Of course Goldin woulda loved a manned Mars mission. That's not the point.

He did a very poor job as CEO.

Instituting FBC, he utterly failed to clarify what it meant operationally and failed to oversee the implementation of policies that insured its successful implementation. ISS continued to rage out of control. Behind schedule and over budget on HIS watch. Lots of rhetoric that the Russians were making us late and Viloa! turns out that we were the ones in the critical path. He fought substantive attempts at commercialization while giving it lip service. In fact, lip service is precicely what characterized his tenure. Lotsa talk, no action.

Ask yourself this...Go back in time pre-goldin. Did you have more confidence that NASA could execute a mission then or do you have more confidence in the NASA of today, Goldin's NASA?

-philw