President G.H.W. Bush Space Exploration Initiative - SEI, 1976 - 2011

Per Craig, "My involvement in the leadership of NASA's formulation of, and response to, President George H. W. Bush's Space Exploration Initiative (SEI) was seminal in the arc of my career. Having been in senior leadership positions for system engineering and integration during the early phases of space station, I had been exposed to the challenges inherent at the intersection of the political and the technical, at the intersection of the "why" and the "how." The challenges at that intersection for SEI were at least an order of magnitude greater. Dealing with those challenges on SEI led me to conclude that the technical challenges, although significant, of "returning to the Moon, this time to stay, and then going on to Mars" were dwarfed by the political and policy challenges. How does one design a NASA human space exploration program to be politically sustainable and to deliver the maximum value to the Nation? How does one design a program so that once Mars is ultimately reached the program isn’t canceled after several landings like Apollo?

Since 1993, the pursuit of answers to those questions and their implementation have motivated and shaped my involvement in:

• Creation of the NASA and the Human Exploration and Development of Space (HEDS) strategic plans • Customer and stakeholder engagement • Value management and public engagement • Creation and promotion of the NASA 2010 Authorization Act and the 2014 National Research Council report on human space exploration • Enterprise sustainability