The Science Department conference room felt ridiculously enormous for just two men to meet. However, Ken Redmond appreciated the choice of venue. Not just the fact that it was more spacious than either his or Reggie’s office, but the fact that it was neutral ground, so it didn’t have the emotional weight of meeting in either of their offices.
On the whole Reggie was a pretty laid-back commanding officer, especially for a Shep. Ken had heard plenty of stories about Alan Shepard’s management style as Chief Astronaut, even if those days had been long before his time. But when you went up to Reggie’s office, even to deliver a report rather than to answer for some fault in your department, there was always a sense of unease, of being on the spot. And when he came to your office, you always felt like your entire department was under the microscope.
Of course the real reason for them meeting here was the sophisticated 3-D A/V equipment Science had here. Equipment he needed for making his presentation on the innovative technique that might be able to produce replacement low-temperature bearings for the various cryo-pumps the settlement used.
Sure, he could’ve used the computer and monitor on his desk, maybe even offered the boss a pair of spex, but it wasn’t quite the same as having the images floating there on the tabletop, so real you’d think you could reach out and touch them. And right now, when he was asking for the boss to OK a huge departure from normal procedure, one that would involve changes in normal flight-certification procedures, he wanted the most persuasive presentation he could manage. Because he was really, really asking the boss to stick his neck out here.
Reggie arrived just as Ken was finishing his final checks on the equipment, making sure everything would show without any glitches. “So what are we looking at that’s so important we need the holoprojector system up here?”
Ken explained about the bearings. “Ever since NASA terminated the contract with McHenery and switched to Salwell, they’ve been wearing out about three times as fast, and we’ve been having no end of trouble maintaining our supply of spares.”
“Salwell? Wasn’t that part of North American Aviation?”
“North American bought them out during the build-up to the Space Shuttle program, and it got spun off again after Boeing bought out North American.”
That got a nod from Reggie. “I remember that now. Probably because they had more of the corporate culture problems than the guys from Seattle wanted to beat out of a new acquisition.”
“North American always had corporate culture problems. It goes way back to Apollo, and I’ve got it on good authority that you could scare them straight for a while after a bad accident, but it never solved the root problem, so it was always a matter of time before they’d start getting lax about the technical stuff. I honestly don’t understand why NASA kept going back to them when you couldn’t rely on them.”
“Because NASA’s a government agency, and therefore beholden to the bidding process.” Reggie leaned back in his chair, looking so much like Alan Shepard that Ken could completely understand how Wally Schirra could take a double-take at encountering him. “So North American underbids everyone else, gets the contract, and then ends up going over budget because half their work’s substandard. But the bean-counters only look at the up-front numbers, so NASA’s pretty much stuck. Get a bad enough accident and you might be able to shake things loose for a while, but then bureaucratic systems reassert themselves.”
A memory came back to Ken. He’d gone over to his ur-brother’s place to return some equipment, and was surprised to discover that Admiral Chaffee had come down to visit with his old boss. It would’ve had to have been some time in ’97, because President Dole had already nominated him as NASA Administrator but it hadn’t been officially confirmed by the Senate. However, he was already digging into the moonbase disaster, because he had brought a briefcase of papers with him and had them scattered about the table for Gus to examine.
Ken still remembered the admiral holding a sheaf of papers in one hand and whacking at them with the other as he made a point about unreliable contractors and nothing ever changing. It had been an awkward moment for a much younger man to have stumbled into such serious business — and Ken had not wanted to say or do anything that would have implied a criticism of Betty Grissom for sending him back here. So he’d stood there, making himself one with the wall as best he could, and got a ringside seat on the sorry story of the failures behind the disaster.
But was it really his story to tell here and now? He still remembered cringing at that horrible tell-all biography that had come out right after the admiral’s death.
No, telling that story added nothing to what he had to say. And they really needed to concentrate on his presentation now. Best to slide the conversation that way so he could lower the light level in here and get those holoprojectors running.