Interviewer(s): Sandra Johnson
Interviewee(s): Robert M. Lightfoot

Sandra Johnson: Today is December 18th, 2018. This oral history interview with Robert Lightfoot is being conducted by phone in Huntsville, Alabama, and Houston, Texas, for the NASA Headquarters Oral History Project. The interviewer is Sandra Johnson. I want to thank you again for joining me today for this interview so we can wrap up your NASA career.\n\n At the end of the last interview we were talking about the transition after Charlie [Charles F.]Bolden left, and you were there as the [NASA] Acting Administrator before President [Donald J.] Trump named a full-time new Administrator. You actually hold the record for being there longer than any other Acting Administrator. We were talking about the National Space Council. You said that there was a genuine interest from Vice President [Michael R.] Pence and that you had a seat at the table as if you were the actual Administrator.\n\n You also said that Congress worked with you as much as they could until—and this is a quote from your interview—they got pretty frustrated near the end. I was just curious. Do you feel that the frustration that they felt was from not having an actual named Administrator? Or was it something else that might have been going on?

Robert M. Lightfoot: What I took out of it and actually got on that and where that really came through for me was in my last hearings on the [NASA] budget. The last ones I had to do. Most of the people on the committee made comments at the time, “It’s time to get the actual Administrator in here.” It was mostly on the House [of Representatives] side, by the way, where they stated that the Senate needs to act and confirm the President’s choice. I think it was more frustration associated with the fact that a nominee had been picked, had gone through committee, and hadn’t made it to the floor yet for a vote. That’s my take on it.\n\n It definitely wasn’t frustration with me or frustration with NASA. I even said it in my testimony, I didn’t feel like I was slighted at all because I was the Acting Administrator. But clearly the Agency needs an Administrator that was selected by the President of the United States was how I put it. I think that was what they were getting to.\n\n The record before me was 222 days, and I was there for 458. Not that I was counting, but that’s a pretty big difference than what they normally had seen.

Sandra Johnson: It was quite a big difference in length at the time, that’s for sure. You mentioned that was one of your last acts as Administrator, to give a statement to Congress about NASA’s fiscal year 2019 budget request. Would you talk about that experience just for a minute? Asking for a budget for an Agency that you were leaving. I’m assuming you knew you were leaving at some point, but did you have any idea that it was at the end of that month?

Robert M. Lightfoot: I can’t remember if I had announced my retirement or not. I think I had. Everybody knew, but I still had to present the budget. Honestly, Sandra, I’ve always been able to compartmentalize a little bit. As far as I was concerned, whether I was leaving or not I was still the NASA Administrator, and the NASA budget needed to be presented to Congress. I didn’t treat it any differently.\n\n I did use the opportunity in my final budget to thank a couple of members of Congress in my opening testimony that I felt had been very supportive. Chairman [Lamar S.] Smith was very supportive, and I knew that he had announced he wasn’t going to run for reelection, so I thanked him, just as an example.\n\n I didn’t know Chairman [John A.] Culberson wasn’t going to win, but I thanked him as well just because he’d been such a staunch supporter and had reached out to me numerous times to make sure things were going okay. That’s the part where people don’t see behind the scenes with some of these folks. Some of them are really trying to do the right thing.

Sandra Johnson: You’ve touched on that a little bit before. Like you said, people don’t understand that behind-the-scenes work that goes on to get things approved for NASA. Since we’re a federal agency, we do have to have things approved by Congress. Those individual members of Congress do the work that help to get those things approved and support NASA all the time.

Robert M. Lightfoot: Yes. I think it goes even into their staffs. There’s some just amazing staffers that support these folks. Whether it’s the personal staff for the members or actually the committee staff. Some of the committee staff that I dealt with were as knowledgeable of NASA as me, they’d been doing it for so long, about what we were trying to do. Which makes it very helpful, because those are the people that can really influence the discussions. They’re the ones that would call and ask questions. We have to maintain a relationship with those folks because you wanted them to call you when they had questions as you moved forward.

