NASA Employees Protest Cuts In Formal Dissent Letter

FLORA LICHTMAN: This is Science Friday. I’m Flora Lichtman. Later in the hour, the science of menopause. And algospeak– how algorithms are shaping language.

But first, policy changes and staff and budget cuts instituted by the Trump administration have upended the operations of many federal agencies, and NASA is no exception. The Trump administration has proposed cutting NASA’s budget by almost 25%, and shutting down 19 currently operating science missions. This week, several hundred current and former employees of the Space Agency released an official letter of dissent arguing against, quote, “rapid and wasteful changes which have undermined our mission.” 20 Nobel Laureates co-signed that letter, titled “The NASA Voyager Declaration.”

One of the signatories is also retired NASA astronaut Cady Coleman. She joins us today to talk about it. Welcome back to Science Friday, Cady.

CADY COLEMAN: Well, thank you. It’s always nice to be with you, Flora.

FLORA LICHTMAN: You all write in this letter that the consequences for the agency, and the country alike, are dire. What is at stake here?

CADY COLEMAN: I’d like to say that it is science as we know it. From a NASA point of view, we do completely unique science, in that we do the science that can only be done from space and in space that can’t be done here on the surface of the Earth. And so I think of the things that we do and what it takes to do them, both the things that involve actually sending humans to space, but also the unique research that we do in space that then supports research down here on Earth. And it’s all one big picture, but we have a really important piece of the puzzle.

FLORA LICHTMAN: Why did you feel personally compelled to sign?

CADY COLEMAN: Because it’s certainly a privilege to have worked at NASA, and certainly a privilege to have been an astronaut that got to go to space. And I take that thought privilege seriously, and it has a responsibility that goes with it. Because people will listen when they hear what you’ve done and think that your take on it matters. My take is one of many takes, but I think it’s a really important opportunity to have people then listen and think about what they’re hearing.

FLORA LICHTMAN: Hmm.

CADY COLEMAN: And so I felt compelled to be part of that process.

FLORA LICHTMAN: The letter says that these changes undermine the core NASA mission. What is that mission?

CADY COLEMAN: I’m going to read to you what we wrote in the Declaration–

FLORA LICHTMAN: OK.

CADY COLEMAN: –which is “to explore the unknown in air and space, innovate for the benefit of humanity, and inspire the world through discovery.” And the money that is spent on NASA is less than 1% of the federal budget, and inspiring the next generation to make sure that they have the tools and the perspectives to build a future. I think that’s invaluable, and the things that the NASA contributes to our present and our future are invaluable. And the fact that they could be in such danger is unbelievable to me, really.

FLORA LICHTMAN: Is it unbelievable to you? Can you believe where we are?

CADY COLEMAN: It’s hard to believe that we are where we are. But actually, the evidence is so tangible. I’m seeing the people who are leaving the federal government that are critical to the things that we’ve been doing.

| sort of a cycle that we’ve seen that involves the 20-year cycle of you’ll have a lot of people working on really big projects. And then they get older and they leave, and suddenly there’s this time when there’s so many more new people, and not enough of the people who have been through those last 20 years. And NASA has had an accident every 20 years, at least, if you think about Challenger and Columbia.

FLORA LICHTMAN: Hmm. I wanted to ask about that, because you all write that the culture of organizational silence promoted at NASA over the last six months represents a dangerous turn away from the lessons learned following the Columbia disaster. Will you talk about that a little bit?

CADY COLEMAN: Well, from my own personal experience, we’ve talked about how every 20 years we’ve had a failed human mishap. And a lot of the people that saw that happen are then not at the agency because they were very experienced. And the people who come up from behind, they actually just don’t have the experience to know how to make these really tough decisions. And what is the definition of careful enough and safe enough?

And my experience during the Columbia accident investigation, my role was not necessarily the accident, but how to then prepare us to go back to flight and how to make sure that we had repair capability for the space shuttle. And these are really difficult problems. Specifically, we were making the goo that would be used to repair the bottom of the space shuttle if it got gouged by debris on ascent. And in doing that, it was a very hard problem. It’s literally like talking a special kind of caulk, and constructing a very special caulk gun that could be used on a spacewalk.

But then there’s also the aspect of putting that into the repair on these tiles that are very fragile, and being sure that it would stick. And then, in sticking, it would protect the spaceship on the way home. Everything I just mentioned is a really difficult problem, and we weren’t sure enough of the system working that the team was recommending we bring three of these systems. But it was really hard to tell this team that, from an astronaut point of view, we don’t think this is ready yet. And we’re not saying go back to the drawing board, but we’re saying more testing is necessary before, as my boss put it, he said, “I would rather have two of those than three. I would rather have one than two. And I would really rather have none of them until you do further testing.”

