I think it is unlikely that NASA will have a former (or current) member of the Military as the administrator be it Jonathan Gration or Charles Bolden given the Civilian mandate of the agency.

Editor's note: you are posting from a foreign country (Edmonton, Alberta, Canada) thousands of miles away from here (Washington, DC). It is just possible that we get slightly better intel about our own politics here ;-)

While it is true that some of the finest astronauts were members of the various military services, I think the administrator position in this time of the Shuttle's retirement and the launch of a new system probably needs to be someone with fairly extensive scientific experience.

I am advocating for Dr. Alan Stern, check him out on youtube @

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VUuVtqu6k_M

Wikipedia Entry:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Stern

I think Keith's right here - I don't think military service would disqualify anyone from serving as NASA administrator.

If General Gration is selected I think it's a wise move. At this time NASA needs strong leadership from the top down. You need someone who can command loyalty, respect and has the qualifications of an engineer and administrator. It appears he has all the necessary qualifications.

The fact that he's a relative unknown in NASA circles is a good thing.

Sigh.

He may be a genius. He may be a leader among men.

But he doesn't know about space, and odds are will be pals with the astros.

Here's hoping he gets paid off with a senior job at DOD or State instead. He's much more qualified for them.

Space.com is reporting that the General HAS been offered the job "according to a source."

That he worked with Hans Mark is a serious negative for me. Hans doesn't believe in private human spaceflight, unless he's changed his tune recently.

Editor's note: here we go with the goofy arm waving. Gration worked for Hans Mark TWENTY SEVEN YEARS AGO.

Last time we went to the moon, the military was pretty much leading the show. The engineers and scientists did what they do best, design and build, and the leadership was left to professional and trained leaders. If it happens, this would be a great move and I'm no Obama fan.

The military has had way more successful programs than NASA has. Some say it's all about budget. It's not.

RH

"Way" more successful? Examples?

Whooohooo! EELVs will see more usage. Long overdue. Ares I must die.

Gration is familiar with EELVs, and I'm sure is being brought in to work the DOD relationships needed to make Orion/EELVI a reality. At the very least, Orion/EELV will get its due time in court. Don't be surprised if you see the major flight centers begin questioning Ares I as early as next week. It may seem contrary to their self interests, especially MSFC, but no one wants to go too crosswise with the new boss.

The selection of someone with almost exclusive military experience will command neither respect nor loyalty from most of NASA's engineers. Although service and sacrifice for our country is certainly respected, the person who commands NASA should have extensive knowledge of spacecraft design, aeronautics, the Earth sciences and the other core disciplines that make up NASA's charter. Leadership ability alone isn't sufficient for developing the long-term plans and strategies required for a successful space program. Ironically, Mike Griffin possesses the knowledge required, but with an arrogance and lack political savvy that has left us equally bankrupt from a leadership point of view. Surely there has to be a competent person with the technical, leadership, administrative, AND political skills necessary to command NASA. Sadly, none of NASA's administrators in recent history have had the right mix of these four ingredients. It is a tall order, but absolutely essential for credibility at all levels.

Re: The selection of someone with almost exclusive military experience will command neither respect nor loyalty from most of NASA's engineers.

This overlooks, of course, the number of engineers whose previous careers were in the military.

Just Googling around I found these:

His speech at the DNC convention
http://www.demconvention.com/j-scott-gration/

http://www.newsweek.com/id/32587

http://www.lemarssentinel.com/story/1229622.html

A manager earns respect and loyalty when he listens and involves his employees in the decison making process.

Glenn: He does have a Bachelor of Science degree in mechanical engineering so at least he has some idea of what the engineers will be talking about.

And when you're leading a 19,000+ people organization you need leadership skills more than engineering, science skills etc. You have other leaders within your organization who you rely on for the knowledge and expertise your leader might not have.

General Gration sounds like a fighter jock with a further background in international politics. As a White House fellow, he has seen how "things work" in Washington. In addition, you don't get to be much higher than an O-6 (Full Colonel), unless you can "play the game". He may not have "a background in space," but I'll bet he'll know how to get the job done...whenever the "Head Shed" makes its policy decisions known. I am more concerned about what that policy will be with regard to our future in space, and what kind of money Congress will make available! We will just have to wait and see...

