11 December 2008

NASA administrator non-cooperative with transition

The Orlando Sentinel reports that Bush appointed NASA administrator Mike Griffin is not cooperating with the Obama transition team, and is ordering staff not to criticize his baby, the "Return the the Moon" program. Personally, I think the policies at NASA in recent years have been awful. Obama should just quietly plan on asking for Griffin's resignation effective Day 1 and implementing a whole new management team. He could do a lot worse than asking former Administrator Dan Golding to return at least for a time; Golding at least had some kind of vision for the future beyond just replicating the past, and badly at that.

Fair disclosure: I think Golding's abiding interest in deep space exploration and fundamental science of extrasolar planets in particular was exactly the right approach for NASA right now, not so much expensive and largely unproductive manned missions, for which sufficient money is just not forthcoming.

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