Sandra Johnson: I know that once President Trump announced his pick and the Senate had a chance to approve him, maybe you can just talk a little bit about that transition of handing over. Were you there while his staff was there as part of that transition? How close did you work with them? Or did you at all?

Robert M. Lightfoot: Very little actually. Jim [James F.] Bridenstine finally got confirmed I want to say April. It was basically a week and a half before I retired, so we had a very small overlap time. He and I had been talking a lot as part of him being prepped. I checked on him every once in a while, made sure if there was anything he needed from me. Just a very respectful transition.\n\n One of the coolest things about our democracy is we transition from one to the other. Frankly everything I saw and every time I talked to him I knew he was going to bring, in my opinion, the type of passion and the type of understanding of what we need to do as an Agency. I was very encouraged actually to get him on board.\n\n I wish I’d had a longer transition with him because I think we could have done a lot more things. Depending on how you read it, when I announced my retirement is when one of the senators had been kind of holding up his confirmation actually said, “Well, looks like we need to go ahead and confirm,” in a tweet. I don’t know if that’s what caused it to finally happen or not. By then I’d announced my retirement, so I was done. That’s the way it worked.\n\n My conversations and my handoff with Jim, even after I left. I told him, “I’m here. Just reach out if I can help with anything.” Obviously early on we talked more than we do now, but even now I’ll check on him.\n\n I think probably one of the most poignant moments was with the Soyuz abort recently. I immediately sent him a text and said, “Hey, if I can help in any way let me know.” That’s the kind of thing no Administrator wants to deal with, or have that on their watch. That kind of thing.

Sandra Johnson: You’ve had a chance to work under a lot of different Administrators, while you were in those leadership roles at Stennis [Space Center, Mississippi] and at Marshall [Space Flight Center, Huntsville, Alabama] and then again at Headquarters. Maybe if you can just take a moment and talk about some of those Administrators. Not only their leadership style, but maybe some of their differences, or the effectiveness of their leadership style. I know a lot of them are formed by things that they have to go through. A lot of them had to go through tragedies and that sort of thing. Maybe talk about that, but also the differences in their background. The new Administrator doesn’t have that typical background of an Administrator for NASA. Mike [Michael D.] Griffin was an engineer. Charlie Bolden was an astronaut. Sean O’Keefe came from OMB [Office of Management and Budget] and the Navy. Their backgrounds are pretty diverse, but they were leading the same Agency.

Robert M. Lightfoot: The first Administrator I really remember I guess I would say having any kind of interface with was O’Keefe. Obviously knew who all of them were before that. I had a little bit of interaction with Dan Goldin, but I was probably a GS-14 [General Schedule pay scale] maybe, or maybe a 15. He was not in my chain, he was too far removed from my chain to pay attention. O’Keefe was probably the first one that I got to know in some shape, form, or fashion.\n\n That was a case where you had a gentleman that knew government really well, how to maneuver in government very well, and didn’t have the technical background but clearly had the chops to deal with OMB and the [Capitol] Hill. Honestly as an Agency the biggest thing that happened with him is Columbia [Space Shuttle disaster, STS-107]. Columbia happened when he was the Administrator. As I think I told you guys before, leading during easy times is not that hard. Leading during tough times is very difficult. You exercise muscles you don’t even know you have. That’s what we saw from O’Keefe when he did that. He seemed to have the ear of the White House and the administration at least at some level.\n\n Mike came in, Mike Griffin. I’ve known Mike for a long time. Just a brilliant, brilliant engineer. He set us on the pace for going back to the Moon with Constellation [Program] and the other activities that were going on. Obviously we had an administration change and then Charlie came. Charlie was a Marine general, an astronaut, had a different skill set than the other two in there.\n\n I think that the story or the message I would tell people is that NASA can survive, and prosper actually, not just survive. NASA can advance what we’re trying to do regardless of who the Administrator is. What the Administrator does is help to be that bridge between administration and Congress to make sure that they help us, because we can’t do anything without all of them supporting. I just saw many different styles.\n\n Think about any leadership position. There’s different people that have different styles. They all seem to work for the time that they’re in there. I don’t think there’s a style that works, and I think Jim coming from the Hill brings his own set of strengths. He’s probably a lot more technical than people ever gave him credit for, at least in my conversations with him. What I would say about Jim that impressed me the most is he listened. He listened to things that I talked to him about and took it all in. He didn’t have an “I’m not going to do it that way” attitude. He was very much in the learning mode. I think that’ll bode well for the Agency going forward.

