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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)."
I couldn't agree with you more. NASA has $10 million allocated and congressionally approved for competitive prizes this fiscal year, and yet less than $1 million has been allocated thus far. Even DARPA's Grand Challenge in October (autonomous robotic roving) is worth $2 million. Isn't it obvious that the bureaucrat statists and / or the pork barrelers in Congress FEAR this long overdue reform-fortification? Why won't NASA simply fortify its competitive prizes? Do we really need for central planners to decide what numerous competing teams nationwide could if only more of NASA's $16 billion dollar annual budget went to incentivizing them through prize offerings? For more details about this badly needed STRUCTURAL change at NASA: http://www.spaceprojects.com/prizes
Highly unlikely. NASA is a civilian organization, tasked with civilian space missions. The DoD maintains its own space operations (the Navy through SPAWAR and the Air Force through Space Command). The military side of space is quite distinct from the NASA side. Yes, many of the same contractors (Boeing, Northrop Grumman, Lockheed) work both kinds of projects. But the management and direction is done by quite different entities.
These people really have little to do with the detailed running of these programs. I'm sure that those efforts will continue on just fine. BTW: The article didn't mention it, but most of the people named have only been there for a year or two. The were all put there by the previous administrator, O'Keefe. It's not like Griffin is destroying decades of experience. Many of these people were bean counters, appointed by a bean counter.