In her speech Thursday, Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords also talked about going to the White House earlier this week to be a part of the teleconference Preisdent Obama had with the crews of the space shuttle Discovery and the International Space Station. Besides calling Obama “so fabulous”, she said that she believes that the president is sincerely interested in space. “He calls himself a space guy, and I actually believe he is,” she said. “I think that he’s delivering in terms of substance, but in terms of budget as well.” She cited several reasons for this assessment, from his hosting that teleconfeernce to his choice of a book that he and the First Lady read to second graders last month: The Moon Over Star.
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 Thursday morning Women in Aerospace hosted a breakfast at the Library of Congress featuring Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords (D-AZ), chair of the space and aeronautics subcommittee of the House Science and Technology Committee. Much of her prepared remarks dealt with general space policy issues, as well as the need to get more women into the science and engineering workforce. In the Q&A that followed, though, she was asked about who she thought would be a good administrator, or at least what kind of person should be running the space agency. She didn’t offer any specific names, but she did outline three “totally different skill sets” she felt were needed for the “very tough job” of NASA administrator:
“The president has made some incredible appointments, and we’re looking for someone obviously who’s very talented, who’s got the vision, the expertise, and can make this happen,” she said. “We really have to make sure the president has good people in place so that they can get this job done. We can’t let this vision go.” It’s interesting to use these criteria against two individuals who may be finalists for the administrator position: Charles Bolden and Nick Lampson. Bolden clearly has the technical expertise, and arguably the managerial one (counting his time in the Marines and the private sector), but how politically savvy is he? Lampson, on the other hand, clearly has political aptitude, but has never run a large organization, and his technical background would largely be limited to what he picked up during his time focusing on space issues in Congress. (And it would make for some… interesting.. subcommittee hearings, as the ranking Republican on Giffords’ subcommittee is Rep. Pete Olson (R-TX), who defeated Lampson in November.) Then again, there may be no one left who is equally strong in all three of Giffords’ desired skill sets. [Disclosure: I’m an officer of Women in Aerospace, but not involved in the selection of event programming.] I noted here earlier this week that the “Colbert controversy”—what to do about naming Node 3 of the ISS after comedian Stephen Colbert won an online poll run by the space agency—attracted the attention of Rep. Chaka Fattah, who argued that NASA should bend to the will of the people (or, at least, the voters) and name the “nodule” (as Rep. Fattah described it in his press release) after Colbert. I said that it was fair to assume that Fattah was at least partially joking: why would a congressman, especially one who had been a guest on Colbert’s Comedy Central show, take the time to address this? Well, it does appear that he is serious. Rep. Fattah tells “The Swamp”, a blog run by the Washington bureau of the Chicago Tribune, that he really thinks NASA should not disregard the results of the poll:
(The reference to “the power of the purse” is a reminder that Fattah sits on the appropriations subcommittee whose jurisdiction includes NASA.) The question that isn’t asked, though, is whether Colbert is stimulating interest in space exploration, or simply having some fun (and getting some publicity) at NASA’s expense. This week the Senate Budget Committee released its “Chairman’s Mark” for the FY2010 budget resolution, which included a few paragraphs about NASA. This passage in particular caught the attention of shuttle advocates, particularly in Florida:
Claiming credit for adding the language was Sen. Bill Nelson, a member of the budget committee and a supporter for keeping the shuttle flying if it does not complete its current manifest of missions by the end of next year. “The Budget Committee’s decision sends a strong signal that the shuttle shouldn’t be retired on a date-certain, but only when all the missions are completed,” he said in a statement. The signal, though, is largely a symbolic one. Even if the language remains in the final budget resolution this year, appropriators next year won’t be beholden to funding it. It does, though, further suggest that Nelson and the Obama Administration—which stated in its budget outline released last month that it still plans to retire