My parting words that I emailed to KSC: All, I want to share three final thoughts before I retire from NASA today. They are the 3 different ways I learned to view what we do at KSC, corresponding to the three phases of my career. 1. For 10 years I was in the Shuttle program, and my view of NASA was defined by the “coolness” of the space program. What we have done is truly the coolest thing humanity has ever done: launching the amazing Shuttle; putting Galileo into the Jovian system; Cassini to Saturn; missions to Mars; Hubble; Spacelab; etc., etc., etc. We easily forget how cool it is, but the entire world has not forgotten. 2. The next 7 years I was in the ISS program. ISS was on the brink of cancellation, so JSC asked KSC to send a team all around the country to bring it back from the brink. Before then, I took our skills and abilities for granted. But we taught the contractor how to integrate schedules, do M&P processes, develop a complex test program, manage recovery plans in the face of hardware failures and tight schedules,... Our KSC skills turned out to be critical in saving the ISS, and so we put ISS into the sky. Seventy years of spaceflight has molded you into the most skilled spacecraft developers and launchers the world has ever known. You are truly a national treasure. 3. The final part of my career was in technology development. It was then I realized NASA has a unique responsibility in the course of human history. Ask yourself how much you remember about Spanish politics in the 14th, 15th, or 16th centuries? Not much? But that was hundreds of years to not remember much! Most people only remember one thing: that Queen Isabella funded Columbus to explore across the Atlantic. Almost everything else from those centuries has dwindled to no impact upon our daily lives in the modern world, but we will never forget that Isabella funded the “NASA” of her time. That was lasting. And so in this century, almost nothing will be remembered after a few more centuries except for what we are doing here in the space program. All the political wrangling will be forgotten, but what you do you won’t be forgotten. We are reaching the limits of our globe’s capacity to sustain humanity and its aspirations, and if technology can save us then it will be spaceflight technology that does so. We have literally billions of times Earth’s resources here in our solar system. Humanity must go beyond the limits of a single planet if we are to continue living ethically and doing ever greater things. In all the world there are only a few dozen organizations that can make this happen. You are one of the few such organizations in the world, and the most skilled at what we do of them all. Future humanity needs you, especially you. It has been an honor working with you and I wish you the best as you continue to amaze the world today and for posterity. I will be working at the Florida Space Institute come Monday and I hope we can continue to work together. All the best, Phil
Posted on: Fri, 08 Aug 2014 22:05:24 +0000
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