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Space Science

New NASA Administrator Named 242

Posted by CowboyNeal from the meet-the-new-boss dept.
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."
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New NASA Administrator Named More

New NASA Administrator Named

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  • Heavy lift (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Mark of THE CITY ( 97325 ) on Friday March 11, 2005 @11:43PM (#11917001) Journal
    Why build a new one, when Russia already has one?

    • Re:Heavy lift (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Chairboy ( 88841 ) on Friday March 11, 2005 @11:50PM (#11917035) Homepage
      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.
      • Ever seen the satellite imagery of Energia's destrictive power when blows up on the pad?

        Oy, those Rooskeys ain't brave... they CRAZY!!

        And we complain about Shuttle safety. NASA PR needs to just start advertising Russian "safety" and people will lay off. Bigtime!

        -Pie

  • Top 10 floors are safe (Score:3, Funny)

    by fprefect ( 14608 ) on Friday March 11, 2005 @11:45PM (#11917015)
    At least this guy hasn't bemoaned the very institution to which he's been assigned.
    • Daily Show viewers ought to get this one (3/10/05) but in case the joke flew right over your head, the about-to-be-appointed ambassador to the UN, John Bolton said once that the top 10 floors of the UN building in NYC ought to be chopped off. Brilliant, fprefect.

      • Re:Top 10 floors are safe (Score:4, Informative)

        by Raul654 ( 453029 ) on Saturday March 12, 2005 @01:52AM (#11917617) Homepage
        Just to be picky - he didn't say they out to be chopped off, he said something to the effect that if the top 10 stories were chopped off, the UN wouldn't be any different. He didn't advocate chopping them off, he was pointing out that the UN has a huge bureacracy, which is true afterall (Remember, this is the same organization that added Sudan to the select human rights commission *while* it was committing genocide in Darfur) On the other hand, appointing him was another in the Bush administration's long line of diplomatic fuck ups.

        • OT: The UN didn't appoint Sudan to the HRC, the UN member states who had the right to vote appointed Sudan.

          The UN gets the bad rep it has precisely because it is captive to the will of its members, most notably the five permanent members of the Security Council with their right of veto. The UN will only ever be able to accomplish its mission if it is given some measure of independence from national governments, but the current US administration (and just about any other conceivable US administration as wel

      • and terrifying ;-)

        SB

  • Good appointment for 3 reasons (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 11, 2005 @11:45PM (#11917019)
    Actually, this is a Very Good idea for three reasons:

    (1) the nominee is Not a Beancounter;
    (2) the nominee is not an astronaut married to the Space Shuttle/Space Station welfare system;
    (3) the nominee knws some science and engineering.

    -- Jonathan Vos Post

    • Re:Good appointment for 3 reasons (Score:5, Insightful)

      by lecithin ( 745575 ) on Friday March 11, 2005 @11:48PM (#11917027)
      I'll give you another one:

      "From an entrepreneurial standpoint, he has someone who has actually experienced what it is like to be on the other side of the table dealing with the government," he said. "We haven't had that before."

      • Re:Good appointment for 3 reasons (Score:5, Informative)

        by ktakki ( 64573 ) on Saturday March 12, 2005 @12:45AM (#11917248) Homepage Journal
        "From an entrepreneurial standpoint, he has someone who has actually experienced what it is like to be on the other side of the table dealing with the government," he said. "We haven't had that before."

        Of the ten NASA administrators (actually nine since Fletcher served twice) -- from Glennan (1958-1961) to O'Keefe (2001-2005) -- seven have come from the private sector. Two (O'Keefe and Frosch) came from academia and one (Truly) came up through the NASA ranks.

        So, seven of nine (heh) of the men who headed up NASA also had either engineering or administrative roles at companies such as Sperry Gyroscope, General Electric, General Dynamics, Hughes, Aerojet, Westinghouse, and TRW. All have been major defense contrators and NASA vendors.