the shuttle in 2010—don’t see eye to eye on space issues. While the White House hasn’t announced a pick for NASA administrator, space enthusiasts can look on the bright side: President Obama did spend about a half-hour talking about space with ISS and shuttle astronauts, peppering them with questions ranging from their work installing solar panels on the station to how they check email. The issue of who might—someday—be running NASA did not come up, but one wonders whether people like Senators Bill Nelson and Kay Bailey Hutchison or Congresswoman Suzanne Kosmas, who were all present at the White House for the call, brought up the issue with the president at some point before or after the call. Meanwhile, as NASA make more effort to engage the public, you had to wonder when something like go wrong. And it appeared to do just that when Stephen Colbert beat out a pre-selected choice of names for Node 3 of the ISS in an online poll, thanks to a write-in effort by fans of “The Colbert Report”. NASA says the poll is not binding, but that hasn’t stopped Congressman Chaka Fattah (D-PA), who sits on the appropriations subcommittee whose jurisdiction includes NASA, from issuing a press release calling for NASA to honor the results of the poll even if Colbert’s campaign “was a bit over the top”. One assumes that Rep. Fattah’s tongue is at least partially wedged in his cheek—he appeared on “The Colbert Report” in 2006—but it does lead one to wonder if other members of Congress will pay closer attention to NASA’s participatory efforts. Of the four people on the previously-announced “shortlist” for the NASA administrator job, we know now that Steve Isakowitz is remaining at the Department of Energy and Scott Gration has been tapped to be a special envoy to Sudan. That would seem to leave two candidates: Charles Bolden and Lester Lyles. Or does it? The Orlando Sentinel reports that neither person is likely to be named to the job soon: Lyles does not appear that interested in the job, preferring the better renumeration of work in the private sector after a long military career (which is similar to what Space News reported in its print edition last week) and the administration is not interested in Bolden, the favorite of Sen. Bill Nelson. Even “people close to Nelson”, the Sentinel reports, are resigning themselves to that fact. So it would seem that the shortlist is now empty (unless one takes seriously the reports that former astronaut Mae Jemison is under consideration, which, it appears, many people aren’t). If the administration is starting over in its NASA administrator search, it suggests that it may be well into summer before a permanent administrator is in place, given the delay between when a nomination is announced (not before next month, according to the Sentinel) and confirmation by the Senate. One possibility, the Sentinel reports: acting administrator Chris Scolese might be asked to become the permanent administrator. He would still have to go through the nomination process, but presumably could take on duties beyond his current “caretaker” role after being nominated. If anyone had any doubts about whether Steve Isakowitz was still in the running to become NASA administrator, the White House wiped them away with an announcement about a new set of nominations. No, the administration didn’t announce their pick for NASA administrator, but did announce a number of selections for posts in the Energy Department, adding at the end: “President Obama also announced that Steve Isakowitz, the Chief Financial Officer at the Department of Energy, will continue serving in his current role.” This, plus the selection earlier this week of Scott Gration as a special envoy to Sudan, means that half of the “conventional wisdom” shortlist of four candidates are ruled out, leaving Charles Bolden and Lester Lyles and the remaining candidates. (Plus Mae Jemison, according to one report. Not to mention who else might be under consideration but hidden from view.) Speaking of Gration, The New Republic reports that Gration “had his heart set on running NASA” but “defense lobbyists scotched the idea”. (Why defense lobbyists would be weighing in on Gration, or the NASA administrator position in general, is a detail overlooked by TNR.) And Sen. Bill Nelson, who was reportedly the one originally opposed to Gration and then the one who took credit for having “taken down” Isakowitz, has other issues to deal with: hacking of computers in his office, reportedly traced back to China based on the IP addresses that the attacks came from. Perhaps the Chinese are curious about Nelson’s ideas of who should run NASA… On Thursday morning the Space Transportation Association hosted a breakfast with Mike Coats, director of NASA JSC. Most of his talk focused on work at the center, including workforce and project management issues at the center. He did