Has Obama’s NASA Strategy Fizzled at Launch?

Posted by Raymond on April 17, 2010

From Time:

Never mind the tropical sun. Visit Florida and dis the space program, and the reception you’ll get is going to be awfully cool. Nobody knew that better than President Obama on Thursday, when he toured the Kennedy Space Center and then spoke to a roomful of 200 VIPs about his plans for NASA after the shuttle program ends later this year. The President had to know that more than the agency’s future could be on the line. In Florida — the ultimate presidential swing state — his could be too. So how was the temperature in the room? Chilly — and not without reason.

Obama’s take on space has never been an easy thing to track. During the campaign, he targeted NASA as a likely area for budget-balancing cuts. Electoral arithmetic made that position untenable, and he quickly backtracked, pledging a robust future for the space agency, albeit one that would take it in a different direction from the one the previous Administration had pursued. That direction had involved mothballing the shuttles by this year and replacing them with what was known as the Constellation program, a collection of projects that involved building new spacecraft for both orbital flight and trips to the moon, as well as two new boosters — one for humans and a powerhouse version to lift heavy cargo.

Once elected, Obama began changing course fast. He started by sacking Michael Griffin, the fiercely focused if not always interpersonally winning NASA administrator who had pushed the program along to the point where metal was being cut on the new spacecraft and the booster Ares 1X was poised for launch. In Griffin’s place, Obama picked Charlie Bolden, a former astronaut and a bit of a cipher.

[Read more at Time]