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

Damn! He was the only reason I voted for Bush!

[tjstork]

I thought O'Keefe's aggressive reinstatement of the Prometheus project, his commitment to the CRV, were all right on the money.

JPL'ers thought Elachi would get the job

[Anonymous Coward]

Elachi is the current administrator of JPL. They expected O'Keefe to resign and speculated that Elachi would be a candidate. Apparently he was offered the job after Goldin left, but he had just taken over JPL and wanted to stay.

Great. Now what?

[Anonymous Coward]

Alberto Gonzales for Attorney-General, the man who helped write justifications for torture and ignoring the Geneva Conventions.

Bernard Kerik for Dept. of Homeland Security head, now withdrawn after journalists did the kind of research the White House and FBI are supposed to do and found out he was a combination of cheap crook, personal spy for his boss in KSA, and the guy who spent 1.5 months in Iraq before bailing out (he promised six).

Condi Rice for Sec. State, a woman who as National Security Advisor somehow managed to miss all the reports and test runs that proposed air-based attacks on the WTC and claimed that a presidential intelligence bulletin issued one month before Sept. 11 warning of al Qaeda's efforts to attack within the US was "nothing major"

I can't wait to find out how "qualified" Bush's selection for NASA head is. Watch this person turn out to be one of the individuals responsible for the Challenger disaster, or someone more interested in throwing military toys into space than, y'know, that exploration stuff.

Go NASA!

[steveyT]

I'm English so my taxes don't contribute to NASA, however I'm a big supported of the work they do. Personally I think it's really important to be conducting research and experimentation. I think it's a shame that it has basically come down to America to lead the world in this field, as competition often leads to better results.

I really hope this isn't going to be a backward step for NASA, but instead a positive move.

Re:Go NASA!

[tjmcgee]

I have to say that I think you are wrong about the faster, cheaper, better philosophy being horribly wrong. It may not have been executed exceedingly well, but it did have some huge payoffs. If it weren't for faster cheaper better (smarter?) We probably would have only had one other Mars probe since the viking missions. Instead, we have a couple of orbiters and 3 mobile landers. The cost of these together has not even come close to the cost of one viking style probe. The philosophy behind faster, cheaper, smarter allowed for failures, the idea was you would spend 3 billion on a series of probes (instead of one), you can do them every two years (instead of every 10) and if you lose one you don't lose everything. I think that contrary to what you suggest the faster cheaper better philosophy has contributed a great deal to our understanding of Mars and not set us back 5 years. like this

But all space missions are expensive

[mind21_98]

All space missions are quite expensive. NASA has to determine whether a mission will provide more benefits than costs. Fuel costs quite a bit, as well as the training and the parts needed to build a rocket capable of going to Mars. Any benefits? Not many. That's probably why not much has been done.

Re:But all space missions are expensive

[NardofDoom]

And why is space expensive? Because there aren't economies of scale. Because we don't have competition driving the price down. Because NASA has let us believe that space is expensive.

The Ansari X-Prize showed that, for 1% of the cost of one shuttle flight, you could develop, build, test and fly a system capable of reaching space. I'd wager that for $100 million you could send three people to orbit. Hell, Apollo only cost us $50 billion, and we actually went somewhere. Half a dozen times.

So is space expensive because it's hard, or is space expensive because we're used to going through a massive government bureaucracy to get there?

Re:But all space missions are expensive

[konstantinlevin]

Point 1: Space exploration is our only chance if we ever hope to get off this rock. Obviously, things like materials synthesis and training of astronauts are costly, but the consolation is that we may hope to come up with a solution for how to continue human life. Call me a cynic, but I consider it pretty unlikely that we humans can survive our technological adulthood while we still struggle with our social pubescence.

Point 2: This point is a little more abstract, so bear with me. I think cost should not even have a bearing on this. Exploration is one of the most important of human endeavors, just cuz it helps us make sense of our surroundings. I don't know what we hope to find. I don't really care. I just think it's important to look anyway.

In the old days, there were explorers who set out in those kickass tall ships to have adventures. It's romantic, but the romance captivated people and they went anyway.

Perhaps the best example of this is the Endurance (ship). In 1913, Sir Earnest Shackleton of Great Britan put out a classified ad announcing that he needed a crew, preferably people with specialized skills, for an exploration of Antartica that would be terrifically dangerous and unpaid. This full-disclosure ad got thousands of responses. The world was on the brink of total war, but the Queen and the British government gave the mission their full blessing and support. In 1914, the crew of the Endurance left on a doomed voyage. They got stuck in thickening ice, and the ship was crushed. Shackleton led his starving crew across 800 miles of frozen wasteland to ultimate rescue, and every last man survived. For the full story, I recommend Endurance: Shackleton's Incredible Voyage, an excellent book if there's anyone out there who still reads books.

This is missing from our culture these days, and I would like very much to see this spirit of adventure returned to the dollar-chasing monotony of daily life.

Re:But all space missions are expensive

[Rei]

No, fuel is not expensive. Fuel is cheap - depending on the rocket, tens to hundreds of dollars per kilogram of payload. The main cost is in part fabrication for disposable rockets and in maintainance for reusable rockets.

