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Pioneering NASA official on aerospace industry:
'Bro-culture' is bad for business
By Jackie
Wattles, CNN Business
Updated 6:41 PM ET,
Thu June 30, 2022
Lori Garver, pictured during her time as NASA's Deputy
Administrator.
New York (CNN Business) Lori Garver spearheaded the NASA program
that paved the way for SpaceX to return human spaceflight to the United
States after a decade-long wait. In her new book and in a recent interview
she reflects on that success, the controversial cast of characters driving
this new space race, and the cultural issues that permeate the aerospace
industry at large.
And the former NASA deputy administrator, when asked by CNN
Business how SpaceX's future might play out, had a message for Elon Musk:
Don't trip on your ego, adding that the perils and politics of spaceflight
are already potential risks to the company's future.
In her new memoir, "Escaping Gravity," Garver wrote about
her feelings watching the success of NASA's Commercial Crew Program, the
initiative that brought about the first privately owned human spacecraft that
culminated in SpaceX's historic 2020 astronaut
launch.
"SpaceX has a huge lead and is running faster than any of
the competition, including all the big aerospace companies," she wrote.
"To me, that is both fantastic and scary at the same time."
She adds that, "[e]scaping gravity is not a simple
maneuver and in the coming years it will be impossible to beat it safely
every time. The private sector will have to answer to its customers for
missteps that lead to bad outcomes. Only time will tell if they will be given
the opportunity to correct their errors and continue as NASA has been allowed
to do in the past."
In an interview with CNN Business, Garver also said she was
disheartened to read recent reporting alleging
toxicity within SpaceX's corporate culture amid
Musk's erratic behavior on Twitter and a broader "bro culture," as she put it,
that permeates the aerospace industry.
Garver warned that if companies don't get serious about
addressing issues like harassment and lack of inclusivity, "they will
lose workforce."
"These rockets don't build themselves," she said.
"The best and the brightest, they aren't going to put up with behavior
that is truly a distraction...The bro culture could succeed in the past
because the predominant number of engineers were white males. That is no
longer the case. And we
absolutely benefit from all comers. All views."
SpaceX did not respond to a request for comment for this
story, nor has it responded to routine inquiries from reporters in years.
In her book, Garver also recounts the harassment she said she endured
during her career in aerospace, which spanned NASA as well as various other
corporate and government jobs. Being objectified was simply "a part of
being a woman working in aerospace when I was in my twenties and
thirties," she said.
In her book, she
recalls one NASA supervisor who once "told me to come into his office so
I could get my birthday spanking" in front of several colleagues.
In a separate incident, Garver
recalled being in Moscow in her thirties when "a senior aerospace
contractor who had been over-served pushed his way into my hotel room,
shoving me onto the bed."
"I was able to get out
from under him and run into the hall, finding a colleague to intervene,"
she wrote.
"I never reported the
incident to NASA or to his employer. Embarrassed and assuming it would be my
own career that suffered, I—like so many others—swept such occurrences under
the rug," she wrote. "I'm ashamed for many reasons, but mostly
because the behavior likely continued."
"It is time to end justifications for rooted misconduct
as well as the field's predominance of people—including in its leadership—who
look and think the same way," Garver wrote. "Progress toward diversity, equity, and
inclusion has been much too slow."
How SpaceX and NASA overcame a bitter culture clash to
bring back US astronaut launches
When Garver was selected to become NASA's second-in-command in
2009, she said she had already been thinking for decades about
shaking up the space agency's contracting policies. The old way, known as
"cost-plus" contracting, in some ways gave NASA's corporate
partners a blank check to get projects done, and they were routinely delayed
and over budget.
The contracting method that Garver and a small contingent of
others pioneered for human spaceflight programs at NASA is what's come to be
known as the commercial
contracting structure. It allows companies to compete for
contracts before NASA doles out fixed amounts of money. If projects run over
budget, it is up to the contractors to cover the cost. But many aerospace
stakeholders pushed back, arguing that human spaceflight programs were too
technologically complex and expensive for multiple companies to attempt.
It was a contentious and fraught battle to
attempt to change the system, Garver recalls.
"Senior industry and government officials took pleasure
in deriding [SpaceX] and Elon in the early years," Garver
wrote in her book. "To me, this seemed irresponsible."
At one point, Garver described herself
as one of Musk's "most ardent supporters [and] defenders."
Ultimately, the Commercial Crew Program was approved and funded by
Congress. SpaceX and Boeing were both chosen for multi-billion dollar
contracts, and two years ago, SpaceX's Crew Dragon spacecraft safely
delivered its first crew of astronauts to the International Space Station.
The company has since completed three additional launches for NASA astronauts
as well as two purely commercial missions for wealthy thrill seekers. (Boeing
is still working to get its Starliner spacecraft operational but completed a test flight last
month.)
SpaceX's success won over many of the Commercial Crew Program's
former skeptics.
Still, Garver admits that she did not expect SpaceX would be
the standout in the commercial space race. When she was first imagining this
new approach to awarding contracts, it was "so long before the
billionaire investors in space" were part of the public imagination.
"We always thought it would be [legacy] aerospace companies," such
as Lockheed Martin or Boeing, she told CNN.
"It's not something we envisioned for a number of
reasons," she said. "First being that we didn't envision
billionaires amassing this many billions."
Correction: An earlier version of this story omitted the
context to Garver's quote about not reporting an incident to NASA.
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