Ad LEO! Ad Luna! Ad Ares! Ad Astra!

If he is a friend of the new President, his choice alone indicates a certain favourable interest by the President.

If he is a good engineer, he will be able to understand the technological choices presented to him.

If he is a good administrator he will be able to manage the morass that is today's NASA.

If he is/was a good soldier, he will be able to get the job done.

If he is a good leader he will be able to listen to the opinions offered him and make effective decisions.

And if he does all or even most of these things, he'll be respected and will succeed.

I certainly don't know the man, but his resume reeks of potential. I do hope it's realised for the benefit of us all.

Whomever is chose, the best of luck to them.

Paul

Seems his most important qualification is being an Obama supporter.

What is this persons views on humans returning to the moon as planned and on time?

Anyone know?

Obama may have decided that his main goal with NASA, if nothing else, is to ditch the Ares I and ensure a sooner flight of Orion on EELV. He would be credited with saving NASA and closing the gap.

Wiki says "Through 2000 and 2001 he was Deputy Director for Operations (J-39, responsible for civil-military operations) in the Joint Staff in Washington".
Does anyone know more about this function?

Glenn said "Ironically, Mike Griffin possesses the knowledge required, but with an arrogance and lack political savvy that has left us equally bankrupt from a leadership point of view."

Griffin follows the plan set-out by Bush and as enacted by Congress. I am not sure how following Congress' directives is arrogant.

Concerning the military issue. I thought that Bolden didn't get the nomination as deputy-administrator because he was stil active in the military. Have the rules changed?

One more question if Gration's only qualification is being loyal to Obama and working for NASA for one year, 27 years ago, I am a bit worried about this nomination. If you ask me, it would make more sense to name him deputy-administrator and keep Griffin as administrator.

person who commands NASA should have extensive knowledge of spacecraft design
*sigh* You seriously think that ? That the head of BMW ought to be an expert car designer ?

I hope the Obama team isn't seriously considering a career military officer who has no professional experience with space flight or space science. If the agency is, in fact, headed for a significant course change, then it needs to be guided and steered by a knowledgeable director. There will be tremendous pressure from a dozen directions - within the administration, within the agency, and within congress. There will be a mixture of sound and unsound visions for what NASA should be. An industry novice, however impressive his resume, may not have the experience or clarity of purpose to resist being maneuvered. Whose ideal will he ultimately be implementing?

NASA's culture varies with each Center.

At the more operational Centers (e.g. KSC, Dryden, Stennis) - a military background would be seen as a plus. The same is true for the more conservative, southern based Centers (JSC, MSFC, and perhaps Langley). The more liberal Centers (Ames and Goddard) will look favorably upon almost anyone Obama appoints. HQ will bend over for anyone in charge.

Moreover, I think NASA employees generally give new Administrators the benefit of the doubt and judge them on their performance.

NASA's culture varies with each Center.

At the more operational Centers (e.g. KSC, Dryden, Stennis) - a military background would be seen as a plus. The same is true for the more conservative, southern based Centers (JSC, MSFC, and perhaps Langley). The more liberal Centers (Ames and Goddard) will look favorably upon almost anyone Obama appoints. HQ will bend over for anyone in charge.

Moreover, I think NASA employees generally give new Administrators the benefit of the doubt and judge them on their performance.

With all the "nominations" slipping out from unnamed sources over the last week, I find this one even less credible. If a reliable source from within the transition team had been cited it would be a different story. But since neither stories I have seen have provided one this just more smoke up the ass. Top down leadership? Wasn't that the criticism of Griffin? Too heavy handed? NASA is a civilian organization and General Gration would be out of his depth dealing with NASA and its engineers and scientists. With no NASA technical expertise or space related experience, he would be hardpressed to earn the respect of his subordinates in a civilian. General Bolden found out this much as deputy NASA Administrator. Expect members of Congress to throw up a roadblock if this rumor is true.

