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New NASA Administrator Named
CheshireCatCO writes "The Bush Administration has nominated Mike Griffin as the new chief administrator of NASA. Griffin currently heads the Applied Physics Laboratory at Johns Hopkins University and holds degrees in physics, civil, electrical, and aerospace engineering and aerospace science, as well as an MBA. (How did he ever have time to do anything else?) He was also part of the Strategic Defense Initiative in the 80s."
Russia's biggest operational booster is the Proton, which has equivalent delivered cargo capacity to the US shuttle.
Before you yell ah-ha! and trot out the Energia, note that I said 'operational'. In all likelihood, no Energia stack will launch again. You might as well count the Saturn V if you're optimistic enough to think the DE will fly again.
I think NASA is well aware of that. It's the public that needs to learn that lesson.
That was my initial reaction, so I researched this guy (and submitted an article to slashdot that had a lot more links about his history, but this article was picked instead).
:P ) - even at his "private industry" job where he was a manager at Orbital Sciences (the company that makes the Pegasus - a nice rocket, BTW, even if it is expensive per kilogram because its payload is so small). If he's any sort of hack, he's a military hack. But, I'll give him the benefit of the doubt for now. Can't be worse than O'Keefe. :P
He doesn't seem to be a political hack, although he clearly has significant Republican leanings. Calling him a scientist as a lot of news reports have is pretty misleading, too - his history is management. Once nice thing about him is that he wears his heart on his sleeve; he's made lots of public statements about what he wants in the past. Here's what he wants:
* More NASA funding. He's called for 20B$/yr several times, pointing out that this is only 20 cents per day per person - less than the average person spends on gum or pizza. He wants to use the funding so that we can launch "big programs" (like Mars, the moon, etc) at the same time as keeping all of our research and exploration.
* A heavy lift vehicle based on SSMEs, SRBs, and the shuttle main tank, so that we can take advantage of over two decades of research using these systems. This might be a hard sell - there will be efforts to have either Atlas V or Delta IV be the core.
* Mixed feelings about the shuttle and ISS. If it will take no longer than 2010 to get the last pieces of ISS up, he wants to use the shuttle. If it will take as late as 2014, he wants to get a heavy lift vehicle built first, and launch them with it. He wants the shuttle replaced with a more modern vehicle (and has specifically pointed to the maintenance costs as the biggest problem), but sees the necessity for using it in the short term.
* A major supporter of establishing a moonbase. He seems to have spoken about this more than Mars, although he has spoken in favor of manned missions to Mars as well.
All in all, his plans sound pretty reasonable. On the other hand, his history leaves something to be desired. He's worked almost exclusively on military-related projects (including SDI
Pinkypants -- my favorite!
Actually, this appointment is irrelevent. As someone who works with people at NASA (on the science end), I have seen up close and personal the Bush strategy for NASA. A more telling story appears in today's Washington Post concerning NASA job cuts. NASA expects to cut 15% of its workforce by 2006. The excuse given is that they need to streamline to go to Mars. The real reason is that Bush wants to turn NASA and other government agencies into organizations which convert govt. funds into private contracts. So how do you do that? Cut the permanent staff and put all NASA projects up for bids. We are currently in the "passive cut" phase. NASA employees nearing retirement have been offered a $25,000 package to just go away. For some centers, most of the staff have been offered such a packacge. NASA/Ames for example had 1400 of its 1470 employees receive such an offer. Since you can't do science through bids to private entities, this means that NASA is done with science (and no...sending man to Mars has very little science associated with it). People bitch that NASA has had no direction for the past 25 years. NASA has been the crown jewel of US science from Hubble to Spitzer to Galileo but that is just not sci fi enough to capture the imagination of the American public. Almost all similar projects that were on the drawing board are now gone. What's left of NASA's staff after the passive cuts phase will be absorbed by universities as all NASA scientists must pay themselves (or at least justify) their salaries through their grants anyway at this point. NASA is fast becoming a 16 billion dollar kickback to Big Biz. They will not be going to Mars any time soon if ever.