Sandra Johnson: Listening of course is an important part of being a leader. You talked a lot about leadership in the first two interviews. Maybe we can talk about your leadership style and method. You mentioned before that you had always been a bridge builder. You just mentioned again that the Administrator was the person to build that bridge between NASA and Congress. You described yourself as a communicator.\n\n Let’s talk about how you developed that leadership style throughout your career with NASA, and if you had any specific mentors along the way. You have mentioned some people before. You talked about Roy [S.] Estess in your first interview and how special he was. If you want, please talk about your style, and where you felt like that came from, and how you feel that you developed it.

Robert M. Lightfoot: It’s interesting, Sandra, I’m not sure that I ever thought I had a style. I believe in servant leadership, and that’s got a pretty specific definition. I’m here to serve my team more than my team is here to serve me. I believe in situational leadership, where not everybody responds the same way, so I as the leader have to change the way that I talk to different people to maximize their potential going forward.\n\n I think the best way to say it for me is I never thought I deserved the position I’m in. That keeps you grounded. It keeps you always trying to be better. I think that’s the way I’ve always thought. Where did that come from? That comes from my dad. My dad was a schoolteacher. I witnessed him my whole life growing up. Everybody he talked to, he talked to them exactly the same way. It did not matter. It’s a trite saying: from janitor to CEO, as far as he was concerned there was no difference in the way he treated folks.\n\n I watched that and I watched him be successful. I also knew he wouldn’t put up with it if I did anything different. He is my hero for a lot of reasons and still is today. I think he just taught a humbleness that goes with that. That’s what people tell me, I’m approachable and humble. That doesn’t mean I don’t have an ego. It doesn’t mean I don’t want to lead and run. But I also recognize there’s people that are smarter than me in every room I walk into. The key leader is the one that can get that brilliance out on the table in a way that we can actually do something with it.\n\n I love leadership. I love talking to people about my scar tissue that I have because I’ve had plenty of unsuccessful leadership moments and I’ve had some pretty successful leadership moments. I tell people I never set out to do any of this. I never set out to be a Center Director or an Acting Administrator or Associate Administrator. It was never on my to-do list. I didn’t really have a to-do list. I just did the job that was given to me.\n\n I gave a speech when I was presented with the [Dr. Wernher] von Braun [Space Flight] Trophy here in Huntsville. My speech was about how I said “yes” a few times when I probably should have said “no”. A lot of my mentors said yes a few times when they probably should have said no. That’s how it works. That’s my style. Being approachable and vulnerable lets people let their hair down with you and really tell you what’s going on. In this job as Administrator you need people to tell you what’s going on. If you don’t know, that’s when we get bit. That’s when something bad happens. I don’t know if that answers the question, Sandra, but that’s the way I’ve thought about it.