        I'm not going to go so far as to imply a conflict of interest, but I would be hesitant to uphold defense contractors as shining examples of private sector management. TRW, in particular, has had its share of cost overrun problems with respect to NASA and DoD projects.

        k.
    • I was thinking, "this sounds too good to be true!" until I read the SDI thing, then I started thinking, "it was too good to be true".

      I'm skeptical. Bush has a history of hiring people for blind, dog-like obedience and punishing them when they show more loyalty to their country than their master- anyone remember that Colin Powell character? Valerie Plame, who was exposed as a CIA operative after her husband contradicted WMD assertions being put out by the White House? General Shinseki, who said we'd need se

      • Re:Good appointment for 3 reasons (Score:4, Interesting)

        by Rei ( 128717 ) on Saturday March 12, 2005 @12:52AM (#11917285) Homepage
        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).

        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 :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
        • Personally, I have trouble with his vision of NASA. People in space is cool, yeah; I'm not against that. But alongside an 800 million dollar increase in the NASA budget, the National Science Foundation- the major United States source of funding for doctoral students, postdocs, and University researchers- was cut by 100 million. The NSF funds computer science, biology, astronomy, geology, engineering, medicine, paleontology, damn near everything. Basic, fundamental research. I'm not saying that a moonbase is
          • I hate to be the one to point this out to you (ok, I don't, not really), but "while reducing tax revenues" is an incorrect statement.

            I know that's the myth the Dems try to feed the public, but the reality (which is readily available from the IRS website) is that U.S. tax revenues are up over the last few years.

            For example, the highest annual gross revenue the IRS collected from 1992-1999 is lower than any of the years 2000-2003. Generally much lower. (Actual 2004 numbers not being out yet, but projections
            • We really don't need to spend as much on defense as we do.

              If we could return a single one of the B-2 bombers which we almost never use, that's $1b right there we could funnel into something else.

              National defense is an extremely important idea, but lets not right the DoD a blank check and let them use it as they see fit. There needs to be significantly more accountability on this area of spending. I bet billions could be eliminated from the budget and put towards the national debt, or to other programs, if
            • 1) You list two doublings of raw tax income increases across nearly twenty-five years. Are you factoring in combined inflation and currency (dollar) depriciation into your numbers?

              2) As a percentage of GDP, how much more or less does the federal government take in through taxation between 1980 vs. 2005?

              3) How much of the federal budget is used to pay interest on the debt vs. military spending vs. spending programs such as NSF, DOE, Education, HUD, Medicare/Medicaid, etc?

              4) If one were to end Social Secur
              • 1. The numbers are all in current dollars, so the comparison takes into account inflation.

                2. I haven't looked at percentage of GDP for a while, so don't hold me to this, but I'm pretty sure that it's increased some over the same time periods, but not by nearly as much. However, I did recently look at per capita taxes (it was on the same IRS chart as the dollars cited above) and the current dollar amount per capita has also increased at almost the same rate as the overall revenues. So the "average" individu
                • Just looked it up, and spending percent of GDP has been more of an up-down roller-coaster than anything else. There is a 125 year CBO projection graph [cbo.gov] that illustrates it going up from the 50's low of 15% to the mid 80's peak of 23%, then declining gradually to the present 18%, projecting a future rise. (CBO predictions being much less reliable than historical numbers.)

                  The range between 15% and 23% isn't a huge one, though, and probably has more to do with how well the economy was growing (since that has f
                • 3. According to the NY Times a month ago, the current budget breakdown is:
                  Military 19%
                  Interest 8%
                  Medicaid 8%
                  Medicare 13%
                  Social Security 21%
                  Other nondiscretionary 13%
                  Nonmilitary discretionary 18%

                  This can't possibly be right. I'd like to see a link to the NY Times article in question. Just two anomalies:

                  The military budget in FY05 was ~$500B spent in just under ~$2T for total expenditures. That's more like 25%. To be under 20% they would have to have spend less than $400B which is clearly bogus, especially
            • How did this get modded up? It's completely incorrect.

              First off, I couldn't find anything at the IRS's site (I'm not surprised that you gave no link), so I went to the Congressional Budget Office - a more appropriate place - and OMBWatch, a budget watchdog group that posts lots of statistics gleamed from CBO and other agencies' reports. Lets pick a couple of key times here for comparison: 1992, 2000, and 2004.

