NASA, Other, White House

More hopes for the new administration

A few items from this week’s issue of The Space Review:

Dwayne Day discusses how the new administration might lead to declassification of historic documents about early reconnaissance programs. Plans to declassify some of those projects, long since declared obsolete, were in progress in the Clinton Administration when they were suddenly halted, and the Bush Administration did little to press for further declassification of these records. Declassifying these records would not only be of historical interest, it could also “improve the image of the intelligence community, particularly the NRO, after nearly a decade of negative publicity and some embarrassing recent missteps like the Future Imagery Architecture.”

Dave Huntsman argues that rather than focusing on just who the next administrator of NASA should be, we need to look at who the “top NASA team” will be, including the administrator, deputy administrator, inspector general, and chief financial officer. “Right now, neither the Congress nor the American people trust NASA to cost-effectively manage NASA’s programs,” he writes. “To reinstate that trust, NASA doesn’t just need a new administrator: it needs a new top team with a different attitude that will join the agency at the hip with the rest of the Administration.”

Stokes McMillan writes that he expects that President Obama, like his predecessors, will stumble in some manner in their first 100 days in office. President Kennedy did, he noted, and responded in part by seeking bold new steps in space, something McMillian hopes Obama will consider. “President Obama will now have the opportunity to make his own bold decisions that yield an enduring legacy. Let’s hope that he chooses to follow President Kennedy’s lead in creating a legacy of space.”

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