Sandra Johnson: Yes, I think it does. You’ve talked about leadership, and I’ve gotten a good sense of how you felt about those things all the way through in the different quotes that you follow. The [President] Teddy [Theodore] Roosevelt quote and the one you mentioned already today, it’s easy to lead when things are good, but leadership is when things are hard, that’s true leadership. I feel like we have a good sense of the way you feel about it, so I appreciate that.\n\n One of the other things I wanted to talk about while you were at Headquarters, and this is more a cultural question. Earlier in your career in propulsion and the different fields, you were coming up in a time in NASA when there were more women moving into NASA, into those types of positions, but still there weren’t as many as men. Still aren’t. You served under two different Deputy Administrators who were women, Lori [B.] Garver and Dava [J.] Newman. Then Lesa [B.] Roe served as your Deputy Administrator while you were Acting Administrator, and Krista [C.] Paquin.\n\n It’s interesting to me that you had these women in highly visible roles at NASA. Talk about them for just a moment and your feelings about maybe women at NASA, especially with the push for STEM education [curriculum based on Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math] and the work that people are doing to attract more women to the fields that NASA deals with.

Robert M. Lightfoot: Part of it for me was early on, I guess 2007ish, when I was Deputy Center Director at Marshall, I asked Dave [David A.] King if I could be the champion for diversity and inclusion. In so doing I started learning more and more about things, enablers, disablers, the kind of things that come into play, mainly on inclusion, and how easy it is to pick somebody that’s like you to help you and do the things that you do.\n\n That was my early lesson. I had lessons before that. My father, I told you, he would knock me upside the head if I didn’t respect everyone the same way. What I found, honestly, it’s kind of interesting, I never thought about that I was working with a woman or an African American. I don’t want to say that I was blind to it because that’s not true either, but it wasn’t like the focus of what I was doing. I just had people that wanted to do a good job. If I was working for them I wanted to help them do a good job. If they were working for me I wanted to help them grow and enable them to be the kind of folks they are.\n\n If you take Lori Garver and Dava Newman for instance, just like the Administrator conversation we had a minute ago, totally different skill set, but both incredibly passionate about the Agency and where they thought the Agency should go. Whether you agree with either one of them or not, but that’s what they thought.\n\n In my job I worked for them. My job was to do that. Lesa Roe, who was my first Deputy and then Krista Paquin, who was my second, I didn’t pick them because they were women. I picked them because they were the most qualified to do the job. I felt that very strongly. Now look at Jody Singer who’s the first female Center Director at Marshall. I could not be more proud of her. Worked with Jody for a long time.\n\n I get asked the question, “What do you think about Jody being the first female Center Director?” I said, “I’m really proud of her for that but I’m more proud of her for being the fourteenth Center Director at Marshall because she’s the right person for the job.” Not because she’s a woman, because she’s the right person for the job. I’ve always thought about it that way.\n\n I’ve had help along the way, you need to know. I’ve had a couple mentors. One of the first female senior executives at Marshall Space Flight Center was a lady named Ann [R.] McNair. Ann helped me a lot when I was younger in terms of some of the decisions that I might make that were not intentional, but they could be looked at as unintentional biases. It’s just funny to watch the difference as you go forward. I learned some things on my own in particular for women about the way women respond to things versus men. I think you have to take time, and again, it’s that situational thing. You’ve got to realize they’re not going to respond the same way a guy does on some things. That’s not good or bad, it’s just different. Unfortunately sometimes we bucket that as good or bad.\n\n I never saw it that way. The only time I remember distinctly pointing something out was I was in a meeting with the head of the NRO [National Reconnaissance Office], Betty [J.] Sapp, at the time the Secretary of the Air Force Deborah Lee James, and Charlie Bolden, head of NASA.\n\n These three people were running the meeting. I looked at them and I said, “This is pretty cool; two women and an African American running three of the most powerful organizations in this country.” I thought that was pretty cool. That shows we’ve come a long way. That’s always been my take on it. Get the best person and let them do their job, then help them.

Sandra Johnson: Yes. That’s definitely important. It is interesting that you asked for that job to be in charge of diversity. You learned your lessons well from your father.\n\n Is there anything about that Acting Administrator time or any other time when you were actually with NASA that we’ve maybe talked a little about but not enough? Or anything you wanted to add about that time?

