Bolden Throws Bridenstine Some Shade
Former NASA Administrator Weighs in on New Space Agency Head, EOS
“Eos: Why wouldn’t Jim Bridenstine have been your first choice?
Bolden: He would not have been my first choice because he’s a politician. And he is the first person, to my knowledge, ever selected from political office to become the NASA administrator. I don’t think it’s healthy for the agency to have someone who’s a partisan in that position. The position calls for somebody who can carry out the president’s agenda to the best of his ability but do it in a nonpartisan way and be able to work across the aisle. And I think his history is such that he may find some difficulty in working across the aisle.”
Keith’s note: It is amusing to hear Bolden say this. He was not President Obama’s first choice to head NASA. He got the job in great part due to overt political lobbying by Sen. Nelson. The bulk of Bolden’s job was politics – internal and external. Indeed, his position was “political” in that President Obama nominated him to enact his Administration’s policies. If Bolden had gained some political experience prior to heading NASA he might have made more headway on some of the ongoing political issues that he had with the White House and Congress. Just sayin’, Charlie.
I think one of Mr. Bolden’s comments it telling. When asked about his advice for the new Administrator, he said, “Don’t try to transform it, because it’s been around a long time. It may need some tweaks, but it does not need to be remade. That was the only thing I could tell him.”
In other words, simply because an organization has existed for a long time, it doesn’t need to change or adapt. If he’d said, “Don’t try to change it because people will resist change, and you won’t accomplish anything,” I might agree. But “it’s been around a long time” and therefore “does not need to be remade”? I don’t believe it; it seems to defy the whole concept of evolution and adaptation to changing times.
Charlie did not like to rock the boat.
Yes. But sometimes the boat needs to be rocked. Maintaining the status quo isn’t an inherently good thing to do.
Yes! But often it takes a major shock to rock the system. Admiral Halsey was consider a nuisance until Pearl Harbor, then he saved the Navy with his “crazy ideas” on how carriers would control the seas, not battleships.
NASA will have a similar moment when SpaceX, Bigelow and Blue Origin get rolling. The FH roadster was just the opening gambit…
General Officers are appointed by the President and confirmed by the Senate, and the choices can be highly political, so I guess Bolden shouldn’t have been NASA Admin. either /s
Bolden was a go along to get along politician. On the other hand, James Webb was arguably NASA’s best Administrator, and he was an attorney, a businessman, and a career government official.
Webb was an interesting Administrator to be sure. He served a few months longer than 7 years, arriving at NASA from a few years at Kerr-McGee Oil, and before that, losing a turf battle at State.
I’ve not learned exactly which qualities motivated President Kennedy to choose him to run NASA, or how he was short-listed. He was well-connected in DC to be sure.
The country — and indeed the world — is heavily populated with very capable people, folks quite able to perform Herculean tasks but who pass their lives untried and untested because the breezes of history blow in a different direction. Differentiating that population in many ways defines the leader, like Mr. Kennedy.
When the winds caught Mr. Webb he was able to make his mark to the benefit of NASA, and America.
NASA needs to study climate change and its leaders need to lead in that direction.
As long as they study it on Mars, in person, I agree!
The worry is for us here and now on earth.
NOAA will have some extra funding soon…and it’s their job.
NASA studying climate on “Planets” collectively is useful for Earth climate studies and is called Planetary Science.
In some ways, I wish they would. Planetary science within NASA is a bit too focused on discoveries for my tastes. The Voyager movie of Jupiter, taken on approach, was one frame per planetary rotation for three weeks. In terms of measuring winds, atmospheric circulation and storms, that’s the sort of continuous coverage that’s extremely valuable. But once you’ve done it, doing it again isn’t new and impressive. The closest thing we’ve gotten since Voyager is the “Voyager 3” project by a bunch of amateur astronomers, who more-or-less recreated the Voyager 1 approach movie from the ground.
Hard not to like Charlie as a person but comes up short as aggressive effective leader. One example, under real leadership , went from minimal infrastructure, no serious launch vehicle, no capsule, no LEL, and little understanding of man in space, to a moon landing in nine years. Under Obama and Charlie, we’ve spent over 10 years and billions on a launch vehicle that won’t carry men until the 20’s. Let’s hope new Administrator won’t see key function as Ribbon Cutter.
