the personal level, decided to take a look at our honor awards
system, the way we recognize our best people, and I got Charlie Bolden from the
Johnson Space Center, and a young person from every center in NASA, and at
headquarters, to take a look at that system.

They have given me their recommendations, and we are going to make sure that
the honor awards system of the future continues to recognize the very best of
all our people, all our work force whether they are scientists, engineers,
professional, administrative, from all groups.

The future really is the bottom line, and that is what I want to leave you with
this morning.

We are looking for exciting signs from Magellan, from Galileo, from Hubble,
from COBE, and all of those missions coming in the future.

Discovery is going to be flying in early October, putting the international
spacecraft Ulysses in a scientific orbit around the Sun.

We are looking for continued breakthroughs in aeronautics technology in working
with our centers, and with American industry there.

The Endeavor, the next space shuttle, is going to be delivered next Spring,
under cost, ahead of schedule, and with a great performance to add to the
shuttle fleet.

I am proud of you. As the President said to you from the Marshall Space Flight
Center, and as the Vice President said to you from the Johnson Space Center,
since I last talked to you from the top of a launch pad, NASA does have its act
together. The people of NASA are people that are worthy of being proud of
themselves, and what we do, and I certainly am proud of that, and I am
delighted to just be associated with all of you, and look forward to talking to
you next time.

So keep it up, keep working hard. We will solve this problem on Columbia, and
be flying again when we are ready, and when we do, you are going to see the
entire fleet back in operation.

Thanks for listening. I will see you next time.