note, though, a concern about the lack of a NASA administrator and the uncertain future of aspects of the agency’s mission, including Constellation. “The uncertainty is driving folks crazy,” he said. “We don’t know really what the policy is for this new administration regarding space and maybe we’re going to have another change in direction. That uncertainty is causing a lot of concern in the workforce.” Asked later about what effects this leadership vacuum at NASA headquarters was having on his job, Coats said that acting administrator Chris Scolese was doing a “great job”, but there were limits to what he could so. Scolese, Coats noted, “is reluctant to make anything that might be perceived as policy decisions. And yet it is very hard when you’re running an agency to make a decision that isn’t perceived as policy in some way.” It was time, Coats concluded, for the administration to provide Scolese with some help. “It would help we could have an administrator, a deputy administrator, and some direction, frankly.” On the use of the NASA funding in the stimulus package, “we’re still talking,” Coats said. “We were hurting badly in ’09 and ’10 on the Orion program” prior to the passage of the stimulus package, he said. If stimulus funding is spent on that program, “that would allow us, if not shorten the gap, at least not to grow it a whole lot.” He did note that JSC was hard at work spending the $50 million in the package for facility repairs, noting that Hurricane Ike caused $90 million in damage to the center. The pace of activity is so high that JSC is borrowing procurement staff from KSC. In a brief appearance, Congressman John Culberson (R-TX) heaped praise on Coats and his work at JSC, then made a suggestion. “I don’t know if it’s something you’d want to do, but I’d love to see you as our next NASA administrator.” “Thank you for those kind words,” Coats responded. “Don’t even go there. The grandchildren are in Houston, so that’s where granddad’s going to be.” Florida Today reports that a group of House members, the NASA House Action Team, has written to the White House to request that the president announce a NASA administrator as soon as possible. The letter appears similar to the one Congressman Bill Posey sent last week; Posey is also a member of the NASA House Action Team. In another development reported in the article, a spokesman for Sen. Bill Nelson says that the White House has informed the senator, who chairs the space subcommittee of the Senate Commerce Committee, that an announcement of a nominee “will be coming very soon, perhaps in a matter of days.” That’s similar to what President Obama said himself last week, when he told the Orlando Sentinel that he planned to select someone “soon”, without being more specific about the timeframe. While we don’t know who among the several people whose names have been linked to the job, we know one person who definitely won’t get the job: the administration plans to name Scott Gration as a a special envoy to Sudan today. Gration, of course, was two months ago the can’t-miss gonna-be-picked-any-day-now choice for the NASA administrator job whose prospects then faded, either because of opposition from Sen. Nelson or other issues. (Although given Gration’s background, the envoy position is perhaps a better fit that the top NASA job.) That would seem to leave three people left for the job: Steve Isakowitz, reportedly “taken down” by Nelson; Charles Bolden, Nelson’s apparent favorite; and Lester Lyles, who did not seem that enthused about the job in comments reported by Space News in its print edition this week. Unless, of course, there’s a unknown dark horse candidate out there… In an editorial today, Florida Today asks the Obama Administration to name a new NASA administrator as soon as possible. How soon? “We urge him to make the announcement this week because there’s no more time to waste.” The paper appears concerned that, without an administrator, “it’s hurting the agency’s ability to gain a fair share of federal money” in “long-range budget negotiations” between the White House and Congress. It’s not clear what negotiations the paper is referring to, or how having an administrator would change that. Another thing that the editorial doesn’t address is whether the lack of a NASA administrator nominee is entirely the administration’s fault, given the Orlando Sentinel report Friday claiming that Sen. Bill Nelson had blocked a potential nominee. The editorial instead simply lists the four men commonly considered on the shortlist for the position, including Steve Isakowitz, the one reportedly blocked by Nelson. It would be ironic if the paper’s concerns about the lack of agency leadership, and its potential effects for the region’s economy given the impending shuttle retirement, had its root cause much closer to home. |
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