Abstract
In the film The Princess Bride, Dread Pirate Roberts is not one man, but a series of individuals who periodically pass the name and reputation to a chosen successor. Everyone except the successor and the former Roberts is then released at a convenient port, and a new crew is hired. The former Roberts stays aboard as first mate, referring to his successor as “Captain Roberts”, and thereby establishing the new Roberts' persona. After the crew is convinced, the former Roberts leaves the ship and retires on his earnings. (Wikipedia)
I
In the spring of 1986, I was an NRC Resident Research Associate (postdoc) at NASA Ames, working on Controlled Ecological Life Support Systems (CELSS). During the spring, then Exobiology Program Manager (Discipline Scientist and Biological Systems Research Branch Chief) Don DeVincenzi recruited me to come to headquarters (HQ) for the third year of my postdoc on a little-known opportunity to be a “Resident Management Associate” (gofer). My postdoctoral supervisor, Bob MacElroy, had mentioned the possibility of spending some time at HQ, and I had expressed interest in how HQ worked—or didn't. That was especially true, at that point, in the case of the CELSS program. Bob's most memorable comment about HQ was that “there's not a line to get in the door,” which in his laconic Massachusetts accent made it all the more intriguing.
It would take until June (and my turning down a faculty job offer) before the appointment with the Life Sciences Division at HQ was confirmed. Once that was accomplished I could look forward to moving east and working with Don.
Or so I thought.
We began a curious interaction at the start of the summer of 1986. With program reviews, the COSPAR meeting in Toulouse, France, and the ISSOL meeting in Berkeley, California, Don and I would meet on and off over the summer—and each time, Don changed my work assignment. As an explorer, I agreed each time. Initially, I was not supposed to be working on exobiology at all—I had gone to exobiology seminars at Ames, but I was not doing any research in the field. Just after the NRC HQ appointment was made, Don asked me if I would be willing to spend 25% of my time on exobiology. Sure. By the beginning of the ISSOL meeting (July 21) it was 50% of my time (thus losing either the biospheric research or crew factors portion of my assignment). Sure. It managed to creep up to 75% exobiology by the time Don returned to Washington after the meeting (July 26). OK. I guess it shouldn't have surprised me that Don called in mid-September (I had just begun a two-week reserve officer's course at the Naval War College, Newport, Rhode Island) and said, “Can you come and talk to me about taking over the Exobiology program?” I deduced that we had arrived at 100% of my time, but that was just the beginning …
So on a Friday afternoon in September I drove over to Providence and flew to DC to meet Don at National Airport. That night I stayed at his house, and we discussed the program. In the morning, I went to Philadelphia to participate in a Naval Reserve ASW contest on my way back to Newport, but my head was buzzing by that time. Don had told me that he would be leaving HQ for Ames in December and that I would have two months (to the day) to learn everything I had to know about the Exobiology program before being put in charge of it “until such time as a successor could be appointed.”
Don thus introduced me to everyone at HQ as his soon-to-be (“temporary”) replacement, and I went from postdoc to program manager in record time. Almost seven years later I was still waiting for some other successor to take over, but by then I was a full-time civil servant, with the thought that I didn't want to be one forever. How I passed on the job to the next “Dread Pirate Roberts” is another story altogether.
A normal “detail” at HQ would have provided me with some experience at HQ and a chance to see what it was like—followed by a return to the field center to put that knowledge to use in a research career or in center management. But that was not to be. The program management mantle was passed on with a warning (derived from the disappointment of not finding life on Mars with the Viking missions) that if the job were left open, the program might disappear altogether. So any escape from HQ would be predicated on my finding a replacement, or being given one—or science (and NASA) would suffer.
After Don left, I found myself reporting directly to the Life Sciences Division Director, Arnauld E.T. Nicogossian (who liked exobiology, as his middle initials might have suggested). At one point before the end of January, Arnauld came up and asked me if I'd help him run the Biological Systems Research Branch, which was interesting, of course. I had five years in the Navy behind me, and if the boss asks you if you'll help, there's only one real answer, which is yes. But I did wonder whether I shouldn't actually work for NASA before taking over a branch at HQ. No matter—that was Washington for you! Eventually, one thing led to another, and probably based on my willingness and on the basis of some limited interaction with the community, I was hired in early April 1987 as a civil servant. It was the same day that Len (Lennard) Fisk arrived at HQ to take over the Office of Space Science and Applications.
Being appointed as a GS-15 (then the top non-executive rate) on my first job at NASA struck me as rather odd, but that didn't mean that there wasn't plenty of work to do. One of my mentors at Ames, Mel Averner, had preceded me to HQ to run the Biospheric Research program on an IPA—Intergovernmental Personnel Act assignment—from the University of New Hampshire, where he had a faculty appointment (and where Len Fisk had been prior to his arrival). Mel and I both were interested in CELSS, and we agreed that I could help him but that he would take over CELSS, which was okay with Arnauld, too. Lynn Harper, then Lynn Griffiths, was leading the exobiology and biological systems flight project activities as well as the “projectization” of the SETI (Search for Extra Terrestrial Intelligence) program—later the SETI Microwave Observing Project—and was very much involved in planning for flight experiments on the shuttle and for the space station. She and Mel were both hired as civil servants about a month or so after I was, and we together comprised the Biological Systems Research Branch after Thora Halstead and the Space/Gravitational Biology program were transferred to the Space Medicine branch. It should be noted that both Mel and Lynn had permanent non-civil-service jobs when I arrived at HQ, while I was only a postdoc who would disappear if left untended, which I am sure is why HQ hired me first.
For all of his insights into multidisciplinary science and how to run a grant program, I was very lucky that Dick Young, who had at one time been both the Exobiology Program Manager and the Planetary Quarantine Officer (as that job was previously known), was part of the contractor organization supporting NASA Life Sciences. Another part of the crew that Don DeVincenzi had assembled was Pericles Stabekis, who supported the Planetary Protection Officer in ensuring that we didn't contaminate other worlds with life or life-related chemistry and that we would protect Earth from extraterrestrial life we might import during solar system exploration missions. Perry was a great authority on the subject, and once I was a civil servant, the surprise was that I was supposed to be one, too. Soon after I was hired “for real”, I was designated the Planetary Protection Officer for the first time, adding another 25% to the full-time position I already had but had never asked for.
Such was life at NASA Headquarters in the mid-1980s!