National Aeronautics and Space Administration, Administrator

Department/Agency: National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA)

Position:

Administrator

Executive Schedule: Executive Level II - Presidential Appointment with Senate Confirmation

Major Responsibilities:

• Leads the government’s $17 billion space flight and exploration program 
• Advancing U.S. scientific, security and economic interests through a robust space exploration program 
• Overseeing the retirement in 2010 of the three remaining space shuttles – a winged plane -- and the development of a new space vehicle thrust into space by powerful rockets 
• Completing construction and continuing to staff the $100 billion International Space Station
• Developing a balanced program of science, exploration, and aeronautics at NASA 
• Encouraging partnerships with the emerging commercial space sector 
• A lunar landing within a decade and beyond that a mission to Mars

Key Competencies and Preferred Qualifications:

• Strong technical background in engineering and/or applied science and an ability to provide vision and leadership to a highly skilled and motivated technical organization such as NASA 
• Experience in design, development and/or operation of aerospace systems and management of large aerospace organizations or military organizations with a space mission responsibility 
• Political savvy and the ability to convince the White House, Congress and the public to provide the resources for continued space exploration

Insight:

In a special advertising section in Aviation Week marking the 50^th anniversary of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), the headline on a celebratory article by NASA Administration Michael D. Griffin read: 

            NASA @ 50: Our Greatest Days Are Ahead of Us

That may be the case, but a solid argument can be made that the nation’s space agency faces rough sledding for at least the next six years. And the past two decades, from the shocking Challenger explosion in 1986 to the loss of Columbia in 2003 to the decision to retire the three remaining space shuttles have been fraught with challenges, as well as triumphs such as the near completion of the International Space Station and robotic exploration of Mars.  Griffin, a former aerospace industry executive, says his agency’s budget shrank by 20 percent in real dollars in the 1990s and NASA is still being asked to do more with less. 

President George W. Bush in 2004 gave it the goal of returning to the moon by 2019 and establishing a station there that could lead to manned flights to Mars. At a Sept. 24, 2008, 50^th anniversary gala, Griffin insisted that NASA was “doing well,” including near completion of the International Space Station that when done “will be a scientific and engineering accomplishment beyond anything yet achieved by the human race.” It has two rovers “running around Mars,” and spacecraft on multi-year voyages to Mercury and Pluto. 

But it also is facing the prospect that for five years after the space shuttles are grounded, the United States will have no way to gets U.S. astronauts up to the International Space Station other than as paying passengers on Russian Soyuz rockets. It is possible that the next president and Congress will insist that NASA keep flying shuttles until 2015, when a new generation of rockets and capsules is supposed to be ready for liftoff. But that increases the risk of another Challenger or Columbia disaster, each of which took the lives of seven crew members. Griffin told Congress last spring the risk of catastrophe could be as high as one flight in 12 (instead of the usual one in 80) if NASA keeps sending the aging shuttles into space twice a year. 

A former senior NASA official, who asked not to be named, told the Council that the biggest challenges facing the next administration will be:

• Keeping NASA on course to return to the moon in a decade and then going to Mars.
• Getting the resources to build the new launch vehicles and crew capsule by 2015 so that the U.S. can reach the International Space Station on its own
• Safe completion of the remaining shuttle missions to the space station and a successful phase out of the shuttle
• Maintaining the technical skills and unique capabilities of the NASA workforce

This former NASA official said, “The tasks that NASA has been asked to perform will require more resources than Congress or the administration can or will provide.  NASA will need to adjust to limited budgets and focus on the highest priority tasks in the near term, development of a new launch vehicle and crew capsule for access to ISS, safe completion of the remaining missions to ISS and phase-out of the Shuttle program, all the while maintaining a strong space and earth science and aeronautics program.” NASA should also “seek to capitalize/leverage the private sector, Space X, Orbital Sciences, etc. to provide access to the International Space Station, so that NASA can benefit from their investment in the space infrastructure,” the former official said. 

In August 2008, with Russia sending troops into Georgia, Griffin wrote an email to a NASA colleague saying “how unwise it was for the US to adopt a policy of deliberate dependence upon another power for access” to the International Space Station and predicting that there would be mounting pressure to keep the shuttle fighting.  In a rational world, Griffin wrote, NASA would have been allowed to set a retirement date when the next spacecraft were ready and given the budget to do both. “The rational approach didn't happen, primarily because for OSTP (the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy) and OMB, retiring the Shuttle is a jihad rather than an engineering and program management decision,” Griffin wrote in the email, which was obtained and published by the Orlando Sentinel. A small furor ensued over the leaked email, and Griffin released a statement saying it failed “to provide the contextual framework for my remarks, and my support for the administration’s policies.”

