During this time I kept a daily diary of my interactions as this was literally at the dawn of today's Internet and we still used paper for many things. At this conference were many NASA luminaries and at one panel discussion a startling, and in hindsight prophetic statement was made. The statement that is in my diary goes "SEI by 1994 or will not happen until after 2004". The person that made this statement was the head of NASA Code X (X for exploration), and his name was Dr. Mike Griffin. Dr. Griffin also stated that without the SEI the United States would begin to fall behind in aerospace technology. It seems that with 14 years of hindsight that Dr. Griffin was exactly right on both counts.
