NASA’s Goldin Boy Wants to Boldly Go Where No Man Has Gone Before : Space: He’s outspoken, determined and in charge. Dan Goldin is shooting for the stars with plans for a space station and a mission to Mars.

Hundreds of people clustered around the TV in the lobby of New York’s LaGuardia Airport that Sunday in July, watching as Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin became the first men to walk on the moon.

Dan Goldin sat there, transfixed, as his flight to Boston left without him.

Goldin was so proud to have had a small part in Apollo 11. His company built the engine of the lunar lander that carried the astronauts to the surface that day--July 20, 1969. He made a pact with himself right there: Someday, somehow, he would be part of a Mars mission.

Today, 25 years later, Goldin has that chance.

Twenty-seven years ago, Goldin, then a junior engineer, left NASA for TRW Inc. He’s back, but now he’s in charge of the entire space agency--and battling the bureaucracy that drove him away.

NASA’s candid and controversial chief of two years is rocking the agency’s boat hard, to the disgust of many old-timers.

He’s ousted longtime officials, rearranged the hierarchy, cut the work force, shaved the budget, insisted on “faster, better, cheaper,” fought for Russian participation in the planned space station and, at least for now, won.

Apollo 16 commander John Young, who holds the record with six space flights, says that despite his rough edges, Goldin’s heart is in the right place. Apollo 10 commander Thomas Stafford, who circled the moon but never landed, considers Goldin the best NASA administrator since Jim Webb, who laid the foundation for Apollo during the 1960s.

John Pike, head of the Federation of American Scientists’ space policy project, also is impressed.

“Walks on water,” Pike said of Goldin. “He’s been extremely effective in formulating a post-Cold War political rationale for NASA that does not require industrial-strength mendacity.”

Nominated by President Bush and retained by President Clinton, Goldin is receiving much of the credit for last month’s stunningly large House victory for the space station.

It was the 15th time he’d had to weather a space station vote in Congress. All these votes are “enough to make you want to puke,” he blurted publicly last spring.

He admits he got carried away that day, but quickly asks, “Doesn’t it bother you?”

If he’s blunt at times, even brash, then so be it.

“As Popeye says, I y’am what I y’am,” Goldin said during an interview in his large, top-floor office at NASA headquarters in Washington.

“I haven’t changed,” he insisted. “I decided I would be myself, and that I will do the very best I can. I don’t know if I can try harder, because I put in a good 15-hour day. I was doing it seven days a week and I now have it down to 5 1/2.”

Goldin, who turned 54 this month, eased his maniacal schedule so he could train for a triathlon--a swimming, biking and running competition. Unfortunately, a bicycle accident in late April wrecked his training plans.

For Goldin, who just never seems to stop, it’s NASA versus the NFL, space research versus taco chips and beer.

“We are talking about $14 billion out of a $5.5-trillion economy,” he said of NASA’s budget. “Give me a break! One-hundred-forty million people now watch the Super Bowl. I don’t want to demean professional football, but is that what life’s about?

“We consume taco chips and we consume beer. We have to have two cars and sometimes three. We have to have vacation homes. How come people don’t criticize those that have three cars and two vacation homes, yet they say, ‘How come when people are starving you go and do a space program?’ It rips my heart out.”

And he’s just warming up.

“I’m not worried about the space program. I’m worried about America,” Goldin said. “Our nation has become a nation of consumption. Entertainment and recreation are the most important things for the future. God help us!”

Goldin became interested in space while growing up in the Bronx. His Uncle Joe taught him how to build model airplanes and rocket ships, and he devoured science fiction.

After college in 1962, Goldin applied for a job at NASA’s Lewis Research Center in Cleveland, because it was working on a mission to Mars. TRW lured him away in 1967, and he soon was managing secret military spacecraft programs.

Goldin was vice president and general manager of TRW Space and Technology Group in Redondo Beach when Bush offered him NASA’s top job in March, 1992. Ex-astronaut Richard Truly had been pressured to resign by the White House; he’d helped to lead NASA back from disaster after the 1986 Challenger explosion, but refused to go along with changes to reform NASA’s old boy network.

Goldin was considered the medicine NASA needed.

Within months, George Bush was out and Bill Clinton was in. Goldin prepared to leave, but was asked by the incoming Administration to “hang in there”--one of the few agency heads who survived the sea change in administrations. He stayed, even though he says it cost him millions in pay and real estate investments.

He harbors frustrations, but no regrets.

“Every day I wake up and I say, ‘There are thousands of millions of very rich people and executives, but I’m only the ninth NASA administrator.’ I have the best job, because if you’re the NASA administrator during good times, you’re not being tested.”

Goldin is being tested all right.

When he took over NASA, for example, he was shocked to learn there was no single person in charge of the crucial Hubble Space Telescope repair mission. He put Randy Brinkley at the helm and ordered extra training and practice spacewalks. The result was last December’s spectacularly successful mission and, universally, the praise was for the training that preceded it. Brinkley is now managing the international space station program office.

Goldin’s overriding concern, for now, is keeping the station on track; construction in orbit is supposed to start in 1997. Once the station is completed in 2002, Goldin said, it will be time to plan international expeditions to the moon, Mars, maybe even an asteroid.

“I made a pact with myself, so I can’t back off,” he said. “Now, I accept the fact that maybe there may be a higher priority for human beings to go to places other than Mars. But my deepest dream is that in my lifetime I will some way be responsible for a mission to Mars. It would be the next noble thing that we could do as a society.”

The last noble thing was Apollo. Twenty-five long years ago.