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JAXA and NASA both got new leaders in the past year: Keiji Tachikawa at JAXA and Michael Griffin at NASA. What is your impression of them? |
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New leadership always brings a fresh look at a particular management situation and technical situation. In the new leadership that both the United States and Japan have in space, you have people who are used to technical issues. They're engineers. They have managed engineering programs before. They both have experience in the private sector, which I think is very important. And I expect both of these leaders will be looking at how to streamline the management of the organization so that it can function much more efficiently than in the past. Working in space requires discipline, competence and efficiency, and you're dealing with the people's money. They give you that money to do the best job that you possibly can, and I think both these leaders understand that. I think you will start to see a significant increase in the efficiency of the organizations, and as a result much greater results than we've had in the past.
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How should the United States and Japan cooperate in the future? |
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I think the United States and Japan have a very great future of co-operation on space-related projects, as they have in the past. This can happen not only through NASA and JAXA, but also I think with private-sector activities - the commercial communication satellites that are being built for Japan by companies in the United States and elsewhere.
I think that's a very important part of the relationship. There is also the presence of a Japanese astronaut on the return-to-flight mission this year, and the opportunity to share technology development in many different areas. For those of us who work mostly in the private sector, we would hope that the United States private sector and the Japanese private sector will also find great opportunities to cooperate as we both work towards returning to the moon. |
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Do you have any advice for Japanese space activity in the future? |
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I would not presume to give advice on what might be the best activities in the future. The one thing that I think all of us believe is that we must be very active and aggressive in moving human society into space, using space for the betterment of human society here on Earth, and doing whatever is possible to accomplish that as rapidly as we can. I think we should move as fast as we possibly can to use space, to return to the moon.
Japan, I think, like all countries that are interested in space and the moon, should plan to participate in space missions. And where cooperation can be arranged, it should be arranged. We will probably work much more efficiently if we can tap the talents and abilities of several countries. I think it is important, however, to make sure that the management understands that tough and disciplined and competent management is necessary to make things happen, particularly in deep space. Cooperative programs are wonderful, and they should occur, but those programs have to have a structure that allows the quality management that will operate efficiently and safely in a very hostile environment. So hopefully cooperation will occur, and hopefully it can be done with an understanding by all parties that the management is the key. It has to be done right.
Space is a very prestigious place for countries. A space program is important, I think, to the national feeling of wellbeing and of prestige, and many countries are going to be involved - the ones that are involved right now, and I suspect there are others that would like to be involved as well.
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