New NASA Administrator Will Have His Hands Full
Charles Bolden will have to address some immediate questions about the future of America's space program.
The Obama administration has quietly announced its long-awaited nominee to head the nation’s space agency. Assuming that he is confirmed by the Senate, Marine Major General (Ret.) Charles Bolden, a veteran ex-astronaut with four shuttle missions under his belt, will be NASA’s next administrator and, like the president who appointed him, its first African-American one.
His credentials are beyond question, other than the concern about having another astronaut head the agency given the history of the last time that happened. In the early 1990s, former administrator Dick Truly actively lobbied against the Space Exploration Initiative on the Hill, defying his own president, George H. W. Bush. He was fired for his troubles and replaced by Dan Goldin. But it’s a logical fallacy to draw a grand conclusion from a single sample, and Bolden should — and will — be given the benefit of the doubt on that score. There are also concerns that he lobbied for ATK, which stands to benefit from the status quo on NASA’s current plans, being the contractor for the first stage of the Ares launchers. But his activity in that regard was in the past and seems to have been minimal. If anything, there may even be a bad relationship between them.
The biggest concern for some, including me, is his previous close relationship with George Abbey, former head of the Johnson Space Center. He reportedly ruled the Center with an iron fist, overstaffing the office and often pitting its members against each other using shuttle flights as the currency of the realm. I’ve criticized his recent policy positions as not being consonant with the goal of creating a spacefaring civilization in the near term. We can only hope that this past relationship will not mean that Abbey will be a power behind a Bolden throne. I’m certainly willing to grant him the benefit of the doubt for now.
His deputy administrator will be Lori Garver, the former head of the National Space Society, a former NASA associate administrator for plans and policies during the Clinton administration, and long-time space policy advisor to Democratic presidential nominees, including John Kerry, Hillary Clinton, and Barack Obama. She won’t be the first female deputy administrator — that was Shana Dale, who served under the last administrator, Dr. Mike Griffin.
Reportedly, the administration wanted to make the announcement with some “hoopla,” planning the ceremony for last Friday after the most recent shuttle mission was scheduled to safely land from its spectacularly successful upgrade and repair of the Hubble Space Telescope.
Unfortunately, the weather in Florida didn’t cooperate, and both the landing and the announcement were put off until Saturday, the first day of a holiday weekend. That plan went awry as well. When the bad weather continued, the administration decided to wait no longer and made the announcement Saturday anyway. Many consider this uncharacteristically bold, on the assumption that they didn’t want to make a high-profile space announcement and then have the orbiter kill another crew the next day. (The vehicle landed safely on Sunday in California.) In retrospect, it might have been better and much more high-profile to have made the announcement at the International Space Development Conference, which is scheduled for this coming week in Orlando, Florida and is sponsored by the organization that Ms. Garver used to head.
Page 1 of 2 Next ->
Rand Simberg is a recovering aerospace engineer and a consultant in space commercialization, space tourism and Internet security. He offers occasionally biting commentary about infinity and beyond at his weblog, Transterrestrial Musings.
 |
 |
 |
Podcasts |  PJM Home |
Pajamas Media appreciates your comments that abide by the following guidelines:
1. Avoid profanities or foul language unless it is contained in a necessary quote or is relevant to the comment.
2. Stay on topic.
3. Disagree, but avoid ad hominem attacks.
4. Threats are treated seriously and reported to law enforcement.
5. Spam and advertising are not permitted in the comments area.
The clause regarding "hate speech" has been deleted because readers criticized it as being too loosely defined. We agreed.
These guidelines are very general and cannot cover every possible situation. Please don't assume that Pajamas Media management agrees with or otherwise endorses any particular comment. We reserve the right to filter or delete comments or to deny posting privileges entirely at our discretion. If you feel your comment was filtered inappropriately, please email us at story@pajamasmedia.com.
21 Comments
1. Well Educated Cad:Hmmm…. I’m detecting a pattern here…
May 29, 2009 - 12:40 am 2. Well Educated Cad:Hmmm …My previous post disappeared.
