New York (CNN Business)Lori Garver heads NASA program that paved the way for SpaceX to return manned spaceflight to the United States 10 years later I stood. -Long waiting time. In her new book and recent interview, she discusses its success, the cast of controversial characters driving this new space race, and the cultural issues that permeate the entire aerospace industry.
And when CNN Business asked what the future of SpaceX would be, a former NASA deputy administrator sent a message to Elon Musk. Potential risk to the future of the company.
"SpaceX has a big lead and runs faster than any competitor, including all major aerospace companies. "She writes. "For me, it's great and scary at the same time."
She said, "[e] Escaping gravity is not a simple operation and cannot be safely defeated every time in the coming years. The private sector will have to answer the customer about the failure. It will lead to bad results. Whether they will be given the opportunity to fix the error and continue, as NASA has allowed in the past. Will be known over time. "
Gerber warned that "they will lose their workforce" if businesses cannot take seriously issues such as harassment and lack of inclusiveness.
"These rockets cannot be built by ourselves," she said. "The best and brightest guys aren't going to put up with really distracting behavior. Since the majority of engineers were white men, the culture of peers could be successful in the past. No. And we absolutely benefit from all our visitors. All views. "
SpaceX did not respond to requests for comment on this story. It also did not respond to regular inquiries from reporters for years.
In her book, she said she endured during her aerospace career spanning the work of NASA as well as various other companies and governments. He also talks about harassment. The objectification was simply "part of being a woman working in aerospace when I was in my twenties and thirties," she said.
In her book, she once told me to come to his office to spanking her birthday in front of a few colleagues. 1 I remember a person's NASA supervisor.
In another incident, Gerber remembered being in Moscow in his thirties. She said, "A senior aerospace contractor who was over-served broke into a hotel room and pushed me into bed."
"I was able to get out under him, rush into the hall and find a colleague to intervene," she wrote.
"I have never reported an incident to NASA or his employer. I was embarrassed and thought my career suffered, and like many others, so. I wiped out all the events under the carpet, "she wrote. "I'm embarrassed for many reasons, mainly because it's likely that the action has continued."
"People who see and think in the same way as justifying rooted illegal activity." It's time to end the advantage of this area (including its leadership), "Gerber wrote. "Progress in diversity, equity and inclusion was too slow."
The contract method pioneered by Gerber and other small dispatches for manned spaceflight programs at NASA has become known as the commercial contract structure. This allows companies to compete for contracts before NASA pays a certain amount. If the project runs beyond the budget, it is up to the contractor to cover the costs. However, many aerospace officials objected, arguing that manned spaceflight programs are technically too complex and costly for multiple companies to try.
"In the early days, senior industry and government officials were delighted to understand [SpaceX]and Elon," Garver wrote in her book. "This seemed irresponsible to me."
SpaceX's success is a commercial crew program Won many of the previous skeptics of.
Still, Gerber admits that he didn't think SpaceX was outstanding in the commercial space race. When she first imagined this new approach to awarding her contract, it was long before "a millionaire investor in space" was part of the general imagination. "I always thought she was a (legacy) aerospace company," such as Lockheed Martin and Boeing, she told CNN.
"It's not what we imagined for some reason," she said. "First, the millionaire wasn't supposed to collect these billions."
Correction: Earlier versions of this story do not report the incident to NASA. Omitted the context to Gerber's quote about that