I agree with you about Mars, though. We need to improve the tech first. Going to Mars with today's tech would be like Genghis Khan making it a priority to reach the North Pole. Yes, eventually you need to "just go" - however, we really need to reduce costs first (and to all the Zubrin nuts out there - noone with experience who's given his numbers even a cursory glance buys them. He wants to fund an entire Mars mission for the cost of developing just the nuclear reactor that he wants to generate the power)

NASA Copout on Prizes

[Baldrson]

The stories that NASA wants to pursue prize awards in a big way but just can't because of Congressional resistance is a copout.

Every single time NASA puts out a request for proposals it sets the criteria for awarding the contracts. It can set the criteria for awarding the contracts to be objective criteria such as "2 manned launches with the same vehicle within the same week" or whatever.

The only reason NASA doesn't do so is it would take power out of the hands of the people doing the contract awards and put the power in the hands of mother nature and those who know best how to coax her to perform as desired.

John Young, NASA Administrator!

[Big Sean O]

They were just waiting for his replacement.

Might as well put a guy who actually went to the moon in the top position at NASA.

I think you misunderstand NASA's mission

[casuist99]

I think you misunderstand - NASA is responsible for a large portion of research dollars in aerospace, materials, and other engineering and science disciplines. NASA should not be about how to get most easily to earth orbit at the cost of research.

Let's put it this way - we've already been in orbit for 20+ years on regular shuttle flights. What did it get us? We were doing reasearch for PERFUME companies. (ok, we were also doing surveillance satellite deployment, repair, and collection, but ignore that for a moment). The reasearch in earth orbit doesn't justify orbital flights.

Of course, despite my opinion, it is part of NASA's mission to get to space and do "stuff" there. Advances in materials and aerospace science and engineering will lead to easier access to orbit. You only get there with research funding, not by cutting research budgets.

What worries me most is that the new director could be the man in charge of the "missile defense" system. It's unsuccessful, unverified, way over budget, and fails most tests until the test criteria are re-written to make a failure a success. This is not the sort of person you want running a civilian research and scientific space agency.

Re:I think you misunderstand NASA's mission

[casuist99]

You conveniently neglect the facts. I'm not neglecting Hubble. However: astronomers will tell you that a political decision was made to place Hubble in low earth orbit, such that it could be serviced by manned space missions. This was not the IDEAL placement for the telescope - it's not totally beyond the reach of atmospheric interference, for example - but it was made in order to give our astronauts something to do.

Of course, this placement turned out to be lucky when Hubble needed an optical adjustment, but its placement was decided on a political basis, not a scientific basis. This describes the problem I was referring to - hiring a politician to do a scientific job is going to lead to more failures than successes.

To respond to your second statement, which interplanetary spacecraft are you referring to? None manned, certainly. And the missions to mars you've seen on the TV with the robotic rovers - those were launced via unmanned rocket from Earth. No shuttle needed. We developed orbiters and landers for the moon - but without further purpose than just GOING there. That was an engineering feat in its own right and is the essence of human aspiration, but it served no larger scientific purpose than "lets see what the moon is made of." An unmanned mission could have done that just as well. Less inspiring, yes, but just as possible. What have we used those orbiters and landers for since? Nothing? Ah. Are we going to use them again for another moon shot? Nope? Ah. Well, at least we made 'dem orbiters and landers, right?

Re:A new NASA director probably can't do a lot

[Anonymous Coward]

and redirecting the money thus freed up into innovative research programs to lower the cost of access to orbit.

Every "innovative research program to lower the cost of access to orbit" since the early 80s has turned into an exorbantly-expensive, generally ineffective boondoggle that serves to extract billions of dollars from NASA into aerospace contractors with little or no benefit. Most of NASA's problems in the 90s came because all the agency's research money was tied up in the X12 project, leaving the groups doing meaningful and useful space exploration to subsist on a shoestring.

How would it be ensured that new "access to orbit" initiatives wouldn't meet the same fate?

Re:The Administrator is leaving

[Random Chaos]

Perhaps now we will get a space shuttle mission to service Hubble...O'Keefe seemed to be the biggest blocker of this.

NASA has competition

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm also British. I'm an astrophysicist, and my work revolves around XMM-Newton, an X-ray space telescope satellite made and operated by the European Space Agency which your taxes do pay for (thanks!).

Of course, science is international so the ESA is usually a collaborator with NASA rather than a competitor. I hope this new administrator does everything possible to keep the spirit of international scientific collaboration alive, rather than playing along with a wild goose chase to Mars...

What the heck is an MPA?

[jordandeamattson]

What the heck is an MPA? I think you mean that O'Keefe is an MBA.

Just because someone is a professional manager, doesn't mean that they can't manage a technical or scientific organization

Remember that the Manhatten Project was lead to success by General Leslie R. Groves http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leslie_Groves, who while also an engineer, who was the moral equivalent of an MBA. Yes, they wouldn't have gotten their without the techies like Feyman, Fermi, or Oppenheimer, but they also wouldn't have gotten their without Groves.