              Raw revenues:
              1992: 1,310 billion dollars
              2000: 1,717 billion dollars
              2004: ~1,775B (based on a 11.
              • The IRS source is http://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-soi/03db31ps.xls. It took me two clearly labeled clicks from the IRS home page to find that, so it's not exactly hidden.

                They show gross collections of 1,120,799,558,292 in 1992 (current dollars), so obviously the IRS report and whatever the source of your numbers is don't match at all. There could be a difference in what revenues are being counted, since the IRS doesn't collect _all_ U.S. revenue.

                Care to provide a link to the CBO or OMBWatch sites that have tho

    • Re:Good appointment for 3 reasons (Score:4, Insightful)

      by helioquake ( 841463 ) on Saturday March 12, 2005 @12:26AM (#11917193) Journal
      Yeah, but the real skill required for a NASA administrator is this:

      Let engineers be engineers.

      You can replace the word "engineer" with "scientist", too. There are too much bureaucratic work at NASA. It costs some money to file document; it costs money to spend money. The facility is on the constant maintenance mode, i.e., a fix is being fixed as being fixed. The money is wasted where science and engineering doesn't get involved. Laboratories and divisions at NASA have largely been run by bean-counting civil servants who worked very hard in the Apollo days and now lucratively hold the wallet to keep his friends happy (yet unproductive). Let that change. Let the engineers and scientists be engineers and scientists! And those bean-counters should merely be there to help achieve the goal, instead of getting in the way.

      Furthermore, it lacks a clear vision for the future of this institution. Since the Bush administration speaks little about the Moon/Mars project after the election. So I consider that moot. This Griffin guy needs to be questioned what he sees as the future of NASA at a confirmation hearing in the Senate. I'm sure Barbara from MD would ask if he'd save the Hubble.

    • Re:Good appointment for 3 reasons (Score:5, Informative)

      by demachina ( 71715 ) on Saturday March 12, 2005 @12:28AM (#11917197)
      The one concern I would have is I think he was spearheaded Bush Senior's Space Exploration Initiative(SEI) which was Bush Seniors version of going back to the Moon and Mars, and he presided over a program that dead ended. You have to wonder if Bush Junior is hoping for a different outcome the second time around, or if he doing a bad rerun of SEI meaning the current initiative is doomed.

      A few noteworthy Google hits on Mike Griffin below, a hard name to Google because its so common.

      I gather he invented Faster, Better, Cheaper while at SDIO, a concept that has some merit if properly done, it has a lot in common with Kelly Johnson and the old Lockheed Skunkworkds that built the U-2 and SR-71, but became much maligned when Dan Goldin tried to implement it at NASA, because NASA is institutionally and structurally incapable of doing faster, better, cheaper and have it end up being actually faster, better and cheaper.

      theForce.net [theforce.net]

      Mike Griffin, a former senior NASA manager and aerospace industry executive, presented the most charitable assessment of NASA's human space flight efforts, ranking it second in priority only to building a new, more reliable heavy lift launcher.Griffin advised following through with space station, which means returning the shuttle to flight, while setting a new course that includes Mars. To accomplish this, Griffin recommends increasing NASA's budget from $15 billion a year to $20 billion.

      "NASA costs each American 14 cents a day. A really robust program could be had for about 20 cents a day," Griffin said. "Americans spend more on pizza then they do on space."

