In an interview with Orlando Sentinel space reporter Michael Cabbage in January, NASA administrator Mike Griffin said he “certainly will not be” campaigning for Congressional candidates this year, as his predecessor, Sean O’Keefe, did (or tried to do) in 2002. However, it appears to be a different story when it comes to simply endorsing candidates. The Galveston Daily News reported Monday that Congressman Tom DeLay got a “surprisingly out of the norm endorsement” for his tough reelection campaign from Griffin, who “asked those in the space community to send DeLay back to Washington.” The final graf of the Daily News article about the race for the 22nd district in general:
In his keynote speech to the Rotary National Award for Space Achievement Friday night, Griffin said DeLay was “the best friend NASA has” in Congress. He also said every effort should be made to re-elect him to office.
NASA has been good about putting the text of Griffin’s speeches online, although this speech has yet to appear there as of early Monday morning, perhaps because of its timing (Friday night). Seeing the full text of the speech would help put Griffin’s comments above in context. In some respects those comments are not that surprising, since Griffin has previously acknowledged DeLay as being “incredibly helpful to NASA”.
Tom Delay is a partisan crook. Associating what’s left of NASA’s good name with a soon to be convicted criminal is just another example of their current self destructive disfunction.
For another example reference any of the hardware proposed for VSE especialy the absurdly bloated lunar lander and ridiculous manned solid fueled launcher for the massive CEV.
I can only hope that sanity and good engineering will prevail if and when competent government returns to our land.
Steve