I hear that as of today, Major General Jonathan Scott Gration IS the NASA Administrator nominee. Has anyone else heard that He's been picked by Obama?

"The candidate's new Swahili-speaking military adviser, Gen. Scott Gration, sees him as America's Mandela."


NASA does not need a worshiper of the ObaMessiah as Administrator.

For the individual who wanted examples of the many military program successes, just within the Air Force alone there is the F-16, F-17, F-22, B1, and B2 programs (not to mention the ones that aren't publicized). For the Navy, look at the Los Angeles, Seawolf and Virginia class subs, the new aircraft carriers the fighters, the list goes on and on, think of the army hardware, etc.

Agreed about the military successes you listed, but I inferred (perhaps incorrectly) that the poster was referring to military space successes. My point was that the DoD and NASA have had similar success/failures in space. If the original poster really meant the military as a whole, then you can't take the vast differences in budget out of the picture.

There are a number of postives aspects that should be considered should Gration emerge as the nominee for NASA. His close relationship with President-elect Obama is a major plus. This hasn't happened since James Webb (O'Keefe had Chaney's ear, but no evidence that he was close to Bush). For those who have constantly complained that low-level bureaucrats at OMB and OSTP have had too much influence over NASA's direction, what a difference it will make to have an Administrator who has a personal relationship with the President and will have his calls taken. Having someone who is both an engineer and has had experience with policy and strategy development is exactly what the agency needs. Despite Griffin's ridiculous statement that NASA isn't involved in policy, the agency is most certainly a major player in shaping policy and developoing policy options. Gration clearly has demonstrated leadership abilities. He is an excellent communicator. He's not an insider with pre-conceived views on the current program and will be able to establish an unbiased review of where NASA stands and how best to proceed to ALIGN THE AGENCY WITH NATIONAL NEEDS AND PRIORITIES INSTEAD OF DOING WHAT IT FEELS LIKE DOING! Change is coming.

Scott Gration is a fighter jock with no clue about rockets or effective administration of a large bureaucracy. O'bama could do better by nominating one of the chimps that flew on the early space missions. At least they would have relative experience.

It's well known that Gration was angling for a top job in the Department of Defense in the Obama Administration. During the campaign he had an opportunity to be involved in creating Obama's space policy, but barely engaged due to lack of interest and quickly pivoted over to other things - leaving the job to 20-something policy staffer Carlos Monje instead.

If he's appointed, the signal sent to the entire space community will be that NASA is nothing more than a consolation prize for the Presidents' buddy who couldn't get the job he wanted. Or, at best, maybe NASA is some kind of training wheels for Gration to prove his management abilities.

How soon until he has his eyes on some of the slots at DoD that will be opening up when Gates leaves (Secretary of the Air Force, for example)? Is he really going to be effective if his term is only one or two years? Is he going to have the respect of the NASA team given his apparent lack of interest in space science or exploration?

Evidently, a lot of people think cabinet posts and agency heads should be chosen from field careerists. So, Secretary of Defense should be a career military officer? Secretary of State should be a career diplomat? Maybe so, but this policy didn't work out so well for the Ming Dynasty. The US system is modeled more or less on the Roman Republic, where most posts were filled by professional politicians. Julius Caesar was not a career military officer. That worked well until the Romans began outsourcing jobs. Maybe instead of just importing engines, we can get a former Soviet bureaucrat to run NASA for us. They've got the experience and engineering chops for the job, right?

Mike wrote: "At the more operational Centers (e.g. KSC, Dryden, Stennis) - a military background would be seen as a plus. The same is true for the more conservative, southern based Centers (JSC, MSFC, and perhaps Langley)."

I won't presume to speak for everyone at Langley, but I'm quite sure there are a large number of us for whom the very negative experiences we had while a former military person was in charge at the Center make us look unfavorably upon having a military person in charge of the agency. The fellow may turn out to be great, but I'm not holding my breath. Then again, it really won't take much for me to think he's great. All he has to do is undo the damage Lisa Porter did to the aeronautics research program, particularly the aviation safety program. If he does that, I'll be happy.