      Free Republic [freerepublic.com]

      The final nail in the coffin of Goldin's "legacy" came when NASA published its damning critique of his vaunted "better, faster, cheaper" approach.
      A couple of points on this greatly misunderstood concept..
      First, FBC is not Dan Goldin's invention. It came out of the old SDIO ("Star Wars") organization back in the late '80s. At the time, the dominant paradigm in both military and civil space was big, complex, very capable spacecraft, on which any and all instruments and experiments could be accommodated.
      This development model led to decade-long, multi-billion dollar missions (e.g., Galileo, Milstar). When these kind of missions screw-up (e.g., Hubble Telescope, Galileo antenna), the public and Congressional ramifications can be devastating.
      "FBC" was devised as a way to deal with this problem. I believe it was mostly developed by Mike Griffin, then Director of Technology at SDIO. The concept was simple: cut costs by having a small, compact, "Skunk Works"-type development team. Fly small satellites, each with one or two instruments, more often. As you are launching smaller sats more often, you have more flight opportunities, so if there IS a failure, you can recover from it quickly. In short, the objective is the knowledge gained from space flight, not to design and fly the most capable vehicle.
      It's "faster" because you don't have decadal development times as the satellites as smaller and less complex. It's "cheaper" because you're not paying a marching army of highly paid technical staff (where the true costs of space flight really are). It's "better" because for a given amount of expenditure, you get more data, more often.
      You can criticize this all you want to, but the simple fact is that FBC "worked" on a lot of the SDI flight projects of the early 90s (e.g., Delta Star, MSTI), culminating with the successful space test of the Brilliant Pebble spacecraft, the Clementine mission in 1994.
      Goldin and NASA (specifically, JPL) never really understood this concept. They understood "cheaper" in the sense of reducing engineering development costs, but kept the glacial JPL pace, which ran the manpower costs right back up again. The Mars Pathfinder mission, NASA's FBC "success" story, was successful o
      • A fine post there, pal. It is not often that I enjoy reading someone's comment on /.

        Now only if our media is well informed as you are...

      • s you are launching smaller sats more often, you have more flight opportunities, so if there IS a failure, you can recover from it quickly.

        Also, as you are launching smaller satellites (but maybe more per launch, so the throw weight per launch is the same, so no difference) more often, you have more economies of scale, because instead of keeping 10 Delta 3 and Delta 4 packages, Boeing gets a bigger contract to keep more launch packages ready to launch or in the preparation pipeline, and while the total co
      • I like how you linked to a racist web site. Good work! By the way, just how many times this week has the Free Republic called for ethnic cleansing of various parts of the world?
        • By the way, just how many times this week has the Free Republic called for ethnic cleansing of various parts of the world?

          Probably about as often as slashdot has called for Redmond to be nuked. Free Republic is a discussion site, and people post wacky stuff on there. Like slashdot, every once in a while you also see a post which doesn't suck.
        • Dude, chill out. I was just googling for interesting comments about Mike Griffin and that was one. Trying to paint me as rascist for quoting something that had nothing to do with race is going off the deep end.
      • personally I spend $1.00 a day to nasa. I donate what I can to the program Yes you CAN donate money to them, $366.00 a year check does in fact help. I was told that my contribution 2 years ago went to help repair some damage to the saturn V rocket sitting in the yard on display.

        Is my money going to fund a shuttle replacement, a launch or anything else that is current? no. but I'm helping keep our history in good shape, AND kjeeping nasa from spending their mission cash on maintaince of exibits that are as
    • On the other hand with that many degrees you have to wonder how much focus the guy has and whether he really has any interest in _doing_ research as opposed to learning about what other people have done.

  • Correcting some info... (Score:4, Informative)

    by TroaIzwhoot ( 804309 ) on Friday March 11, 2005 @11:54PM (#11917060)
    Griffin currently heads the Applied Physics Laboratory at Johns Hopkins University
    Correcting some info: Griffin currently heads the Space Department at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory, not the entire lab itself.
    Press Release: http://www.jhuapl.edu/newscenter/pressreleases/200 4/040419.htm [jhuapl.edu]

  • One question. (Score:3, Funny)

    by teamhasnoi ( 554944 ) <teamhasnoi AT yahoo DOT com> on Friday March 11, 2005 @11:58PM (#11917082) Journal
    Can he understand his little brother, or what? And what's with the talking dog?

  • Impressive resume (Score:5, Informative)

    by daveschroeder ( 516195 ) * on Saturday March 12, 2005 @12:01AM (#11917093)
    Prior to being at JHU's APL for the second time, Dr. Griffin was also the "president and chief operating officer of In-Q-Tel [in-q-tel.com], a private, non-profit enterprise funded by the Central Intelligence Agency to identify and invest in companies developing cutting-edge technologies that serve national security interests."

