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.

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.

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?

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.