May 29, 2009 - 1:08 am 3. Sabina:To say again…. I’m detecting a pattern here to Nobama’s appointments . “White males need not apply”
Not Abbey again!!! Please, no!
May 29, 2009 - 5:00 am 4. chris in Toronto:#2 Well Educated Cad: That was my immediate take as well. Sadly, before Obama, I never, ever saw things through the racial lens. Does this say more about me or about Obama?
May 29, 2009 - 5:41 am 5. D-wah:You think Obama curses his own white half? “Out, damned spot! out, I say!”
May 29, 2009 - 7:01 am 6. G Alston:We need to start construction of solar power sats. Making big things in space is something we can do; I’d like to see us develop the capability of doing it better and cheaper. Power sats have a more immediate financial payback. It wouldn’t hurt us to appease the bean counters. The ISS needs to be expanded such that the portion of the budget devoted to exploring has a staging orbit. Constellation/Orion seems like a step backwards.
May 29, 2009 - 8:15 am 7. Falconsword:10% discrimination, 90% ‘history maker’. He’s even more wrapped up in his need to make ‘history’ every where he turns that Clinton was. He’s already made history by being the biggest money spender in world history, does he really think putting minorities in every job from SCOTUS to NASA director will overcome the fact that he will actually manage to cause a world recession? Hardly. At least as a sci-fi writer and futurist, I’m glad that he appointed an astronaut for a change. Lets hope he nukes the disastrous Constelation program and gets to work on something other than a BDB approach. Leave that to the Russians, we need an SSTO and reusable lunar landers.
Sic Semper Tyrannis
May 29, 2009 - 8:26 am 8. RabelRabel:Bolden’s personal history reads like the man who should have been the first African-American president. Annapolis grad, 100 A-6 combat sorties in Vietnam, test pilot, astronaut, Marine Corps General, minimal political activity post-career. The anti-Obama. He certainly seems like a man who can provide the focused leadership NASA needs.
May 29, 2009 - 8:26 am 9. billslayer:Earth orbit is not where the real deal it. The real deal is on the moon. Helium 3.
May 29, 2009 - 10:24 am 10. G Alston:#9 — Earth orbit is not where the real deal it. The real deal is on the moon. Helium 3.
We have fusion now?
May 29, 2009 - 11:37 am 11. ked5:Well, I might suggest his #1 priority. Rein in James Hansen. Better yet, fire him. Restore NASA credibility of using the scientific method. Between Hansen’s fake data (oh, it was just a mistake. yeah. right. Only rookies make those types of mistakes. He should have been fired for it.) and his community agitating, Hansen’s destroying NASA’s credibility on climate science.
Then with Hathaway’s reluctance to admit he “might” have been overly opptimistic (for three years) about SC24, NASA is developing a serious reliability gap on the solar front.
May 29, 2009 - 12:03 pm 12. chris in Toronto:11. ked5: Great point about Hansen.
May 29, 2009 - 2:07 pm 13. Rollory:Even more important is to get the government out of the space travel business. NASA is not and will not be our pathway to the stars; they’ve proven that by spending the past 30 years diddling around in low earth orbit doing NOTHING of consequence. Take all the money that would have been spent on NASA budgets and set it aside as a promised reward to whatever private organizations successfully reach certain milestones, like a fully staffed permanent station (an actual industrial-strength station of real utility, not the flimsy excuse for junk that’s up there now), a lunar colony that pays for itself (solar power collection at least, while helium-3 isn’t useful yet), orbiting solar power satellite grids, asteroid mining trips, etc. Not one cent gets paid until the stuff gets accomplished and once it is done we all benefit from it. And in the meantime we’re not paying 50-year-old PhD bureaucrats to go on joyrides and do mock experiments for elementary school kids.
This current path is a dead end. It does not matter one whit who is in charge.
May 31, 2009 - 5:30 am 14. anonymous:The most important aspect of this pick is Pres. Obama selected the best man for the job. I attended a speech Major General (Ret.) Bolden gave at USNA while I was there. Without any hesitation, I can state he transcends race. He is an impressive American! I wish him God Speed as he takes this challenging position. His biggest challenge will be to return the agency to its fifty and sixties pushing the envelope attitude away from the bureaucratic beast it became.