From what I have seen the most successful people (read that as those promoted into top positions) at NASA, at least in recent years, have been politicians first. If you take a look at many of those in senior management positions I doubt you can identify any with particularly outstanding technical accomplishments. In fact in this era of astronauts in many leadership positions it appears those with technical accomplishments are shunned. I do not count being an astronaut as having accomplished anything technically. And if you look at how the human space flight program is situated and proceeding today, I think you see the results. We have only 1 or 2 US astronauts on ISS, can only get there on Soviet/Russian spacecraft, and NASA’s own crewed spaceship is still half a decade or more from flight, and that is after a decade and a half of work on a “safe, simple, soon” solution. Bolden is probably prime example number 1 of someone who should never have been placed into a leadership position, and once there, did a fairly lousy job. Although he had a lot of help from his predecessor, Bolden had the authority and responsibility to prevent the US space program getting into the situation in which it now finds itself, and he did absolutely nothing.
That is true of any organization as it ages and is part of bureaucratics taking it over and driving the productive individuals into niche areas or out of the organization. In a private organization this is usually solved by s reorganization due to falling market share to avoid bankruptcy. There is no such check and balance in government agencies outside the military.
Today the NASA Administrator is just that, an administrator. His main job is to get money from Congress. Probably Bridenstine can do that as well as anyone. Whether any of us believes in climate change is unimportant. The important thing is to keep the observation program going so that we will have the facts.
While to some extent you are correct, as far as I am concerned at least in human space flight NASA is wasting a lot of my money, and until there are some shake ups and major changes of direction they are undeserving of any more money. For what the program has been accomplishing for many years, they are getting too much money already.
I wonder if we are using a single word to actually describe (at least) two different things.
The term ‘politics’ or ‘politician’ brings up all sorts of unsavory activities, mostly involved with either money, or with sacrificing the work at hand in order to advance an often unrelated agenda. It’s a little smarmy, not inherently, but that’s how it is practiced.
The sort of behaviors that scientists, for instance, engaged in funding a new earthbound telescope as an example seems like a different thing, requiring a collection of skills entirely different.
Our New Administrator appears to be of the first type, though I will maintain an open mind.
I know what you’re saying, but I think I’d say it differently. I’d say both of the things you describe are “politics”, but the rules of the debate and the personal interests of the people involved are different.
The scientific politics, about what sort of telescope to build in your example, are heavier on dialectics than rhetoric. That might be just professional training. Scientists are used to using logic to argue a point; lawyers are used to convincing people at a more emotional or personal level. But I also see less of parliamentary debating tricks in scientific politics. That’s not necessarily a reflection on the scientists ethics; they may just not be smart in the right way to be devious.
There also aren’t as many covert motives as in the politics of legislatures and governments. The more overt motives may be because the people involved have a personal interest in the results. I don’t need to hide the fact that I’d rather see the money go to an orbital UV telescope than a ground based one with limited capabilities to observe planetary aurora. People wouldn’t think less of me if they found out. In the case of professional politicians, the primary goal is to get (re)elected. You can’t get elected by standing up and telling the voters, “I’m just in it to be elected and be a big, important person.” And someone who isn’t interested in being elected isn’t likely to be a professional politician.
But don’t get me wrong. It isn’t as if there aren’t nasty, devious tricks and covert motives in the politics scientists get involved in, and not all elected officials are unscrupulous egotists. I’m not trying to imply either of those things. But there are, at least on average and in my opinion, some noticeable differences in style and motives.
When the rubber starts to actually meet the road with regards to the SLS survival debate in the next 4 to 6 years, some of those Bridenstine critics might not mind so much having someone with some political savy sitting in that chair.
At some point someone is going to take a sword with SLS emblazoned on it (at least I think that’s where you are going with your comment?).
I’m saying that bad things happen to tight quality control systems when they are forced to function in an environment of constricting timelines and midnight design and mission configuration changes.
It’s just a good thing that the Orion escape tower doesn’t need to change and that there will be several crew-rated commercial space flight systems in operation by then that might be able to mount a rescue of needed.
A skilled politician might be able to keep NASA from going down with the ship.
Charlie is a former test pilot and astronaut. A national hero who commanded respect from both sides of the aisle. He is exactly right. What is going to happen when the Democrats win back Congress? Bridenstine’s ONLY qualification is his political affiliation, and without Robert there, all I can say is “good luck”!