WP: NASA Chief Sees Space As Inside Job: Aims to Develop In-House Talent

[DeepModem Mom]

NASA Chief Sees Space As Inside Job
Griffin Aims to Develop Greater In-House Talent

By Guy Gugliotta
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, June 27, 2005; Page A03


If Michael D. Griffin has his way, going to the moon won't be outsourced.

Space travel and exploration are too important to be defined by the Bush administration's pro-private-sector dogma, the still-new NASA administrator said. Only government has the gravitas and permanence to lead the way.

"NASA has relied more than I would like to see on contractors for technical decision-making at the strategic level," Griffin said in a recent interview at his headquarters office. "The issues of what we are doing and how we go about it are inherently governmental, because the space program is multi-generational. Contractors come and go."

In only nine weeks on the job, Griffin has turned NASA inside out, ordering wholesale changes in virtually every one of the nation's major space programs even as he replaces a small army of senior managers. He has radically altered new initiatives, reaffirmed his faith in venerable hardware and, less than a month before the first shuttle launch in 2 1/2 years, shaken up the human spaceflight program.

Griffin's aim is to restore NASA's Apollo-era luster by hiring the world's best space scientists, rekindling public support for space travel -- especially human space travel -- and doing whatever is necessary to ensure U.S. leadership in space far into the future....


http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/06/26/AR2005062600941.html

[WLKjr]

1. I am all for this

I think it would actually help the economy if this guy rekindles the enthusiasim that was present during the Apollo era.

[Javaman]

2. Rekindle? That would mean we would need a prez* with a clue...

As long as they keep the scatter gun approach to projects at NASA, there will never be a unified goal. A manned mission to Mars is a pipe dream, they have given up on the ISS, they want to mothball the Space shuttle for something "new" by 2010 that has yet to be designed and the only thing that actually works these days, the Hubble, they are scrapping.
The unmanned missions work great because they are sourced out to private corps and enterprises and are very inexpensive comparatively to run.
In an era when we are at the edge of private space exploration, (space ship one), thus making space travel cheaper and more efficient, with new clever and innovative ideas on propulsion, cabin design and life support systems, they want to pull back and centralize control of the program? That is a step backwards.