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Biden Space

Nelson Confirmation Hearing Date Set

By Keith Cowing
NASA Watch
April 5, 2021
Filed under

NASA Watch founder, Explorers Club Fellow, ex-NASA, Away Teams, Journalist, Space & Astrobiology, Lapsed climber.

7 responses to “Nelson Confirmation Hearing Date Set”

  1. TheBrett says:
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    It’ll probably be quick and quiet. Most of the Senators already know the guy, and he’s not proposing any radical shifts to NASA.

    • Jeff2Space says:
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      If this means he’ll support things like finishing development of the EUS for SLS, that would be a bad thing. As it is now, SLS only needs to launch Orion, with a crew, to a high lunar orbit to enable lunar landing missions. The current version of SLS with the interim upper stage can do that and NASA has already committed to flying astronauts on the current version of SLS.

      Funding EUS would be throwing good money after bad at Boeing for no good operational reason, IMHO.

  2. ed2291 says:
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    Though his record is poor on commercial space and needed NASA changes, I will certainly give him a chance. Bridenstine pleasantly surprised me and perhaps Nelson will too.

    • fcrary says:
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      We’ll see. My concern is that Mr. Bridenstine didn’t have much of an agenda when he took the job. (Unless you count “space is cool” as an agenda.) Mr. Nelson does have an agenda. It may have changed since he no longer needs to send jobs to Florida to get votes. But changing his position on things like SLS and commercial space would be an admission that his past position was wrong. On the one hand, politicians hate to do that if people are likely to notice. On the other hand, politicians are also pretty good at tap dancing around the issue and making sure few people notice.

      • Zed_WEASEL says:
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        AIUI the NASA Administrator carries out the agenda of the White House. Usually with the vice-president setting the agenda.

        Not so much worry about ex-Senator Nelson’s past agendas than his total lack of skills in managing a large far fling organization with serious turf issues among it’s components.

        Hope the new Deputy Administrator is as good as her resume.

        • fcrary says:
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          I think that misunderstands the situation. The agenda isn’t set by the White House working in a vacuum. Even President Kennedy’s decision to land a man on the Moon by the end of the decade wasn’t, exactly, his decision. He very definitely decided that NASA should do something impressive and something which would prove the US wasn’t behind the Soviets. But he didn’t have any real opinions on what that should be. Going to the Moon was based on advice from NASA (the Administrator and Deputy Administrator in particular), his Science Advisor and a few other people. Advice about what NASA should and could do to achieve that goal of “beating the Russians” at something impressive in space.

          I don’t think it’s realistic to think President Biden and Vice President Harris will come up with an agenda or a plan for NASA, and that Mr. Nelson will simply execute it. They have neither the time nor the interest to do so. They are far more likely to ask Mr. Nelson what NASA should be doing, to achieve some much broader science and budget policies, and they’ll probably take his advice. So Mr. Nelson’s views, past positions and whatever his current agenda is do matter.

          As far as the Deputy Administrator is concerned, unless I’ve missed something an appointment has not been made. There have been lots of speculations, but nothing official yet. So that’s something else we’ll have to wait and see about.

          • Zed_WEASEL says:
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            Ellen Stofan who was the head of the Biden NASA transition team is supposedly the front runner for Deputy Administrator.