Robert M. Lightfoot: It’s funny, Sandra. I may have already touched on this, and if I did I apologize. But I’ve done a couple speeches in the last month. When you guys first started talking to me I will admit I was probably still coming out of being burned out. That last year and a half was pretty tough being the Acting Administrator and still having to do the other job too. But I’ll end this whole thing with this.\n\n Never underestimate the power of mission. As I get further and further away now—I’m eight months out of the job—I’m missing the mission. I love my job today but when you look at what everybody tries to do and when you look at the mission focus the Agency has, even other organizations have, you can’t underestimate how powerful that is, and how great it is to be part of something bigger than you.\n\n I was able to accomplish things that I could have never done by myself, but only because I was part of a greater team. I will tell you I’m growing more and more appreciative of that the further I get away from it.

Sandra Johnson: We’ve heard it described that way from others. But it is important. It’s important that people reading this know that being a part of that mission as you said is something greater than yourself.\n\n When you decided to retire, I’d read that there was some speculation on how long you’d actually stay actually retired. You mentioned LSINC [Corporation] before in your other interview. It was ironic that when you were at Marshall you had worked with them. You had asked for help outside of NASA after the cancellation of Constellation when there was that risk of losing that engineering capability at NASA. They helped you work out some of the strategies that led to that National Institute for Rocket Propulsion Systems.\n\n I was just curious how you chose or how you moved into this new position and what you were bringing to it and maybe what you think you learned from your tenure at NASA that’s helping you in this new adventure.

Robert M. Lightfoot: Oh, man. Good question. The reason I chose it is because first of all I knew the CEO [Chief Executive Officer] really well. I consider her a good friend. We had traded mentoring moments for probably the last 10 years. Never thought I’d go work for her, by the way.\n\n I’ll just tell you what I had. I could have gone several places I think. I had a logic that I was trying to follow in terms of what I wanted to do next. I was not ready to quit working, but I needed to get out of the pressure of the job I was under. Pressure is probably the wrong word. At least the pace. Maybe that’s a better word. If I wanted to live very long, I needed to get out of that.\n\n It became very clear to me as I was going through some of the potential offers I had and potential thoughts I had on where I wanted to go that people were important. I’ve said that as a leader forever, that people are most important. I should have known that, but it’s actually fascinating when you start meeting people you’re going to be working with. If you meet some people that you go, “Oh, man, that didn’t feel right,” it’s probably not right. I was just very lucky to meet the team here at LSINC. There was a good connection, so that was one thing, people.\n\n The other thing was when you come off of a job like the Administrator at NASA, whether you’re Acting or not, you’re still doing it. I in essence was serving as the CEO and COO [Chief Operating Officer]. Position became important for me. Not necessarily title as much as position. What I mean by that is at NASA I was able to really influence the direction we were going, and influence our message to the next administration. I wanted to be part of that at the corporate level wherever I went. If I’d gone to a larger company I’d have had to pay some dues for a while before I could ever even think about getting into the corporate structure, and this job offered the opportunity to jump right into the corporate structure.\n\n The variety of the product that the company was involved in was important to me. I don’t mean offense to anybody out there that loves this kind of work, but you could have given me the presidency of a large IT company and I would have just died. I don’t know IT, I’m not interested in IT. It’s got to be something I can put some passion around. Here we had a really cool opportunity; we do government work and commercial work. The commercial work has nothing to do with aerospace and defense. It’s just purely commercial work. That gave me a chance to grow. I want to be able to grow as well.\n\n What did I bring to that job? I brought probably leadership experience. The company is growing. It’s a very small business. When you’re a small business you might not have the processes and structures in place because you don’t need them. But as you grow you got to start putting those things in place so that you do that. Clearly I’m going to know that from those days.\n\n I brought—I think, but you’d have to ask my boss—my goal is to bring a sense of hey, we got this, we’re OK. I think I used the phrase with you guys before about “reality-based optimism”. That’s something that I’ve tried to always do with our teams. Don’t be an Eeyore down in the dumps all the time. But also don’t be sunshine and rainbows that everything’s perfect, we’re going to be fine. You need to bring a reality-based optimism to this space. That kind of balanced approach is what I brought to this team as they’re growing.\n\n I can tell you, doesn’t matter whether you’re going from 30 people to 90 people like we’ve done or 3,000 to 9,000, growth is growth. It brings some interesting challenges and you need some people at the top that know how to manage that.

