THE resignation of NASA chief Dan Goldin will leave his as yet unnamed
successor with a budgetary mess dominated by huge cost overruns on the
International Space Station.
Goldin resigned on 17 October after serving as NASA Administrator for more
than nine years, a record period. He earned praise for revitalising a space
agency demoralised by a series of failures including the Challenger explosion
and the flawed mirror in the Hubble Space Telescope. Yet the tighter budgets
that flowed from his 鈥渇aster, better, cheaper鈥� philosophy for building more
spacecraft at lower cost have created growing frustration.
In 1997, the first two planetary missions born of Goldin鈥檚 new philosophy,
the Mars Pathfinder Lander and the Mars Global Surveyor Orbiter, were
spectacular successes. But two years later, when two other Mars missions
crashed, an independent review panel concluded that Goldin had squeezed budgets
too far.
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Today鈥檚 problems revolve around the International Space Station, now an
estimated $5 billion over budget. Early this year, NASA admitted it could
not finish the station within the Congressional budget. It proposed cuts that
would force the station to operate with a crew of only three, who would have
little time to do any science.
The Bush administration has refused to bail out NASA. The lack of support
could make it hard for them to find a replacement. An independent report on
NASA鈥檚 budgetary crisis is due in November and is expected to be highly critical
of NASA. Goldin will leave soon afterwards.