A report on yesterday’s swearing-in ceremony from Marcia Smith. And another from Eric Berger. He seems to be off to a good start. I think he’ll be one of the best administrators NASA has had. He’ll certainly be refreshing after Charlie “Muslim Outreach” Bolden (Note: That was never actually a thing, but his idiotic interview with Al Jazeera made it hard to defend otherwise good space policy from the Obama administration).
[Update a while later]
Thoughts from Newt Gingrich, including some mild SLS bashing.
Rand, I see this post, and note no comments as I write this. There was definitely a time when this was big news. It just isn’t to me anymore. Of course most of that is because I left the industry for more lucrative work doing things that actually progress within 5 years. The other is because NASA, since I left it, hasn’t made any meaningful progress of its own in that time. And really, other than shutting down the Shuttle Program, it hasn’t made any meaningful progress in over a decade (outside perhaps unmanned space exploration, which has done some extraordinary things).
I wish Bridenstine well, but frankly NASA has its own deep set bureaucracy. He’ll have some influence, but I doubt it will be the revolution that NASA needs. Obama’s willingness to buck an opposition Congress created a better chance to get SLS defunded. I don’t see Trump or Bridenstine being successful with defunding a project that sends billions to red states. And that’s fine with the Democrat voters that run most of NASA’s centers.
Having an administrator is better than not having one, and he’s about as good a pick as we could hope for, but the future of human spaceflight lies with the private sector, not NASA.