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[Chicago Astronomer - Astro Joe]

Space Watch: New Openness At NASA?

Washington (UPI) Apr 28, 2005

Despite evidence NASA's bureaucracy is continuing to resist any meaningful reform, in recent months one NASA department seems willing to recognize the advice of outside experts, a circumstance not seen at the space agency perhaps for decades.
Whether Michael Griffin, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's new administrator, can or is even willing to extend such openness throughout the agency's entire management remains the $64,000 question.

More here: www.spacedaily.com/news/nasa-05i.html

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Here is a great story on the snooty, closed minded and exclusive actions of NASA, but it looks like that may change with the new Administrator at the helm there.

'Bout time I say!...

[Chicago Astronomer - Astro Joe]

Massive Reorganization Underway at NASA

A massive reorganization has begun at NASA. NASA Administrator Mike Griffin has begun the process by sending out formal notices to more than 50 senior NASA managers aprising them of pending changes in their job titles.

One person has already resigned. Associate Administrator for NASA's Exploration Systems Mission Directorate, Adm. Craig Steidle, tendered his resignation today effective 24 June 2005.

Changes will occur across all of the agency's activities - except human space flight - those changes come later after both the STS-114 and STS-121 missions have been completed.

Federal regulations require a 120 day waiting period after a new agency head takes office before involuntary reassignments can be implemented. Notices can be sent to affected employees no sooner than 60 days after that date.

The countdown clock for the 120 day moratorium on involuntary reassignments [regulations] of SES career appointees started on 14 April 2005.

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If any of these people were O'Keefe cronies, then I say good riddance. But let's see.

[Maddad]

What's that make the deadline? Mid August?

[Chicago Astronomer - Astro Joe]

Michael Griffin was on the outs sometime ago, pushed to an obscure corner of NASA for speaking his mind, and he didn't threaten to quit or cry about resigning. Let them go I say...whining as they clear out their desks. A nice hot August day in Florida is just as good as any.

Must be tough for them to eat crow by one who was "lower Level", and now top boss man. Too bad, so sad. I like when that happens!... ;D

Now, Michael....Get some go getters in NASA, some with a backbone with the gumption and determination of the glory days of early NASA...

[Chicago Astronomer - Astro Joe]

NASA Exec Resigns As Part Of Shakeup

More fallout from a long overdue house cleaning...

Washington (UPI) Jun 10, 2005
NASA exploration program chief Craig Steidle has resigned, the first of 50 senior managers asked to resign or accept new jobs.
Nature, quoting a memo posted on the Web site NASAwatch.com, said the resignation is part of a shakeup being orchestrated by new NASA Administrator Michael Griffin.

Bob Chesson, head of the European Space Agency's manned spaceflight operations in Noordwijk, Netherlands, said Griffin likely will replace managers with people who have hands-on experience.

"Griffin will bring back technical leadership as well as looking after the budget," Chesson told Nature. "He wants a similar set-up to the Apollo days."

Chesson said he talked with Steidle Wednesday and Steidle confirmed a number of other managers would be leaving.

A NASA spokesman could not confirm the number of people affected.

"These things will come out in ones and twos over the next few weeks," spokesman Robert Mirelson said.

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"Griffin will bring back technical leadership as well as looking after the budget," Chesson told Nature. "He wants a similar set-up to the Apollo days."

Well, all right! Let's get the rubbish out and get some real space men and women in those seats at NASA. The dark ages are over...Hooray!!!... ;D

[Chicago Astronomer - Astro Joe]

NASA fires culture change consultant

CAPE CANAVERAL - NASA has terminated the contract of a consulting company hired to help reform the agency's management culture after investigators blamed mismanagement for the 2003 loss of shuttle Columbia and seven astronauts.

NASA Administrator Mike Griffin and his advisers determined the agency no longer needed an outside company to analyze managers' behavior and retrain them to do a better job of seeking out, listening to and acting upon employees' concerns.

The training program is not complete. The consultants' extensive work with safety managers and shuttle inspectors at the Kennedy Space Center, for instance, ended about halfway through the process and will not be finished.

Krause stressed Thursday that NASA executives told him the termination is not performance-related. NASA officials indicated the same, saying the remaining work could be finished by agency employees at less cost. The five-year, $10-million contract was less than half complete, but NASA held the right to cancel it at any time without reason.

More here: www.floridatoday.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20050610/NEWS02/506100355/1007/NEWS01

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Go Mike, go!

