Hello PhilW -

I remember both the 90 Day Study and Mars Orbiter ($1 billion loss, both no reflection on Truly), and both occured when the President and the Congress were willing to give NASA much more money

"Faster, Better, Cheaper" is the plan for scientific probes, and NASA's been doing a good job here - while the 2 Mars probes failed, there were a slew of scientific craft that did really well -

The overall strategy was Total Quality Management, and given that NASA is a federal R&D agency scattered across several states with a diverse set of customers, and not a private sector commercial firm, Goldin didn't do too bad in implementing it. Goals were determined by polling the community; they were then defined by "themes", and there's a rough management structure to address the "themes".

Nobody saw what would happen with Russia, and specifically with NPO Energia, as NPO Krunichev performed in a completely adequate manner. When the Soviet Union collapsed, the Ministry of Post and Telecommunications made off with the com-sats, and used the hard currency they earned to fund MPT operations. (This is a problem that Putin only recently solved.) The head of Energia, Y.P. Semenov, who was raised in the Soviet Union, had absolutely no idea how to manage a firm in a market; he paid the NASA ISS money to his contractors, and they accepted it as payments for debts Energia had already run up with them - NASA sent in its own people, but by this point the attacks here in Washington had began, with Tumlinson's machine being put to use.

(It's no secret Tumlinson hates ISS, and if you go over to NASA Watch you'll find one astronaut's comment that a particular piece of equipment sucks being heralded as a statement by him that ISS sucks.)

So the score - ISS initial stage in place, despite tremendous obstacles,
but additional capabilities dependent on funding, which the Congress seems willing to provide; EELVs coming online, but RLV hit unforeseeable technical obstacles; shuttle operations moved as far as possible towards consolidation; Mars program straightened out by Scott Hubbard - all in all, a remarkable record, given the conditions under which Goldin operated -

EP