If indeed the General is Obama'S choice to run NASA the General is going to be in for a rude awakening. NASA does not have a military culture mentality.It is a civilian agency where employees do not have the salute and carry out the order mentality. Orders are considered suggestions and employees may and have substituted there own logic and " I no better" attitude in decision making.

Getting control of NASA will be his biggest challenge..Decision making is easy the hard part will be in implementing them..

I'm inclined to give Gen. Gration the benefit of the doubt, but I will say that the installation of a military guy at a civilian agency may not be the best fit. I'd recall to mind the fact that Mr. O'Keefe was a secretary of the Navy, and a personal friend of V.P. Cheney, and neither of those facts made him a particularly effective NASA administrator (although I think that he was fairly well respected during his tenure here).

Editor's note: you seem to have forgotten where the VSE came from. Mike Griffin inherited it - from Sean O'Keefe.

A general leading a civilian agency, now that just makes perfect sense. That explains why we've heard so many rumors about EELV and the DoD offloading its costs onto NASA. It's probably endgame for the Moon or anything beyond LEO. Much of the Ares-1 technology (J-2 engine, SRM, etc.) was being developed with the Ares-5 in mind, so with that gone so will the supplier chain just barely being established. Up will go Ares-5 development costs while Congressional interest to fund decreases exponentially. As a result ... no Ares-5 = no Altair since even the three core configuration of Atlas/Delta won't come anywhere near performance. I very much doubt we'll see a 5-core Atlas V or Delta IV. The 'clustering' concept already outpriced the Saturn-1 beyond affordability. Also, spreading payloads as to require more than two launches and one rendezvous dooms operations beyond LEO.

All this doesn't bode well. I really really really hope I'm proven wrong. I'd rather stick to Griffin and Ares-1 than risk a return of another Goldin-like "minimalistic, cheaper, let's-court-failure" program (oh sorry, meant "faster, cheaper, better").

I hope he is not a Steidle Part II. Recall - Steidle came to NASA with great credentials and leadership skills. But, he demoralized huge numbers of agency people by essentially telling NASA engineers and project managers that they weren't good enough to do the work necessary to take NASA back to the Moon. He didn't want any in-house work, and didn't want significant roles for MSFC or JSC. Perhaps that's good or bad depending on your point of view - but he was not well liked outside the beltway, and the institutional push-back he produced was significant. And his insistence on using DOD management protocols and pushing aside 7120.5 rubbed many others the wrong way too.

What really marked Steidle's time however was how seemingly unaware he was of the relationship between NASA Centers and Congress, despite his own experience on the high visibility JSF program that got plenty of Congressional attention. After spending several months finding ways to remove the Centers from his plans he was surprised and angry to get phone calls from Senators and members of Congress complaining about his approach. He and his military experienced staff would complain - "if this were the military, these people would be fired." Well, NASA is not the military. Steidle also seemed to think that he could just decide that a RIF was needed at NASA Centers, and thought somehow that Congress would just go along with the idea because he had the right to manage his programs how he wanted. When he got Congressional push-back on that - again, surprise was his reaction. How could that be? And his relationship with both the Approps and Authorizing committees in Congress was poor, to say the least. And recall - Steidle was in charge of ESMD at a time when a Republican President was supported by a Republican Congress, and the Administrator was well plugged in. If not for an awkward omnibus budget resolution pushed by Tom Delay in late 2004 NASA may never have gotten funding approved for the VSE in its very first year because Steidle was so bad at managing that relationship.

General Gration is clearly a great man. I just hope he can bring a stronger sense of awareness of how this particular bureaucracy works to the job than the last similarly qualified military leader who was put in charge of something big at NASA.

Well. As I said in earlier postings I wish NASA could do away with DOD. On the other hand if he, as a person, is really close to the President... Can he manage NASA without DOD's interests (beyond the obvious, e.g. National Security, ITAR,...) in mind? If yes, then great, if not, bye bye Exploration.

I haven't yet made up my mind on the Gration pick. But, he's not just a "fighter jock." As the 3rd Wing Commander, he was in charge of a very large operation. Over 6000 military personnel, plus gov't civilians, contractors, etc. Add in a hundred or so aircraft and other resources worth billions of dollars, contract management, PLUS a complex operational mission. Obviously, this is not just some "fighter jock."

