Interview with Thomas A. Tombrello - Caltech Oral Histories

Tombrello–224
no strategy.” I’m not a sweet person; he has every reason to dislike me. But that’s fine. What
worries me is, I think people tend to mistrust strategy—or not understand what strategy is. They
want it simple. The current PMA chair, Tom [B. Thomas] Soifer [professor of physics], is a very
fine man. He’s a fine scientist. He’s a fine person. But I think he feels very uncomfortable
about raising money. Why would he feel uncomfortable about raising money? Because he was
running the Spitzer Science Center, which at its peak was probably spending about $150 million
a year. Hey! Donors is donors. His donor happened to be called NASA; and you have to still be
the performing seal for NASA. And to be perfectly honest, I was talking yesterday to a woman
in the director’s office at JPL. We were talking about NASA administrators, and she said, “Has
there ever been a good one?” I said, “Not for a really long time, Nora.” I mean, OK, you’ve got
to sell things to somebody like Sean O’Keefe [NASA administrator 2001-05]? I mean, come on.
You’re talking funding with Gordon Moore, who’s a giant, and then you’ve got to sell a space
mission to Sean O’Keefe?
ASPATURIAN: Actually, Sean O’Keefe turned out to be better than what came after, I think.
TOMBRELLO: [Laughter] Yes.
ASPATURIAN: I think O’Keefe came in with a mandate to be hard-edged about JPL, but then he
got seduced by planetary exploration, as many do.
TOMBRELLO: He became more enthusiastic. I think Charles Elachi had something to do with
that. Charles is always a performer and always had a good program at JPL. I worry about JPL,
but I worry most about this Mars Science Laboratory, which is a bet-the-lab-on-a-mission that’s
way over budget and way overtime.
ASPATURIAN: They’ve done so well with their Mars program in recent years. That would be a
pity.
TOMBRELLO: That’s one that got out of hand. They did well with the Mars program because
they kept them relatively small. More robust than they expected.
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