Reader's Favorites
Media Casualties Mount

Administration Split On Europe Invasion

Administration In Crisis Over Burgeoning Quagmire

Congress Concerned About Diversion From War On Japan

Pot, Kettle On Line Two...

Allies Seize Paris

The Natural

Gore Book Sales Tank, Supporters Claim Unfair Tactics

Satan Files Lack Of Defamation Suit

Why This Blog Bores People With Space Stuff

A New Beginning

My Hit Parade
Instapundit (Glenn Reynolds)
Tim Blair
James Lileks Bleats
Virginia Postrel
Kausfiles
Winds Of Change (Joe Katzman)
Little Green Footballs (Charles Johnson)
Samizdata
Eject Eject Eject (Bill Whittle)

Space
Alan Boyle (MSNBC)
Space Politics (Jeff Foust)
Space Transport News (Clark Lindsey)
NASA Watch
NASA Space Flight
Hobby Space
A Voyage To Arcturus (Jay Manifold)
Dispatches From The Final Frontier (Michael Belfiore)
Personal Spaceflight (Jeff Foust)
Mars Blog
The Flame Trench (Florida Today)
Space Cynic
Rocket Forge (Michael Mealing)
COTS Watch (Michael Mealing)
Curmudgeon's Corner (Mark Whittington)
Selenian Boondocks
Tales of the Heliosphere
Out Of The Cradle
Space For Commerce (Brian Dunbar)
True Anomaly
Kevin Parkin
The Speculist (Phil Bowermaster)
Spacecraft (Chris Hall)
Space Pragmatism (Dan Schrimpsher)
Eternal Golden Braid (Fred Kiesche)
Carried Away (Dan Schmelzer)
Laughing Wolf (C. Blake Powers)
Chair Force Engineer (Air Force Procurement)
Spacearium
Saturn Follies
JesusPhreaks (Scott Bell)

Biting Commentary about Infinity, and Beyond!

« A Smaller, Better Future | Main | Cycle Of Moral Equivalence »

Heads Should Roll

Jim Oberg says that NASA needs to be overhauled from the top.

Posted by Rand Simberg at August 21, 2003 08:12 AM

Comments

Hmm. Change at the top does seem quite necessary. Readdy's memo was an embarassment to the agency. Was he drunk, stoned -- or worse, completely exhausted -- when he wrote that stupid thing?

More than that, though, is the need for changing the very "top down" nature of the culture. That factor stops the movement of needed information in its tracks. It keeps people from considering things that bosses don't want to think about. It drives out independent people and promotes agreeable, but wrong "yes" men and women.

Posted by Chuck Divine at August 21, 2003 09:37 AM

One word: Zubrin.

Posted by Phil Bowermaster at August 21, 2003 11:57 AM

Zubrin would be a disaster. He's a brilliant visionary, but his people and management skills would make Dan Goldin look like Dale Carnegie, and I don't think we need a Mars monomaniac in charge of an agency with a very broad charter.

Posted by Rand Simberg at August 21, 2003 12:08 PM

I propose John Pike, which would lead to quickest path to elimination of the agency. Which would be a bit sad, as its not that bad when talking about achivements in pure research. But if i had to choose between this and some reform of the bueraucracy to be more effective buearaucracy while retaining its current status quo and false premises, i think id go for the former.

Posted by at August 21, 2003 12:32 PM

The breadth of the charter is one of NASA's biggest problems. Focus is a very good thing, especially when resources are scarce. Besides, wasn't NASA a smidge "monomaniacal" about a lunar landing back in the sixties?

Anyhow, as intent as Zubrin is on getting us to Mars, I don't think he views landing there as an end unto itself. He sees it as the ideal place to begin the settlement of the planets and eventually the exploration of interstellar space. That's where the whole "brilliant visionary" thing comes into play, which is also a Very Good Thing®.

As for his people skills, I can't address that having only spoken to him a couple of times. (Gratuitous Plug: My interview with him will run on the Speculist next week.) I do know from years in the corporate world that sometimes the most effective leaders have a dismal lack of what we ordinarily think of as good peoople or management skills. Not that I enjoy working for anyone like that, or wish it on anyone else.

I'm just sayin'.

Posted by Phil Bowermaster at August 21, 2003 12:52 PM

NASA managed to accomplish a lot more in the 1960s than putting men on the Moon, but that overshadowed everything else in the media.

And I don't share Bob's monomania, and don't agree that a federal push for Mars will be a useful thing to do at this time, for the same reasons that Apollo set us back in many ways. I prefer Elon Musk's approach, particularly since he's doing it with his own money.

Posted by Rand Simberg at August 21, 2003 01:02 PM

Going to Mars need not be a dead end. As someone recently wrote:

I can't make myself agree with those who say that going to the moon was not a good idea. Going to the moon was a great idea. It just should have been followed immediately by the next great idea,and then the next one, and then the next one. Our BHAG didn't fail us; it's just the next BHAG failed to materialize. Maybe Neil Armstrong should have said, "That was one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind. And now,on to Mars."

