From Volume 3, Issue Number 52 of EIR Online, Published Dec. 28, 2004

Where Will O'Keefe Resignation Leave NASA?
by Marsha Freeman

Dec. 20 (EIRNS)—When NASA Administrator Sean O'Keefe announced on Dec. 13 that after three years he would be leaving the space agency, White House spokesman Scott McClellan said this was "not unexpected." It certainly caught everyone else by surprise.

At this moment in the space program's history, important decisions that will have repercussions for years to come, must be made. While O'Keefe has not been one to avoid making tough decisions, perhaps he saw the handwriting on the wall.

Every few months, NASA has had to revise its schedule for returning the Space Shuttle to flight, following the Feb. 1, 2003 Columbia accident. As the schedule has stretched out, the estimates of what return-to-flight will cost have increased. Although Administrator O'Keefe and recent "NASA champion" Rep. Tom DeLay (R-Texas) crow about the NASA budget increases they were able to secure this year, ostensibly for the President's space exploration vision, anyone with a pencil can figure out that most, if not all, of that increase will be needed to get the Shuttle flying again.

O'Keefe brought on some of this crunch himself, insisting after the accident that NASA would "set the bar higher," piling on more requirements for flying than the Columbia Accident Investigation Board had recommended.

Veteran six-flight astronaut John Young commented on Dec. 16 to Associated Press: "I really believe we should be operating it, flying it, right now, because there's just not a lot we can do to make it any better." Young, who commanded the first Columbia mission in 1981, said he thought space flight was worth the risk.

While the Shuttle program runs further behind, and the exploration vision funding is disappearing, O'Keefe managed to antagonize an important constituency for space exploration—scientists.

His decision, just two days after the President's January 2004 vision announcement, to cancel a Shuttle mission to service the Hubble Space Telescope, claiming that it involved too high a risk, led to a storm of protest among scientists and their Congressmen.

Five days before O'Keefe tendered his resignation, the National Research Council of the National Acacedmy of Sciences released a scathing evaluation of the Administrator's program to service the Hubble robotically.

The panel, which had been convened at the request of O'Keefe, called for NASA to send an astronaut crew on the Space Shuttle to do the tricky and difficult repairs.

In its report, the Academy panel recommended that a servicing mission be sent "as early as possible after the Space Shuttle is deemed safe to fly again." Panel members determined that the robotic mission NASA is now developing is "too technologically risky," and will not be developed in time, before Hubble faces total failure. By NASA's own estimates, and those of an independent study by the Aerospace Corporation, the robotic mission will also cost more than a Shuttle mission.

As far as risk is concerned, four of the Academy panel members are former astronauts, and after O'Keefe's decision last January to cancel the Shuttle repair mission, a number of astronauts volunteered to go to fix Hubble.

In President Bush's first term, the appointment of a NASA Administrator was considered so unimportant, it took more than a year after the election to fill the job.

O'Keefe has said that he is leaving NASA to get out of Washington, and make enough money to send his three children to college. He said he will delay starting his new job as Chancellor of Louisiana State University until the President chooses a replacement—by February, he hopes.

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