Cut the fat, kick out the cronies and eliminate the parasites that are suckling on the teat of NASA.

Excellent move!... ;D

[Chicago Astronomer - Astro Joe]

NASA changes to run deep

OAKLAND, CALIF. - The reshuffling of NASA leadership that began Monday with the resignation of a key architect of America's space policy points to the emergence of a new regime more aggressive than its predecessors and perhaps unlike any other in the agency's history.

When Congress confirmed Michael Griffin as head of NASA a month ago, it was a clear statement. He was a scientist's scientist - a rocket engineer with five master's degrees and a PhD - intended to rouse the institution from a bureaucratic slumber that had been deepening since the last Apollo moon landing. Now, Mr. Griffin is making a statement of his own.

In cleaning house, Griffin is consolidating his position for a pivotal period in NASA history - a time that will see the first shuttle launch since the Columbia disaster and set the stage for the President Bush's plan to send astronauts to the moon and Mars.

This is the moment for action, some say, and Griffin is merely getting on with it - using his scientific clout and know-how to reshape NASA in a time of change. Yet concerns linger, from a perceived ruthlessness to worries that he will be consumed by the immensity of the undertaking.

So far, Griffin appears to be relishing the task, as he seeks to provide NASA with the leadership and focus that the agency has sought for more than 30 years.

"If it's business as usual, this is not something NASA can take on," says Louis Friedman, executive director of the Planetary Society in Pasadena, Calif. "There is a major redirection ... and that means [Griffin] was brought in to bring changes."

Those changes are inseparable from the president's desire to return an astronaut to the Moon by 2020 and then strike out for Mars. The plan calls for a reordering of NASA's priorities and budget to meet the goal, and that gives Griffin a different role from administrators of the past.

During the Clinton years, Daniel Goldin was famous for trying to do more with less, applying the motto "faster, better, cheaper" to an organization straining against its budgets. Under Bush, Sean O'Keefe acted largely as an accountant, trying to get NASA's house in order. Now, Griffin's job is to understand a vision of enormous complexity - and to make it happen.

More here: news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/csm/20050615/ts_csm/anasa_1

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Run silent.....run deep.

[Chicago Astronomer - Astro Joe]

An Agency in Transition: In First 3 Months New Administrator Starts Major Overhaul at NASA

If the shuttle Discovery launches on time July 13 it will mark the 90th day of Mike Griffin’s tenure as NASA administrator, a fitting culmination for three months of change so profound and so rapid that people in government and industry are still struggling to keep up.

Nearly three months into his tenure the 55-year-old aerospace veteran has wasted no time making his mark on the U.S. space agency, as he and his team addressed a wide range of vexing problems. He set a firm 2010 deadline for retiring the space shuttle and accelerated the effort to field its replacement. He also set in motion an accelerated effort to come up with an overall plan for turning U.S. President George W. Bush’s call to return to the Moon by 2020 into a reality.

Many of the hardest decisions lie ahead, but as the 90-day point approaches, NASA’s lunar exploration plans—including the type of Crew Exploration Vehicle, the launchers and other hardware it will need to get back to the Moon and stay—are coming into focus. Likewise, Griffin has made clear where the U.S. space agency is headed on a number of issues that have dogged NASA for the past year or more, from repair of the Hubble Space Telescope to how the international space station fits into NASA’s space exploration plans.

The return to flight of the Space Shuttle Discovery—more than two and a half years after the shuttle Columbia was destroyed during re-entry—is considered by the White House and Griffin to be the critical first step on a journey that is intended to lead the U.S. human spaceflight program out of the low Earth-orbit rut it has been stuck in since the Apollo program ended 30 years ago this month.

Griffin’s overriding goal, according to those who know him well, is to ensure that the United States is well on its way back to the Moon—this time to stay—by the end of his tenure at NASA.

Griffin has said he does not intend to stay on as NASA administrator past the end of Bush’s second four-year term. So when Griffin was sworn in April 14, both his mission and timetable were clear: 45 months to get NASA moving in the right direction and with enough momentum that there will be no turning back.

"Mike Griffin knows that of all the resources available to public-sector leaders, the one you can never recover is time," said Jim Muncy, a former congressional aide and president of PoliSpace, an Alexandria, Va.-consulting company. "If you ask any of his key people, they know how many months they have left to transform that agency."

More here: www.space.com/spacenews/businessmonday_050711.html

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I like Griffin...