Sandra Johnson: It’s interesting because you worked as a civil servant for the government for a good number of years. Now going into a company that is out there I assume looking for work. As you said, you work some with private industry but also with the government. I’m thinking those are probably government contracts. So, now you’re on the other side of that. Talk about that for a moment, that difference in being on the other side of the civil servant system.

Robert M. Lightfoot: We do some government work, and it is government contract work, but it’s usually we’re a sub. We have recently won a prime job but it’s not really technical, it’s more of a support job for the Missile Defense Agency.\n\n What I would tell you and what I’ve learned is we civil servants, they think we’re a lot more strategic than we actually are based on when we put out a proposal. There’s a lot of guessing about what do you think they really meant. Which I find interesting, because sometimes I go, “Wow, I wish we were that good as civil servants.”\n\n On the other side what I find is there’s an immense amount of talent out here that we got to figure out a way to get involved in our national missions. The talent is unbelievable. I’m very fortunate to work with some people here that while it’s not aerospace and defense work, I can tell you I’d put them against anybody I know at NASA from a technical perspective, based on the way they think and the innovation they bring to the table for some of the commercial solutions we build for our clients. It’s pretty impressive. I would say it gives me a broader view of the talent pool this nation has.\n\n As a nation that has big challenges, we just got to make sure we get that talent pool, get them in the game.

Sandra Johnson: I read an interview with you. In it you made a statement. It was in relation to NASA, and the question I believe was about robotics versus human spaceflight. But I thought the statement itself was interesting, going back to more of a philosophy of work and leadership. It was the power of and versus the tyranny of or. If you don’t mind, talk about that for a minute and how you apply that and what you mean by that.

Robert M. Lightfoot: I teach that in my leadership talks that I do. I also talked about it when it came to commercial spaceflight versus government or traditional spaceflight. Everybody wants to drive you to an or, and oftentimes the better answer is and.\n\n People will say robots versus humans. Why not robots and humans? Why does it have to be an or? I have three tyrannies I talk about. That’s one of them, and versus or. I used to tell people from a leadership standpoint if you find yourself being given the challenge of an or, just replace it with an and and see if it changes the way you think about the problem.\n\n There’s power in and. A lot of power. You can actually get different solutions to something. If we do this and that we’re that much more safe. If we do this or that—why does it have to be an or? That was the reason I talked about it. I’m quoted probably in every speech I did as Acting Administrator that this is an and, not an or. Probably every speech. I’ve said it forever.\n\n There is room for all of us in this global endeavor. So quit making it an or and cutting people out.

Sandra Johnson: It seems to be a theme going through your career. I thought that was an interesting quote. I’ve also read other articles where other people have been quoted as calling you a visionary and that you can see the future well and plan for it years in advance. They were talking about you as you were Acting Administrator at the time. I think that’s interesting and something that would be nice to be described that way. But do you feel that you can see things maybe sometimes that are down the road that maybe some other people maybe stuck with those ors instead of choosing the and or something else like that?