    Some may be familiar with In-Q-Tel as the CIA's private venture firm.

    He had just rejoined APL last April [jhuapl.edu]. He was with APL in the 1980s, and left to become the technology chief for the Strategic Defense Initiative.

    To expand a bit on what the summary said, "in addition to a doctorate in aerospace engineering, he holds master's degrees in aerospace science, electrical engineering, applied physics, civil engineering and business administration, and a bachelor's degree in physics." He is also the president-elect of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) [aiaa.org].

    There's no question he is not only a skilled academic with a clear appreciation for space sciences, but a competent administrator and manager as well, and experienced with Washington politics to boot. Let's hope he does well for NASA.

  • Nasa Scared Shitless? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Goalie_Ca ( 584234 ) on Saturday March 12, 2005 @12:02AM (#11917098)
    Time for nasa to get off its scared little ass and start realizing that space is a new frontier and there will be accidents and mistakes.

    • Re:Nasa Scared Shitless? (Score:5, Interesting)

      by RebelWebmaster ( 628941 ) on Saturday March 12, 2005 @12:06AM (#11917111)
      I think NASA is well aware of that. It's the public that needs to learn that lesson.
      • I second the motion. I spent some time at NASA, (paid visit to look at ideas), and the astronauts accept the risk. Engineers minimize the risk. But citizens don't seem to like the risk at all, they want it 100% safe
        • I think NASA is well aware of that. It's the public that needs to learn that lesson.

        What is NASA doing to educate the public on that aspect of space exploration? Or is it expecting the public to just figure that one out on their own?

        • What is NASA doing to educate the public on that aspect of space exploration? Or is it expecting the public to just figure that one out on their own?

          I suspect NASA realizes that (a) it would be an extremely difficult PR campaign to carry off successfully, since many would perceive it as an attempt to justify their failures, rather than understand that those failures are inevitable and (b) they would receive even more criticism for spending hard-earned taxpayer's dollars on advertising and PR, when they o

  • At first... (Score:4, Funny)

    by ErichTheWebGuy ( 745925 ) on Saturday March 12, 2005 @12:07AM (#11917117) Homepage
    At first glance, I thought that the story read:

    ... holds degrees in physics, evil, electrical, and aerospace ...

    But I wonder if a degree in evil would be such a bad thing?

  • Expect an article pretty soon (Score:4, Funny)

    by Man in Spandex ( 775950 ) <prsn DOT kev AT gmail DOT com> on Saturday March 12, 2005 @12:19AM (#11917169)
    about oil discovery on Mars.
  • He was a nerd/geek. It's not like he was getting laid or being invited to parties or anything.

  • Not the first time... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by ktakki ( 64573 ) on Saturday March 12, 2005 @12:28AM (#11917199) Homepage Journal
    Griffin was on the short list for the job after Richard Truly left in '92 (Truly, by the way, was the only astronaut to head NASA).

    While googling around for some background on Griffin, I found a rough transcript [google.com] of a House Subcommittee hearing concerning NASA FY '93 appropriations on sci.space, which has an interesting exchange concerning a manned mission to the Moon and Mars:


    (Griffin) ...We think $400G is way beyond what can, needs to, will be spent.

    Hall (committee chair): Can do it without sacrificing safety?

    Griffin: We think so.

    Hall: Can lower to under $100G?

    Griffin: Industry estimate, we'll be enlarging, confirming over next 2 years. Suggests missions to Mars are not only feasible but quite robust.

    Hall: Where are folks who did $400G estimate? Gone, in a nursing home?

    Griffin: Different mission. I liked BMW a lot more, but Toyota gets me back and forth.

    Hall: I'd prefer if you drove a Ford.

    Griffin: My latest car is an Oldsmobile.


    Obviously, $400G is $400 billion, not $400 grand.

