New NASA Admin Griffin Cleans House

Doug Dante writes "Michael D. Griffin, the new NASA Administrator, has given 20 senior NASA officials their walking papers, in a first purge that can see as many as 50 loose their positions, reports the Washington Post. Included are Associate Administrator for Space Operations William F. Readdy, and his deputy Air Force Maj. Gen. Michael C. Kostelnik (retired)."

Comments

"sell your programs to the executive branch"

[infonography]

Selling Science to the this Congress and the bush administration, that's a losing cause. You need to tell them that Jesus is on Mars. Then they will open the spigots of money. If you think I am kidding watch the people they replace these guys with. Can you say Doctorate in Theology?

Re:"sell your programs to the executive branch"

[Eneff]

For all of Bush's faults (and they are legion), space is a safe science outlet to him. Frankly, he's pro-science as long as that science isn't biology.

Besides, maybe he thinks if we get to space, we can get high enough to meet his god! :)

Re:"sell your programs to the executive branch"

[mmkkbb]

we can get high enough to meet his god! :)

it's not space travel that will get people high enough to meet bush's god.

Re:Politics

[BitGeek]

History shows that "Big Science" is only Big because there's a lot of public (Eg: stolen) dollars they want to soak up.

NASA spends about a billion dollars per shuttle *flight*.... Space Ship one developed an entire program for $20 million. While they are not equivilent.

And the space shuttle is a disaster-- not because of it was built with private contractors, but because the politicos wanted to dole out the stolen money to a wide variety of states-- necessitating a complicated design that could have major parts built in a wide variety of states.

This is all to be expected--look at the commercial airline industry-- thousands of flights per accident. Let them into space nad you'll have a commercial space flight industry and all the NASA money can be left in the pockets of the poor starving americans it was stolen from (And the rich industrious americans who will invest it in jobs for the poor starving americans.)

I love how the lovers of government always point to failures of the government system as proof that its the only way. Terrorists crash into skyscrapers? Well, lets spend even more on the screening system that let them go thru.

Richard Branson has spent $100 million to have Burt Rutan design an advanced version of spaceship one. But because Richard Branson is a british citizen the US government won't even let him look at the designs for his own ship! The FAA is in the middle of what looks to be a 20 year process for making rules that will "allow" space ship two to fly commercially-- and gives no indication of when they will ever finish the rules, or that they have any incentive to not make the rules so onerous that safety is impaired The FAA's interference with SpaceShip One made safety worse, not better.

Government is a disease masquarading as its own cure. All NASA does is let government control the "high ground" for military purposes and *PREVENT* space science or access to space.