Robert M. Lightfoot: I don’t know. I think visionary might have been a stretch. If I have a skill, Sandra, and it’s not unique, there’s several people that have it, and by the way the people I surrounded myself with, always I tried to surround people that had this ability. It’s not visionary as much as it is think about a game of chess. Good chess players—I’m not one by the way. I’m going to be really clear, I’m a terrible chess player. But they’re usually three or four moves ahead if not five or six moves ahead. If I had a criticism of me from some of my colleagues it would be I would get hung up on thinking about the fifth and sixth chess move before I’d make the first one.\n\n That would drive some people crazy because I would be too slow on making that first decision, because I was already thinking “Okay, do that, then this and this.” I think I told you guys I just look at everything as a systems engineering problem. What are the components of my system? What has to work together? Then how do I influence all those components of the system to work together? Sometimes that takes looking at things completely differently than you would in a normal way.\n\n That’s really the way I think, the way I process information. Because I process that way sometimes that lets me pick a different path than maybe is the real obvious black-and-white path right in front of you. If that makes me visionary, okay. But I’m not sure that’s visionary as much as it is just thinking ahead a few steps.

Sandra Johnson: It’s an important quality though to have I think if you’re going to be a leader.\n\n As you look back over your career with NASA—and you’ve mentioned a couple things, but I just wanted to see if you had anything else. You talked about that time after Constellation as a very difficult time but also something you were proud of. Is there anything else? Is there anything if you look back over your entire career that you would say you are most proud of?

Robert M. Lightfoot: I don’t know if I have anything I’m most proud of. If there was anything really it would be mentoring some of the leaders that are in place today, or hiring people that I see thriving today. Not all of them that I hired did great. Not all the ones I selected are doing great. But those that I did, and I watched them grow. Seeing a person grow and trying to enable them to grow, that’s a pretty cool thing, because somebody did that for me. That’s your giving back.\n\n There’s way too many things that happened in my career for me to just pick one that I would say was the biggest thing. There’s so many. Maybe I don’t even want to say that. I’m not going to go there.

Sandra Johnson: That’s okay. It is a hard question. That’s why we always save these till last.

Robert M. Lightfoot: Sandra, I want to say. I’m going to say the thing that probably means the most to me. Coming out of Columbia and flying out the Shuttle safely and the colleagues I got to work with during that time and bringing all the crews home safe, that to me if I had to pick. There’s a lot of anxiety and pressure, even though you have done everything you can do, and you feel good about what you’re flying. We were really good near the end, and didn’t drop our guard down. I attribute that to [N.] Wayne Hale and John [P.] Shannon. These are great people to work with and we were very fortunate. To have gone through that to me is probably the—if I had to pick, I can’t imagine having lost another crew. I just can’t even imagine. That was probably the biggest.\n\n I would say Shuttle did its job. We got the [International Space] Station built and we got everybody home safe post Columbia. That would be the one, if I had to pick something, if anybody asked me someday, I would say, “Yes, I was part of that team that did that.”

Sandra Johnson: Sometimes it’s the same thing, but the other question we like to ask is what was your biggest challenge?

Robert M. Lightfoot: Yes, I think my biggest challenge—I don’t know. That’s a good question. There’s three that pop in my head.

Sandra Johnson: You can talk about all of them if you want.

Robert M. Lightfoot: One is the Constellation cancellation. One is the Shuttle fly-out. Making sure we did that, and did that well. I think the last one probably from a challenge perspective, the biggest one, and it’s probably because it’s the most recent, was just the Acting Administrator job. I was so worried that I would hurt this great institution that I believe in so much that I just felt like I had to really jump in with both feet, make sure we didn’t have that happen. Yes, it’s not just me, it’s the whole team that does that, but when you’re at the top you kind of feel like it’s you. I didn’t want to hurt the team. I wanted to make sure the team was left with a good mission and good plans to go forward. Felt like I did that, but boy, it’s constantly on your mind.

Sandra Johnson: Is there anything we haven’t talked about that you’d like to mention before we go?

Robert M. Lightfoot: I don’t think so. I think you guys have covered the waterfront.

Sandra Johnson: We like to cover as much as we can. I do appreciate you talking to me again, I really do, and just wrapping this up a little bit from our last interview.

Robert M. Lightfoot: I appreciate it, Sandra. Appreciate everything you guys are doing to capture all this. This is important.

Sandra Johnson: We feel so. We definitely feel it is, and we enjoy doing it.