    He goes on to champion the "lighter, cheaper, smarter" ethos, mentions nuclear propulsion as a possible option, and at that time regarded the recent collapse of the Soviet Union as presenting the sort of opportunity similar to the one that brought Von Braun to the US (acknowledging their current lead in heavy lift capability). He even says "I'm not too proud to ride a Russian vehicle if it gets us there".

    As for Griffin's private sector experience, that's been the rule rather than the exception for NASA's ten former administrators. Frosch and O'Keefe came from academia, Truly from the military (and NASA). The other seven had served as either engineers or administrators for aeronautics- or space-related companies.

    k.
    • Griffin: Different mission. I liked BMW a lot more, but Toyota gets me back and forth.

      Hall: I'd prefer if you drove a Ford.

      Griffin: My latest car is an Oldsmobile.

      A bit off topic with this, but this is one of the things that really drives me up the wall when it comes to congressrats. A fellow can't even make a simple analogy without the jackass congressman freaking out because it refers to foreign cars. In this case the pantywaist worm chairman felt it necessary to make sure everyone knew he was in f

      • Hall: I'd prefer if you drove a Ford.

        Yeah, when I read that line my first thought was that the congressman's district included Dearborn, Michigan. Actually, Ralph Hall is from Texas. Still, I wouldn't be surprised if there was a Ford subconractor located in his district.

        Interestingly, Ralph Hall was a Democrat until 2004, when he switched parties. The Repubs allowed him to retain his seats on his various committees. Also, the Family Research Council gave him their "True Blue" award. Here's a choic

    • This passage is pretty funny. While Griffin is strictly talking science and using sound logic, the other guy is just plain politicking:

      Hall: Where are folks who did $400G estimate? Gone, in a nursing home?

      Griffin: Different mission. I liked BMW a lot more, but Toyota gets me back and forth.

      Hall: I'd prefer if you drove a Ford.

      That's what kills our government. The entire process is stripped of logic and is replaced by emotional statements that don't get much done, but are effective at swaying public op

  • NASA is over (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 12, 2005 @01:10AM (#11917344)
    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.
  • from Wonkette.com:

    "A press release announces Bush's pick to head NASA. Michael D. Griffith "received a bachelor's degree in Physics from Johns Hopkins University; a master's degree in Aerospace Science from Catholic University of America; a Ph.D. in Aerospace Engineering from the University of Maryland; a master's degree in Electrical Engineering from the University of Southern California; a master's degree in Applied Physics from Johns Hopkins University; a master's degree in Business Administration fr

  • More info; what to expect (Score:3, Informative)

    by FleaPlus ( 6935 ) on Saturday March 12, 2005 @07:06AM (#11918578) Journal
    Hm... I went through three rounds of rejected submission attempts earlier trying to submit this story, several hours before this version was posted. In any case, here's my version of the submission, which has many more links:

    NASA Watch [nasawatch.com], New Scientist [newscientist.com], and Space Ref [spaceref.com] report that Dr. Michael D. Griffin [wikipedia.org] has been nominated as the next administrator of NASA, to replace Sean O'Keefe [wikipedia.org]. As NASA head, Griffin will be tasked with implementing the Vision for Space Exploration [wikipedia.org]. Griffin is currently head [jhuapl.edu] of the Space Department [jhuapl.edu] at the Applied Physics Laboratory at JHU, is president-elect of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics [wikipedia.org], and has a doctorate in aerospace engineering. He's noted for being passionate about space exploration and having strong management experience. His nomination has been praised by a number of groups, including the Planetary Society [planetary.org], the National Space Society [nss.org], and House Science Committee Democrats [house.gov] and Republicans [house.gov]. In the past, Mike Griffin has testified to Congress on the future of human spaceflight [spaceref.com], the vision for space exploration [spaceref.com], and the danger of asteroid impacts [spaceref.com]. He was also rebuked in the early 90s [nasawatch.com] for pointing out problems with the space station's review process.

    As for my own thoughts, I think Griffin is an excellent pick. I'm amazed that they were able to find somebody with as much technical expertise as him who also has such a large amount of experience with managing large organizations. According to the space.com article, Griffin can be expected to make maximum use of the emerging commercial spaceflight industry.

