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by
Keith Cowing
Trump Landing Team will soon go on holiday hiatus but there's a disturbance in the Force over the whole @NASA Administrator Apprentice thing pic.twitter.com/96i2GPsJgW
— NASA Watch (@NASAWatch) December 16, 2016
Biologist, Explorers Club Fellow, ex-NASA Space Biologist and Payload integrator, Editor of NASAWatch.com and Astrobiology.com, Lapsed climber, Explorer, Synaesthete, Former Challenger Center board member 🖖🏻
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Is there a twitter storm in store for NASA watch?
Director Krennic – I mean Griffin… and the SLS Death Troopers?
I sure hope that Trump is smarter than that.
You are talking about a twitter addict here.
Yep…he’s a character.
Looking at those selected by Trump for EPA, DOE, and other agencies (in addition to wanting names of those involved with climate research) leaves me not optimistic about the next NASA administrator. A discussion last week on the PBS News hour where directors/administrators appointed by the president will have to deal with agency’s employees that may not agree with directives.
Basically the President Elect has appointed people that he has watched on TV, or those he’s seen interviewed on TV.
You can’t help but wonder the effect if the President-Elect nominates a penny-pincher who is also sceptical about everything NASA does to the hot seat. It might focus a few minds.
We tried that. He was called Dan Goldin. He focused minds, all right but, in my experience left nothing but a trail of confusion and dysfunction at NASA as his legacy.
According to the then inhabitants of the National Space Council, Goldin was inflicted on NASA as a “change agent” as payback for Dick Truly’s traitorious refusal to follow George H W Bush’s lead on the SEI.
The thing is–it is extraordinarily difficult under any circumstances to change the corporate culture of a mature organization while keeping that organization even somewhat functional. Turns out, simply pinching every penny in sight and cutting off any manager who disagrees with the boss at the knees doesn’t actually accomplish that, even if it does satisfy the revenge lust (at least temporarily).
Having lived through the Goldin years, I know how that movie ends. That’s why I see the upcoming Trump years as–essentially–the Dan Goldin NASA experience on steroids raised to the national level.