As an engineering manager who can hack a compiler as well as I can hack an operating plan or rolling four quarter outlook, I am distressed by the number of techies who can't (and don't care they can't) understand the difference between an operating and capital expenses (and why I can't spend 10K this month on a contractor, but I can spend 120K on a new server setup that has an expected life of 36 months).

You might not like it, but finance and accounting are the way score is kept and things are communicated in the world of business. An engineer or engineering manager who can't speak this language is at as big a disadvantage as the techie who can't program.

Yours,

Jordan

NASA rocks.

[standards]

I worked on the ISS program. My dad worked in the space program since Gemini. We both worked for large aerospace companies.

The Shuttle and ISS are amazing pieces of technology, and much has been learned by designing them and operating them. I don't think those facts are debatable.

HOWEVER, the ISS and the Shuttle are qualified failures. Desite their amazing abilities, they are grossly inefficient in terms of dollars. The money could be better spent.

Flying to the moon and Mars is a great, super-fabulous endeavor. Hanging out in a space station for a year is amazing. But there is no point in doing it as a rah-rah feel-good exercise. Honest scientific, commercial, and military goals should be set first, and only in the light of these goals should we see if it makes sense to pursue these manned missions.

The people of NASA aren't the problem - it's the mission that Congress has given them. With nebulous goals like "let's go to the moon", congress is forcing NASA to squander the tax payer's money.

Re:Mars mission

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm all for the moon and mars missions. And I hope they piggy back as much science as possible into the mission.

I want to get off this rock in my lifetime.

I say good riddance

[Javanista]

A classic bean counter. Did he ever believe in space exploration? Shouldn't NASA have a leader that believes in its mission?

People should consider not only that space exploration generates a lot of valuable discoveries (useful on Earth as well as in space), but also that every dollar spent on NASA recycles through the US economy many times over.

The immediate focus of NASA should be on cheap, reliable transit to orbit followed closely by on-orbit construction of nuclear-powered space exploration vehicles. Let's hope the next administrator can get focused on these goals.

conspiracy angle

[beaverfever]

"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."

How does this fit in with the supposed parallel goals of Bush's long-term space-defence plans and his statements regarding putting a man on Mars?

Engineering background required?

[XNormal]

"Well, do bear in mind that NASA Administrator is basically a political job. Jim Webb didn't know diddly about the technical issues, but he was still probably the best Administrator NASA ever had, because he knew where the bodies were buried in Washington."

Quoted from the the one and only Henry Spencer (1993)

Re:He won't be missed

[eclectro]

If the U.S. put the money it wastes on world domination in to mars and moon missions or an Apollo class push on fusion energy there would be potential huge benefits in many areas.

I have heard more than one commentator opine that "Sept 11" is a good crisis wasted. Meaning at that moment in history with a nation circling it's wagons there should have been a major appollo type push to get us off the foreign oil drug. Because when you look at it, decrease oil consumption and you take away the money the sheiks have to give to alquaeda under the table. Not to mention the world of good it would do for our trade deficit.

Instead, we take out a ten-cent dictator. We really did not get our money's worth here. Yes Saddam was a very bad person. But the world is filled with bad tin-horn dictators.

I'm somebody who believes in taking care of their own before extending myself to others. With the money spent in Iraq they could have covered the health expenses of all the uninsured Americans (I just joined the ranks) quite easily with change (lots) to spare.

I don't believe that mars is the best goal for this nation. But by time we are done with Iraq, I bet we will have spent 500 billion on it, which would have gone a long way towards a mars mission, and we would have gotten a lot more out of it. As it is we have a large number of people in the middle east who just flat out want to see every one of us Americans die, preferably by a bomb.

So it is truly discouraging. Bush got re-elected so that at the end of the next four years can see how horribly wrong they were and that the Iraq war was a bad idea. Expensive lesson.

And that goes for the other millions of adults who didn't vote too.

At least they won't be able to play "blame Clinton" anymore as the Republicans have everything under their thumbs.

Our national priority right now should be to standardize a transparent voting machine process and make sure all the machines work by 2008.

But I'm not holding my breath.

Re:Great. Now what?

[quarkscat]

So O'Keefe is on his way out of NASA. Great!
Never has a bean-counter done so much for the
devolution of a government agency. He spent
tens of millions of taxpayer dollars at NASA
on video conferencing equipment, but wouldn't
spend the 1/2 million dollars for an independent
safety study regarding the deblating of shuttle
foam insulation. And so risk averse that he
would rather send an untrained robot to do an
astronaut's job (- repair Hubble Space Telescope)
at the cost of billions directed to defense
contractors. Of course, in the grander scheme
of things, the DoD would much prefer advancing
robotic technology, rather than the "pure space
science" that the HST represents. I fear that
NASA's days as a civilian space agency are truly
numbered.

I will be curious to see how quickly O'Keefe
can run LSU into the ground, judging by his
track record. IMHO, just more proof that the
"Peter Principle" is still alive and well.