As I said, I'm not sure how good a pick he is, but give the man some credit!

Get a clue people. Military personnel in NASA jobs is common place. Sam Phillips, James Abrahamson, Rocco Petrone, Forrest McCartney, Ed O'Connor, Etc. Many were former military, Gene Kranz, Chester Lee, etc

The active duty and former military NASA personnel won't expect anything different than a civil leader would.

Also as for engineering and space experience, the best NASA administrator, Webb, had neither

Gration would have made a better CIA chief!

Gration's experience as a base commander suggests that he can certainly deal with "roads and commodes" issues. But can he manage the complex science and technology development organization that is NASA today? Can he even pick a good team to do that, with so little relevant experience? As with the CIA pick, I think this demonstrates that Obama's primary criterion for NASA administrator is loyalty to the President. The fact that Gration may end up being a bull in a china shop is apparently of little concern.

Is there honestly anyone that Obama would pick that Keith wouldn't be OK with? I'm not calling into question your integrity, Keith, just the fact that you were/are an Obama supporter and we should have full disclosure.

Editor's note: and I was also accused of being a Bush supporter a few years back even though I made overt statements to the contrary ....

Even so, I love this website :)

Well, as one who has worked both DoD and NASA programs here's hoping that he can bring some of program leadership and discipline from DoD that NASA has been lacking since the "James Webb" days.

Re: Space Exec, who said: "How soon until he has his eyes on some of the slots at DoD that will be opening up when Gates leaves (Secretary of the Air Force, for example)? Is he really going to be effective if his term is only one or two years? Is he going to have the respect of the NASA team given his apparent lack of interest in space science or exploration?"

If he does poorly, won't that harm his chances at being reassigned to a preferred position, later? If he excels at NASA, his odds at selecting his next assignment thereafter would seem enhanced.

I hope this means that aeronautics will finally get some more attention and funding, as well as infrastructure. I'm sure there's a need to fix up a couple wind tunnels, and Dryden sure could use a couple of shiny new twin-seat F-15s.

I can't quite put my finger on it, but this "appointment" (should it come to pass) really, really worries me. This guy has NO real space experience; sure he has run some big operations, but as someone noted, is he going to have sufficient knowledge to be able to pick a qualified staff to properly inform him? What kind of tough technical decisions is he going to oversee and how will he frame them? I can't get the well-intentioned, but incredibly mis-guided O'Keefe/Hubble decision out of my mind as an example.

His main qualification seems to be that he is "close" to Obama. I hope (really, really audaciously) that the NASA administrator position is not being handed out as political reward (no matter how much above board). Nearly all of NASA's missions across all divisions must, by the very nature of their development requirements, be lengthy projects that typically span administrations. As a result, keeping at least the partisan aspect of politics at arm's length is vital.

In reply to someone's comment about the cultures of the various Centers and HQ: you may be right about the attitudes at many of the centers, but I really, really doubt that the seasoned permanent staff at HQ is going to just roll over. There is potential for a real clash between the military way and the HQ way.

Stalin had his generals, too! The sycophants didn't accomplish anything. The others he shot. Which is Gration?

Some of the comments above are disturbing. I suspect that none of you know anything about the individual in question, yet you say things like "Stalin had generals too!" and "His main qualification seems to be that he is 'close' to Obama."



I know General Gration personally, and while I did not vote for President Obama, I support my commander in chief and I fully support Mr. Gration -- I know he will succeed at any leadership position he is given, including NASA. NASA will be very fortunate to have an American like the General as their leader. In fact, if my memory serves me, he worked at the Pentagon during the Reagan administration in a capacity involving NASA.



There are two kinds of Generals in our military, those you hope will retire and those you hope never do. You all should sleep well knowing that General Gration was a general of the latter. I was sad to learn General Gration was retiring from the USAF in 2006. It did my heart good knowing that there were leaders like him in my chain of command. But now it's good to know NASA will be under excellent leadership.