Elon Musk wants to go to Mars on the cheap, which I'm all for. But his goal(as I understand it) is to generate new interest in Mars to create a national initiative to get us there:

"I think to some degree, we got lost along the way with the space program," he said. "There was this big push by President Kennedy. Back in the early 1960s, when he said our goal was to land a man on the moon in the decade, no one really knew how or if that could be accomplished. But the goal was there, so it happened.
"Then everything went sideways," he said. "But now, anyone who says we should go to Mars still says one of the major obstacles is cost. If we can show them a lower-cost option, then I would hope a President can come out and give putting human civilization on Mars as a goal, like Kennedy did with the moon."

Not so different from Zubrin. Anyhow while we're throwing names around: how about Elon Musk as the next head of NASA?

Posted by Phil Bowermaster at August 21, 2003 02:10 PM

Regardless of my opinion of either Elon or Bob as the next NASA administrator, I see no point in promoting people who haven't a chance in hell, politically. Anyway, the goal should be to make it so cheap that one doesn't need a national consensus to do it--the people who want to do it will do it, and not make the rest of us pay for it. I used to have as my signature in Usenet "It's not NASA's job to land a man on Mars. It's NASA's job to make it possible for the National Geographic Society to land a man on Mars."

Mars as a government program will be as politically unsustainable as Apollo was.

Posted by Rand Simberg at August 21, 2003 02:21 PM

If the post of NASA Administrator (BTW, possibly the most insipid, spineless, title in ALL of the Federal Bureaucracy) has become so politicised that making a cotroversial nomination is inconceivable, even if only to drive public debate about the purpose and direction of the agency, then let me be the first to suggest that the position is NOT the one from which ANYBODY can lead, direct, inspire, cheerlead, or persuade the American people and the world toward any goal. By extension of that analysis, the organization itself cannot then effectively shape the future of the activities it was established (actually re-chartered) to 'administer' and should be dismantled forthwith.

Posted by Mike Sargent at August 21, 2003 03:12 PM

Well, I figure it's okay for me to promote people who wouldn't be considered politically viable. (Who cares what I say?) I'm probably as interested in the type as I am the individual.

"It's NASA's job to make it possible for the National Geographic Society to land a man on Mars."

Okay. I might be able to buy into that. But WHEN? And it's still going to take some pretty bold leadership to get us to that point, don't you think?

Posted by Phil Bowermaster at August 21, 2003 03:21 PM

When? I don't know, but I suspect faster than NASA will be able to land a man on Mars, given the way NASA does things. It will indeed take bold leadership, but it will have to come, ultimately, from the White House, because it really isn't a NASA problem--it's one of federal space policy in general.

Posted by Rand Simberg at August 21, 2003 03:41 PM

Rand,
POTUS is a pretty busy guy. If nothing else, isn't his NASA Administrator supposed to be the Administration's point man (er, person) on matters aerospatial? Besides, a truely charismatic LEADER in the post might provide positive political fallout, or at least a handy scapegoat.

Posted by Mike Sargent at August 21, 2003 04:58 PM

I'm not saying that the President has to micromanage it, just that he has to set a direction, because it's much larger than NASA. The Departments of Commerce, Energy, Transportation and the DoD have to be brought on board with a coherent space policy, which we don't have right now. We don't even know, as a nation, what we're trying to accomplish in space. Until we do, little progress will be made.

Posted by Rand Simberg at August 21, 2003 05:25 PM

>>The Departments of Commerce, Energy, Transportation and the DoD have to be brought on board with a coherent space policy

A good experiment: go ask DoE about prospects of building a pilot solar power sat. Energy is their line of business, after all.

Quote from http://www.ssi.org/energy.html
" In the bureaucratic format, satellite power has no natural home and no built-in constituency. NASA, now a timid, fearful NASA made up of aging pre-retirees rather than the young tigers who made Apollo work in just eight years, would be frightened out of its skin by a tough, make-it-work assignment with a tight budget and a tighter time scale. And NASA's charter doesn't cover energy. The DOE? Its charter doesn't include space. The NSF? Satellite power isn't science, it's engineering."

Posted by at August 22, 2003 01:24 AM

It's odd hearing about Elon Musk since my wife used to work for him at Zip2. He's an engineer put has not really proven himself as a manager yet. Lets give him a chance to prove himself before we put him in charge of all of the people at NASA.

I wouldn't mind Musk and Zubrin in charge of a Mars team within NASA. I think they'd focus on getting people there at a reasonable cost in a way that allowed follow up missions.

Posted by ruprecht at August 22, 2003 09:23 AM

That sort of 'groupthink' is taught by the military and is no surprise that it carries over into the NASA organization that contains a number of alumni of our armed services and itself works so closely with military projects. I think it would be a good idea to just pull the white sheet called civilian space agency off and let NASA focus on extending our military involvement in space.

Posted by Hefty at August 22, 2003 09:48 AM

Great work!
My homepage | Please visit

Posted by Victor at May 10, 2006 06:46 AM


Post a comment

Name:


Email Address:


URL:


Comments:


Remember info?