FLORA LICHTMAN: Hmm.

CADY COLEMAN: And that was a difficult conversation for me to have with the team, knowing that I’m going to take that information to my boss, the chief astronaut, and he is going to say that in a very public way, when everyone there wants so much to make a solution that is going to bring us back to flight in a way that we think is safe enough. So think about that process when people are afraid to speak about those doubts that are so real in such a complex situation.

FLORA LICHTMAN: Right. You need to feel comfortable enough to speak up.

CADY COLEMAN: Absolutely. And that’s something that really worries me. I like to say that in order to be successful on a team, you have to be brave and you have to be open. And so to be brave enough to say, this is who I am and what I bring.

And I think it’s important right now, here, in this application, even if I kind of speak a different language than you do– which might be a physical language from a country, or because you talk in a different way– like me, right? I think you have to be open to when people are saying that to you, and really look at them, and capture that, and be with them, and help them. And it takes paying attention, and never giving up on understanding who are the people on my team and what do each of them bring that they maybe don’t even know about? And you have to always do that. Never stop.

FLORA LICHTMAN: Right. And that’s a culture that you can lose at an organization.

CADY COLEMAN: Absolutely. It’s a culture of constant learning and no blame. It’s not easy to hold on to that culture. And I’m not saying that everybody there is changed, but the environment that they’re working in is making it difficult.

FLORA LICHTMAN: Who is this letter meant to speak to?

CADY COLEMAN: We all probably have different opinions about that. It is addressed to the interim NASA Administrator, Administrator Duffy. But it’s really, I think, addressed further than that. It’s addressed to every citizen, every American, that thinks that they have an idea about how things are maybe not being done the way they should be, and to speak up and use their voice and state their concerns.

FLORA LICHTMAN: Are you surprised that there’s less public pushback around cuts to NASA?

CADY COLEMAN: I’m not surprised, and I think it’s for actually a really scary reason. And I think the reason is that no one can imagine that the space program could go away, because it’s just something that we always have and it stands for so much. And it actually has this really important function, that doesn’t actually have to do with going to space, which is that people are fascinated by space, and it will actually catalyze them to want to more about something technical. And realize then, oh, maybe this other thing that’s technical in my life, whether it’s making a medical decision with my family, or deciding in our town whether we should have solar energy or not, it really catalyzes more people becoming equipped to be science, technology, engineering, math and art people.

FLORA LICHTMAN: What do you think about this perspective, like, there might be a few bad years, but things could turn around after the next election?

CADY COLEMAN: Having been part of big scientific projects, I’ll give you an example, which is the Chandra X-ray Observatory. I was on the space shuttle crew that deployed Chandra out into the universe, so to speak. Chandra is in an orbit that’s about a third of the way to the moon, so very far away. We can’t go and fix Chandra, so everything had to go exactly right with her deploy.

And what was interesting to me was where we stood in the life of Chandra. When we launched her, she was designed 25 years before we launched that telescope. And so it’s this timeline that is so broad for discovery. And to discover something, it’s like looking at a giant jigsaw puzzle. You have to keep the whole puzzle in mind, actually calculating what kind of telescopes do we need, what are the plans for building them, getting them built, and then having them out there, collecting the data, and applying that to everything that we know.

And so those are processes that don’t just restart. Some of the cuts apply to the Jet Propulsion Lab. These are spacecraft that are already built, from what I understand. And the Nancy Roman telescope is within two years of launching. We can’t just start those things up again.

FLORA LICHTMAN: Do you think this letter has the potential to change anything? Do you feel like you’re shouting into the void?

FLORA LICHTMAN: I do feel like it has the potential to change. First of all, I think it’s very clear from the fact that some of the signatures are people that identify themselves and some of the signatures are people who didn’t, because they did not feel safe enough in their employment or in their missions to identify themselves. So I think it’s really clear that people didn’t just do this lightly. And I wasn’t a part of the writing, but I agreed with what it said, and the necessity to speak out and deliver this letter of dissent.

And I think it’s gotten some press where there’s details in this about what kinds of things we lose with the kinds of budget cuts that have been presented. So I’m hoping that this letter helps people understand that discovery and invention and exploration is not a faucet that you can turn on and off. It is a large collection of people doing their very best to be innovative and creative and collaborative with each other, with other agencies. And they are doing research that can only be done from space and in space, and that research is valuable to all of us.

FLORA LICHTMAN: I think that’s the perfect place to leave it. Thank you, Cady.

CADY COLEMAN: OK. Thanks very much.

FLORA LICHTMAN: Dr. Cady Coleman is a retired NASA astronaut, and author of the book Sharing SpacE– An Astronaut’s Guide to Mission, Wonder and Making Change.