For those who fear that Gration is a military man, get over it. There are worse things that could happen than having an Administrator who has experience in running large programs and who has a personal connection to the President. I’d rather have someone who is close to the President over someone who is close to Bill Nelson.

I think what might be behind the decision with Gration, assuming it is Gration, is Obama is sending in someone to troubleshoot and investigate what space can actually realistically do for us in the near term future, and what the likely costs are. I explain my reasoning in great depth here, but it boils down to this – this is an area of policy that Obama doesn’t have a lot of experience, there are a lot of debates going on (unmanned vs manned, shuttle extension vs ESAS vs Direct vs EELV derived, NewSpace viability, SSP viability, and so on), and there are a lot of claims made by multiple sides of the debates as well.

Obama would most likely appoint someone he trusts to do the investigation for him, and that seems to be the situation with Gration.

My 2 cents

A lot depends on what soon-to-be President Obama wants out of NASA as a whole. If it is going to be ‘business as usual’ (possibly with a short-term Shuttle extension), he would be smart to re-appoint Mike Griffin. The man already knows what levers to pull, after all, so he would probably get the job done better than someone new.

However, if Obama is planning a serious change to NASA, probably by shifting the focus to monitoring Earth’s situation (and possibly planetary defence from PHOs), then he will need to find someone new. Dr. Griffin is, after all, a believer, no matter what you think of his methods and technical ideas. He would not want to be part of a shift away from manned deep-space exploration.

Similarly, if Obama is planning a ‘clean sweep’ to NASA, radically changing the goals or seriously changing the technologies to be used by Project Constellation, then, again, he will need someone new. Dr. Griffin’s ideas and preferences are a matter of public record and he would likely be unwilling to be the hand that cans his own creations and brain-children.

These two statements are contradictory. If “Nelson’s views were known”, then there would be no need to “meet with him and ask him” about a candidate before their name became known publicly.

Please, let’s think before we type.

1) What embarrassment?? Gration has not been officially announced as the nominee, and it is not an embarrassment to the President-elect to float a trial balloon, generate more information, and then maybe make up his mind to go with somebody else. This is what trial balloons are for.

2) Why would Obama treat Nelson special? He does not owe Nelson anything. (In fact, it gives me hope that they are not giving Nelson special treatment.)

3) Now that Nelson has made his views publicly known, guess who will be embarrassed if Gration actually becomes NASA Administrator?

FWIW,

- Al

“Politics is not rocket science, which is why rocket scientists do not understand politics.”