My Space Blog

T. Keith Glennan, First NASA Administrator

NASA is a large and amazing organization, always embroiled in its own dramas – funding, priorities, battles between behemoth contractors with increasing noise from smaller startups, the ongoing bungee-cord balance between science, safety, cost, manned flight considerations, defense vs commercial vs exploration, US dominance vs all the other countries, and on and on. The latest  issues to bump heads are the future of Ares, and the appointment of a new NASA administrator.

By now, you would have thought that a new administrator would be in place.  Instead, there is no more activity than a few names being floated around.  Interestingly, there are several from the military world. This plays into the other issue, that there are those who think that we should abandon Ares and go with military launch vehicles instead.

I’m not going to get into that line of reasoning here (Jeff Krukin has some thoughts), but I will say that it plays into the old assumption that political and other appointees will be parochial and come in with agendas.  A military NASA administrator would be assumed to automatically support the use of military vehicles, for example. I’m not sure if that’s true or if a military appointee would necessarily be a bad thing (General Lew Allen had a good run as director of JPL in the 80’s, for example, and Pete Worden is happily ensconced at Ames) but it will certainly bring in a different perspective.  Some people might argue that it’s not fruitful to have dual-track vehicle programs at all.

Anyway, for your interest here are links to a few people whose names are currently floating around as possible nominees for NASA administrator:

• Lester Lyles (general, current favorite)
• Scott Gration (also a general)
• Charles Kennel (Earth Scientist)
• Charles Bolden (general, former astronaut)
• Pete Worden (general, current director of NASA Ames)

Spaceports has a longer but older (Dec ‘08) list here.

There was a lot of talk this week about the possible decision by the Obama team to merge certain NASA and military activities – specifically, to use existing military vehicles to loft humans into space.

The issues are these:

• The US sees itself in a race with China to return to the moon.  China is moving ahead with its own space program.  It’s already achieved lunar orbit, there was a spacewalk earlier this year, and it plans for an unmanned moon landing in 2013, followed by a manned mission in 2020, dates approximate.
• Pentagon launch vehicles such as Delta and Atlas are well established, at least the names.  There is talk of scrapping the new Ares rocket program currently under development and using existing military launch vehicles instead.  The Pentagon likes this idea, of course.  NASA is balking, and there is unfortunately publicized discord between the Obama administration and NASA’s Republican-appointed administrator, whose wife is actively campaigning for him to keep his job.
• Finally, there is the ever present talk of cost savings.  Everyone’s got an opinion on that topic, including me.  Undoubtedly, the reports and analysis will start unfolding soon.

Here’s my singular thought for now.  The last vehicle that we got from the military was the Hummer.  Isn’t there a lesson here?  Food for thought.

More reading:

• Richard Korman
• Bloomberg
• TGDaily
• Terrestrial Musings
• Just Get There

This is the Space Blog of Anthony Matthews, created 1/1/09. I’m returning to the space business after something of an absence running another enterprise.  I really like small launch vehicles and that whole area, so the blog will focus on them.

The picture I took on a trip to Baikonur in 1993.  It was just after a Soyuz launch.  That was a fun trip.  There was no bottled water so for a week we existed on brownish boiled water, vodka (special occasions only, of course), and this tasty brown soda called NENCH that I later found out was the Russian for Pepsi.

Please check back every now and then!