Does Obama Want to Ground NASA's Next Moon Mission?

December 12, 2008 | athens, Alabama | Vetting explained

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Will the Obama administration cripple the American Space agency? Some serious questions are being asked: http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1866045,00.html?cnn=yes Quote from source: The Obama team picked Garver to run the NASA transition, in part because of her deep pedigree and long history at the space agency, which saw her climb to the rank of associate administrator. But Garver started as a PAO - NASA-speak for a public affairs officer - and never got involved in the nuts and bolts of building rockets. She is best known by most people as the person who in 2002 competed with boy-band singer Lance Bass for the chance to fly to the International Space Station aboard a Russian rocket. Neither of them ever left the ground. Garver's lack of engineering cred is especially surprising in light of the eggheads with whom Obama has been surrounding himself - most recently, Nobel prize winning physicist Steven Chu, who has reportedly been tapped to be Secretary of Energy. Garver is also not thought to be much of a fan of Griffin - who is an engineer - nor to be sold on the plans for the new moon program. What she and others are said to be considering is to scrap the plans for the Ares 1 - which is designed exclusively to carry humans - and replace it with Atlas V and Delta IV boosters, which are currently used to launch satellites but could be redesigned, or "requalified," for humans. Griffin hates that idea, and firmly believes the Atlas and Delta are unsafe for people. One well-placed NASA source who asked not to be named reports that as much as Griffin wants to keep his job, he'll walk away from it if he's made to put his astronauts on top of those rockets. NASA is right to be uneasy about just what Obama has planned for the agency since his position on space travel shifted - a lot - during the campaign. A year before the election he touted an $18 billion education program and explicitly targeted the new moon program as one he'd cut to pay for it. In January of 2008, he lined up much closer to the Bush moon plan - perhaps because Republicans were already on board and earning swing-state support as a result. Three months before the election, Obama fully endorsed the 2020 target for putting people on the moon. But that was a candidate talking and now he's president-elect, and his choice of Garver as his transition adviser may say more than his past campaign rhetoric. What are Obama's position regarding the space program? The answer is no one knows for sure.

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