The Bush Administration has picked a top official from the Office of Management and Budget to put out the financial fires at NASA.
Sean O鈥橩eefe served as Navy secretary and Defense Department controller when Vice President Dick Cheney was Secretary of Defense under President George W Bush鈥檚 father. However, he had little direct involvement with space issues until he began overseeing NASA鈥檚 budget when he was named deputy director of OMB earlier in 2001.
The nomination follows close on the Young commission report that sharply criticised NASA鈥檚 financial mismanagement of the International Space Station (ISS), calling its cost estimates 鈥渘ot credible.鈥�
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O鈥橩eefe offers the financial expertise that the panel said NASA badly needs, but lacks a technical background. That should not be a critical failing, says Dwayne Day, a space policy analyst at George Washington University: 鈥淎n administrator is not making technical decisions.鈥�
Yet a space scientist, who asked not to be named, worries that an administrator without a technical background could have trouble assessing programs competing for scarce resources.
鈥淐lean-up agent鈥�
Nonetheless, the space community is happy that Bush has made a selection after nearly 10 months of virtually ignoring NASA and outgoing administrator Dan Goldin.
鈥淲e鈥檙e glad to see a new administrator selected,鈥� says Pat Dasch, executive director of the National Space Society. She considers his appointment 鈥渁 signal from the administration that job number one is getting things in order.鈥�
Yet she also wonders about the long term. 鈥淭he real question is what is his vision for the future. Please tell us you鈥檙e not just a clean-up agent,鈥� she told New Scientist. Louis Friedman, executive director of the Planetary Society adds: 鈥淗e鈥檚 an unknown quantity.鈥�
Day argues that long-term vision is not as critical as dealing with NASA鈥檚 immediate management and budget problems,. He notes that James Webb, NASA administrator from 1961 to 1968 at the height of the space race, had earlier been budget director after World War II.
Space science
The nomination may not bode well for the troubled ISS. Last week O鈥橩eefe testified that a three-person station crew could do 鈥済ood science,鈥� contrary to findings of the Young panel.
Some space scientists would not mind cuts to the troubled manned spaceflight program, which they worry could devour NASA鈥檚 whole budget.
Yet those cuts could present NASA鈥檚 other ISS partners with the unpleasant choice of dramatically scaling back their plans for science on the station, or scaling up their budgets to pay for station modules that NASA had promised to build.