New man for a new NASA mission

 



  Forget space shuttles, orbiting telescopes, and more robotic 
rovers on Mars.

  The next mission for NASA could be to steer soaring 
space-station costs back toward earth and restore credibility to 
what many call a dysfunctional space program.

  This weekend, the agency bade farewell to administrator Daniel 
Goldin, who resigned after 10 years in office - an agency 
record. President Bush has nominated Sean O'Keefe, deputy 
director of the White House's Office of Management and Budget, 
to replace him.

  In doing so, the White House is swapping the silver-visored 
helmet of a space cadet for the green eyeshade of a consummate 
bean counter.

  Where Mr. Goldin was a product of the US aerospace industry, Mr. 
O'Keefe has served as chief financial officer for the Pentagon, 
Navy secretary, and business-school professor.

  "O'Keefe is not known as a space enthusiast," says Keith Cowing, 
a former NASA scientist and editor of NASAWatch.com. "But he may 
be what the agency needs right now."

  Under Goldin, unmanned craft found evidence of water on the 
moon, inaugurated a long-term program to explore Mars, and 
opened the door to competition from the aerospace industry and 
universities to plan and execute missions.

  With a mandate to cut costs, Goldin implemented a "faster, 
better, cheaper" approach. In the spring of 1992, the Jet 
Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., "had five spacecraft 
in space and three or four under development," he said last 
month. "Today, we have 13 in space and 27 under development."

  But the agency's credibility has come under fire in manned 
spaceflight - especially the International Space Station, now 
completing its first year of full-time crews. The project's 
costs, like those of the space-shuttle program before it, have 
ballooned far beyond original estimates - from an initial $17.4 
billion to more than $30 billion.

  Early on, the Bush administration planned to scale back US 
involvement to a "core" station with a crew of three instead of 
six. Future US modules were red-penciled. And this month, a task 
force on the project's budget concluded that NASA's cost 
estimate for finishing the "core" station between 2002 and 2008 
"is not credible." It presented its own scenario for scaling 
back the station.

  If confirmed by the Senate, O'Keefe jumps with both feet into 
this fiscal morass. Fixing the problem may require not just 
accounting savvy, but also deft diplomacy.

  The task-force report stirred opposition by Canada and other 
partners. To cut the station's scope, they argue, violates 
international agreements and would essentially close off 
international use of the station.

  In assessing how the agency might fare under O'Keefe, some 
analysts say it could blossom, as it did in its Apollo-program 
heyday under another numbers guy, James Webb.

  Yet the agency's objectives have been growing less visionary 
since then, says John Pike, director of GlobalSecurity.org in 
Alexandria, Va. "Webb's mandate was to put a man on the moon. 
Richard Truly's ... was to help the agency recover from the 
Challenger disaster. Goldin's was to cut NASA's budget. Now 
O'Keefe's is to fix the space station."

  O'Keefe's appointment "is a clear message from the 
administration: NASA has to clean up its act before we can talk 
about the neat stuff we'd like to see NASA do," says Patricia 
Dasch of the National Space Society.


Copyright @ 2001 The Christian Science Monitor. All rights reserved.