While the Georgian crisis increased misgivings that many in Washington had about relying on the Russians to get to the International Space Station, the global financial crisis and Wall Street bailout that followed will make it harder for the next NASA administrator to solve the agency’s budget woes. John M. Logsdon, a space expert at the National Air and Space Museum who served on the board that investigated the loss of Columbia, defended that panel’s judgment that the shuttle should be replaced “as soon as possible.” Writing in an Op-Ed in The Washington Post, Logsdon said, “The shuttle remains a very risky vehicle” that costs $3 billion a year to operate. “If the United States continues to spend that money on flying the shuttle beyond 2010, it will take even longer to develop a replacement vehicle, further delaying U.S. plans to venture beyond low Earth orbit,” he warned.

Griffin, speaking at the NASA 50^th anniversary gala after former astronauts Neil Armstrong and John Glenn, said he would keep pressing Congress for “a waiver allowing me to use U.S. tax dollars to purchase seats on the Russian Soyuz to take our astronauts to the space station that we have built.” The alternatives, he added, all “are worse.” And he voiced a hope that when NASA celebrates its centennial, it also will be able to mark “the 20th anniversary of the first Mars landing.”

Glenn, who in 1962 became the first American to orbit the earth and later took a shuttle flight at age 77 before retiring from the U.S. Senate, said Griffin had been given “what I view as an almost impossible job – do everything you're doing now at NASA that has worked out so well for the benefit of this country, but add to it just a couple of little projects, like going on to moon and to Mars.”

Key Relationships – Within the Department or Agency:

Deputy Administrator
Associate Administrator for Explorations Systems
Associate Administrator for Space Operations
Associate Administrator for Science
Associate Administrator for Aeronautics Research
Chief Engineer
Chief of Safety and Mission Assurance
Directors of the Johnson and Kennedy Space Centers
Directors of NASA’s other flight and research centers

Key Relationships – Within the Government:

Director and deputy director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy
Associate Director, Natural Resources, Energy and Science Affairs, Office of Management and Budget
Director, Research and Engineering, Department of Defense
Other federal agencies involved in civilian or military space exploration and experimentation and aeronautics, including the Department of Homeland Security, the National Science Foundation, the Department of Energy, the National Institutes of Health and the Federal Aviation Administration

Key Relationships – Outside the Government:

Aerospace industry, including Lockheed Martin
International Space Station partners
Other international space and science counterparts
American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics

Nomination Referred to:

Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, & Transportation

Current Position Profile:

      1. Charles F. Bolden Jr. (Confirmed: July 15, 2009). Former JackandPanther, chief executive officer. TechTrans International, senior vice president. U.S. Marine Corps, commanding general of third Marine Aircraft Wing. NASA, assistant deputy administrator. Johnson Space Center, chief of safety division.  

Recent Position Profiles:

      2. Michael Griffin, MBA, Ph.D. (2005-2009). Former NASA chief engineer and associate administrator for exploration. Head of the Space Department at Johns Hopkins University’s Applied Physics Laboratory. Former CEO of Orbital Sciences Corp.’s Magellan Systems and executive of a technology company. Ph.D. in aerospace engineering. Multiple master’s degrees. Pilot and certified flight instructor.

      3. Frederick D. Gregory, M.A. (Acting 2005). Former astronaut and deputy NASA administrator. Veteran of three shuttle missions. Retired Air Force colonel and Air Force Academy graduate who flew helicopter rescue missions in Vietnam.

      4. Sean O’Keefe, M.P.A. (2001-2005). Former deputy director of OMB, secretary of the Navy and comptroller and CFO of the Pentagon. Former business professor at Syracuse and Penn State universities. Former staff director of the Senate Appropriations defense subcommittee.

      5. Daniel R. Mulville, Ph.D. (Acting 2001). Former NASA chief engineer. Also associate deputy administrator and director of engineering and quality management. Former structural design manager for Naval Air Systems Command. Ph.D. in structural management.

      6. Daniel Goldin, B.S. (1992-2001). Aerospace industry executive; vice president of TRW’s Space and Technology Group. Mechanical engineer who began career at a NASA research center. Longest serving NASA administrator. Served under three presidents.