    In the past he's also said the following, which I approve of highly: "What is needed is to retire the Shuttle Orbiter, and its expensive support infrastructure," Griffin wrote. "It simply does not serve the needs of exploration and it is too expensive, to logistically fragile, and insufficiently safe for continued use as a low Earth orbit transport vehicle."

    In the past he's been highly in favor of the government constructing a new heavy-lift launch vehicle, which I somewhat disagree with. Such an endeavor could easily end up being a bottomless money pit. Hopefully SpaceX's low-cost launches in the coming months will help raise awareness of frequently-launched smaller vehicles.

  • List of questions Congress and NASA need to ask (Score:3, Interesting)

    by FleaPlus ( 6935 ) on Saturday March 12, 2005 @08:21AM (#11918756) Journal
    In congressional testimony [spaceref.com] he gave last year, Michael Griffin outlined a number of questions which he felt Congress and NASA need to ask. This list was pretty interesting, because many of them are the sorts of things which NASA is notorious for ignoring. It's refreshing to know that these questions are at least on the radar of NASA's new head:

    (bolding mine)

    # Why does spaceflight - human or robotic - cost so much more than other comparably complex human activities, and what can be done to remedy the situation?

    # Is a serious program of human space exploration sustainable, given the "cost of doing business" presently associated with the enterprise?

    # What incentives can be offered to proven and well-established aerospace contractors to devise innovative and cost-effective, yet safe and reliable, approaches to building a new human spaceflight infrastructure?

    # Where and how does NASA intend to engage the entrepreneurial high-tech culture which has made our nation the envy of so many others, in so many areas other than aerospace? What can we do to bring the engine of capitalism to spaceflight?

    # What is the proper role of prizes, or of pay-for-performance contracts, in stimulating and encouraging the high-tech community to devote its attention to aerospace?

    # Can or should the Congress establish prizes for specific accomplishments in spaceflight, independently of NASA?

    # What is NASA's proper role in the development of new space systems, beyond setting requirements to be met through competition in industry?

    # What is NASA's proper role, as an agency of the U.S. government, in the conduct of future spaceflight operations?

    # If the exploration of new worlds requires technologies and skills beyond those presently available within NASA - and it clearly does - how are the skills of other agencies and laboratories to be used effectively in the service of the larger mission? How will the overall effort be directed?

    # Given that we as a nation will spend a certain amount each year on civil space activities, what would Americans prefer to see this money used for? What vision for space exploration excites people enough to cause them to believe that the money they spend on it is well spent? Can a reasonable consensus even be found? How do we know?

    # Is the United States interested in leading an international program of space exploration? Which nations might be competitors, and which might be partners? How and in what role do we view our potential partners in the enterprise? What do our potential partners think about this? How do we know?
  • Read his resume - he's a lobbyist with a science degree. Does this amaze anyone?
  • He hasn't had time to do anything else. He's a complete academic. His work in the Star Wars industry is the clincher: all he's good for is achieving budgets, not any actual mission success. He's the perfect shill for the Republicans' new increased NASA budget: another conduit for military contractor corporation handouts that produce nothing but disaster.

  • One problem... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by RayBender ( 525745 ) on Saturday March 12, 2005 @12:44PM (#11919953) Homepage
    There is one thing that bothers me a great deal about this guy: he apparently was big into SDI in the 80's. That makes me doubt his judgement. Anyone with a decent amount of technical knowledge at the time knew that SDI would never work against a full Soviet onslaught. Either he held his nose and did the work for the money (like a colleague of mine), or he was blinded by ideology, or he just wasn't thinking very clearly. None of those alternative speaks well of him.

  • I rather like these quotes from Griffin:

    http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewsr.html?pid=1068 3 [spaceref.com]

    "So, recognizing that others may differ, for me the single overarching goal of human space flight is the human settlement of the solar system, and eventually beyond. I can think of no lesser purpose sufficient to justify the difficulty of the enterprise, and no greater purpose is possible."

    "What the U.S. gains from a robust, focused program of human space exploration is the opportunity to carry the principles an

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