O'Keefe to Resign as NASA Administrator

lommer writes "The Globe and Mail is carrying a story that NASA administrator Sean O'Keefe may be set to resign as early as Monday to begin a position as chancellor of Louisiana State University. On the one hand this could mean the indroduction of an administrator with an engineering background (O'Keefe is an MPA), on the other hand can we really expect NASA to effect serious changes and find a focused direction with leadership changes every 4 years?" An anonymous reader adds a link to this Florida Today article (also carried by Space.com) which says that "the retired director of the Pentagon's Missile Defense Agency tops a list of five men that President Bush is considering to take over the space agency."

Comments

Re:It's refreshing to see someone leave for money.

[ZiakII]

don't think thats exactly completally true when the same thing has happend with Clinton copied strait from cnn.com

The immigration status of household help employed by prospective high-level government officials has been an issue in the past decade, beginning in 1993 when former President Bill Clinton's first pick for attorney general, Zoe Baird, was forced to withdraw after admitting she employed two undocumented workers and did not pay required employee taxes for them.

Delta IV Heavy

[Artifakt]

The Delta Four launch scheduled for Saturday had to be postponed. The good news is the next window isn't 2 months away, it's Tues. afternoon (the 21st) if they decide to go for it. The D4 Heavy version is the first version of the D4 to use three main booster rockets, forming a booster theoretically capable of servicing the ISS at much less cost to orbit than the shuttle. While the "multi-barrel" design is just becoming operational, regular Delta IVs with the same engine have entered successful service in 2003.
The Delta IV Heavy is staged from Nasa's pad 37B, which last saw service as the launchpad for the Saturn 1B Apollo missions.

http://www.spaceflightnow.com/delta/d310/041201del ta4heavy.html/

http://www.boeing.com/defense-space/space/delta/de lta4/delta4.htm/

The Delta 4 Heavy supports payloads of up to about 50,000 pounds to low-Earth orbit (i.e. the International Space Station). It can put about 29,000 pounds into Geosyncronous orbit 22,300 miles above the planet, or 22,000 pounds to the moon, or about 17,500 pounds to Mars.

The IV Heavy's possible successors, clustering more first stage rockets, include a 7 tube design with MORE lift than the Saturn 5.