May 31, 2009 - 5:56 am 15. Josh Reiter:“His biggest challenge will be to return the agency to its fifty and sixties pushing the envelope attitude away from the bureaucratic beast it became.”
Unfortunately, it was NASA’S big spending, “pushing the envelope” ways of the ’60s that got us precisely on the path we are today. Pining for some romantic ideal of the NASA of old is precisely the wrong way to approach becoming a space faring society in the future.
If anything NASA is already attempting to take on the mantra of the 50s-60s by giving us “Apollo on Steroids”. It is truly infuriating to see billions of dollars being wasted, basically doing what was already accomplished 40 years ago. Flags and footprints? *yawn*
The possibility of hundreds of people being in space at any one time? Too many flight manifests to keep track of? Hmmm, interesting.
May 31, 2009 - 10:06 am 16. John Calomiris:The appoitment of Bolden has promise, unlike the other bums BO has appointed.We need relief,any kind`to offset the horrendous crap he is shoveling our way
May 31, 2009 - 12:31 pm 17. mark:As boring as LEO has been for human spaceflight the last 30 years, some of you are forgetting that there has been some truly exciting robotic exploration. Galileo, the Voyagers (okay so they were launched a little over 30 years ago), and the more recent gas giant and Martian missions.
May 31, 2009 - 9:03 pm 18. Roderick Reilly:“”"”"”We need to start construction of solar power sats. Making big things in space is something we can do”"”"”"
Making HUGE things in space at a comparitively reasonable price is something we can’t do. Solar power sats would be huge.
Jun 1, 2009 - 2:17 pm 19. Roderick Reilly:As Simberg intimates, replacing a space transportation system and a space station with Earth-to-Moon retro-design systems isn’t going to create a space-faring civilization. The Constellation program is unsustainable. Here’s the most optimistic scenario for government-funded manned flight in the next 15 years: a handful of Moon landings and a skeletal attempt at a “Moon base,” and then a complete abandonment of the effort. No follow-on Mars program. That’s it. Oh, and by the way, no need to fret about the Chinese or the Russians or the Indians (and forget about the EU, that is to laugh) as they are not are going to have any greater success with a permanent Lunar presence.
The single best hope for humankind in space are the eventual maturation of systems like those being developed by SpaceX. This is not to say that SpaceX is some sort of saviour, but the concept of developing much less expensive, more reliable, and more routine launchers is what will allow humanity to enjoy a rennaissance in space. While SpaceX-type efforts are goping to take longer and cost more than these pioneers are claiming, the eventual cost difference as compared to comparable government efforts are staggering. For instance, once SpaceX has an operational Falcon 9 and a manned Dragon capsule, it will have spent less than a fourth of what a comparable NASA effort would cost.
Jun 1, 2009 - 2:32 pm 20. Paul -Indiana:#18. How do you get the power from those orbital ‘power sats’ down to earth? I suppose you envision RF transmission. What is the path loss? What happens if someone gets into the power transmission beam? What happens if the control system goes out and the beam starts irradiating a nearby town? What happens when a rogue nation knocks out the satellite? What we need is terrestial-based power generation. Nuclear is as ‘green’ as it gets.
Jun 2, 2009 - 9:50 am 21. G Alston:#18 — Making HUGE things in space at a comparitively reasonable price is something we can’t do.
Not when the focus of NASA is rockets = ammunition. Get reusable SSTO (e.g. DC/X) operable (3 day turnaround) and the equation changes.
SpaceX and the Dragon capsule at least represent a viable civilian effort, but reusability is the key.
#20 — How do you get the power from those orbital ‘power sats’ down to earth?
Microwave. Read up on it. We already know how to do this, and we know how to do this safely. That part was figured out in the 60’s and 70’s. What we don’t have is cheap access to space, otherwise we’d be doing it already.
***
Gen. Bolden — if you’re reading this, congratulations, and please look into getting us to space cheaply.
Jun 2, 2009 - 11:19 am