DOES NASA’s probable new boss have the right stuff to put the agency back on track?
Former space shuttle pilot Charles Bolden was this week expected to be nominated as NASA administrator, with a resumé that combines advocacy for the agency’s scientific work with experience as an astronaut.
He will take over an organisation in trouble on two fronts. Future US human space exploration will rely on the Ares 1 rocket, which is meant to replace the shuttle, but Ares is dogged by technical problems. Meanwhile NASA’s science programme is suffering from cuts made two years ago to pay for Ares.
Advertisement
NASA is trying to do too much with a budget so tight that “little or nothing can be done well”, warns Eugene Levy, a space scientist at Rice University in Houston, Texas. Bolden seems to agree. Three years ago, he told a Senate subcommittee that working within NASA’s budget was “like trying to fit 15 pounds of stuff into a 5-pound sack”.
He called for more money to avoid proposed cuts in science spending. “Human exploration and science research are necessarily parallel endeavours,” he said. Bolden also served on a that in 2004 to the Hubble telescope (see right).
“Human exploration and science research are necessarily parallel endeavours”
Bolden is well connected with the aerospace establishment and has held various posts in industry. Yet these ties might be a hindrance when deciding whether to ditch Ares 1 in favour of privately developed launchers, suggests aerospace analyst Charles Lurio.
Bolden has also served briefly as assistant deputy administrator of NASA. “Charlie Bolden is a good guy – friendly, outgoing, well-liked and respected,” says John Logsdon of the National Air and Space Museum in Washington DC. “He will do well on Capitol Hill and with the public.”
