Obama: The next NASA administrator must stop the agency's foot-dragging

Obama said that the new director who will soon be appointed to NASA will have to "rethink what is the core mission of NASA and what are the next adventures that will be done under the NASA umbrella".

US President Barack Obama said on Wednesday that NASA is an agency tormented by a sense of drift, and that it needs a vision that fits the 21st century.
Obama said that the new director who will soon be appointed to NASA will have to "rethink what is the core mission of NASA and what are the next adventures that will be done under the NASA umbrella". In a meeting with reporters from the Orlando Centennial newspaper, and other reporters stationed in the big city near the Kennedy Space Center, Obama said that the White House will delay making major decisions regarding NASA until the new director takes office.

About a month ago, Obama informed Congress that the space shuttles would end their service in 2010, causing a huge loss of jobs at the Kennedy Space Center and the Space Coast that surrounds it. Obama answered only one question about NASA and did not answer whether he wishes to continue the Constellation program started by the Bush administration, with the goal of sending humans to the moon by 2020. The ARES 1 rocket, which is supposed to be one of the pillars of the program, is behind schedule and over budget, which led to speculation that he will miss its planned first launch date of 2015, making it even more difficult to retain skilled workers at the Kennedy Space Center.

The president also did not say anything about the fate of the International Space Station, whose construction cost exceeded 100 billion dollars. After the shuttle flights cease, NASA will depend on the Russian Soyuz spacecraft for access to the station. Obama clarified that the agency, which has been operating without a director since the retirement of Michael Griffin on the day of Obama's inauguration, on January 20, cannot continue to operate on its current course.

"Designing a mission statement for NASA suitable for the 21st century is going to be one of the biggest tasks I will assign to the new administrator," he said. "I don't want NASA to continue to shrink, and we don't think that this is good for the economy of the region."

Obama has not spoken much so far regarding NASA. The only hints were in the 2010 budget proposal which stated that the ferries would still continue to operate this year, but left open the possibility of launching one more if needed, provided it was done safely and affordably.

However, until the end of the program there are eight flights left after the Discovery mission which is supposed to be launched on Sunday night, and it will be very difficult to add another launch to the tight schedule before the 2010 deadline. The bonus mission that Obama was referring to will include uploading physics experiments to the space station.

NASA estimates that approximately 3,500 jobs will be lost at the Kennedy Space Center, while NASA's subcontractors who handle various components of the Hal station say that for them it is 10,000 workers, since each job at NASA creates 2.8 jobs at Kabyhala, thus another 10- 28 thousand jobs are in Sankeh.