POLL: Best NASA Administrator in the Last 30 Years

[QuantumG]

Funny story - a guy at NASA TV/Select once told me there was a HQ bathroom brawl between a Goldin fan and a O'Keefe fan. At least they were passionate.

The wrestling league we need!

[Coastal Ron]

I'm curious why there are so many votes for Jim Bridenstine, when he was only NASA Administrator for about 1,000 days, or 2 years and 9 months.

Despite not having a management background of any significance, and remembering that he was a climate change denier when he was in public office, what accomplishments did he do in less than 3 years that merit such praise?

Because if you are looking for someone that had a firm hand on NASA internally, and could woo Congress to back his plans, then Michael Griffin should be your vote, even though he made (in my opinion) horrible choices.

[sdsds]

I'm curious why there are so many votes for Jim Bridenstine [...]

Maybe because he was a big SpaceX fan. Birds of a feather....

[JayWee]

I'm curious why there are so many votes for Jim Bridenstine, when he was only NASA Administrator for about 1,000 days, or 2 years and 9 months.

Despite not having a management background of any significance, and remembering that he was a climate change denier when he was in public office, what accomplishments did he do in less than 3 years that merit such praise?
Because if you are looking for someone that had a firm hand on NASA internally, and could woo Congress to back his plans, then Michael Griffin should be your vote, even though he made (in my opinion) horrible choices.

I was optimistic on Bridestine when he was picked, having seen this video in 2017:


I would consider the Artemis Accords to be the most impactful result of his tenure.

[Eric Hedman]

I'm curious why there are so many votes for Jim Bridenstine, when he was only NASA Administrator for about 1,000 days, or 2 years and 9 months.

Despite not having a management background of any significance, and remembering that he was a climate change denier when he was in public office, what accomplishments did he do in less than 3 years that merit such praise?

Because if you are looking for someone that had a firm hand on NASA internally, and could woo Congress to back his plans, then Michael Griffin should be your vote, even though he made (in my opinion) horrible choices.

If you look at the list starting with Daniel Goldin.  He was still far enough back that many people, especially younger ones, don't remember his tenure.  He instituted some badly needed reforms but he also didn't fix the fiscal controls the agency desperately needed.  He isn't going to get many votes for these reasons.

Sean  O'Keefe was brought in to fix the fiscal mess, which he did.  He didn't screw up anything else.  Fixing accounting and not screwing up is not going to make you memorable regardless of how well he managed the agency.  I thought he did a fine job given his mission.

Michael Griffin, regardless of how well he managed the agency, he is not going to be forgiven for the poor decisions he sold to Congress that saddled NASA with Orion/SLS albatrosses that have wasted years of opportunity.  Not many people would rate him highly because of this.

I met Charlie Bolden in 2010.  I liked him and the job he did.  I think he was very limited in what he was allowed to do in advancing a mission for NASA.  That is not going to get him many votes.

Robert M. Lightfoot Jr.'s tenure was to short to have the impact needed to get votes.  No vision was going to be set.

'Jim Bridenstine is winning this poll because of the Artemis program and his ability to sell it on both sides of the aisle.  Nancy Pelosi was even singing his praise for promising to put the first woman and person of color on the Moon which helped get support in Congress.   Climate change beliefs are irrelevant because nothing changed significantly in the agency on Earth science work during his tenure.  He also made people feel like we're finally going somewhere again after years of stagnation in human spaceflight.  He will be remembered as the administrator when Artemis got started as an official goal to get back to the Moon.

Bill Nelson is just staying the course.  It may be exactly what is needed and the best possible right now.  But it doesn't make him all that memorable.  This is a popularity contest as viewed by voters who are mostly outside the agency.

I think the results are very predictable so far for these reasons.  Bridenstine's tenure isn't that long, but it is memorable.

[Eric Hedman]

All fake dates do is reduce the trust anyone has in anything NASA does. And don't you think that is a bad thing?

I have had plenty of experience developing software.

I would agree that software is far less able to be forecasted than hardware. Service contracts have similar challenges. However...

I think all target dates are fake by your definition for any development that pushes the envelope on what has been done in the past.  They are just educated guesses when you do something new.  And if the project has any level of complexity, the specifications change along the way.  I don't care what study you have done, you don't know for sure until you do these projects.

Most of my background is doing hardware production management, including being a factory scheduling manager for consumer products. There are entire industries that rely on engineering meeting deadlines in order to meet manufacturing and marketing deadlines. Including entirely new products.

And yeah, NASA is always building new hardware, and projects like the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) are pushing the limits of the available technology. But the JWST is also a poster child for a number of issues, including scope creep, congressional acceptance of budget and schedule slippage, and the lack of a firm manager to focus the program. And ultimately that comes down to the NASA Administrator, regardless who started the program.

Remember the SR-71? It was an evolution of the A-12, which Lockheed received a contract to build in late 1959, and they did their first test flight in April 1962 - less than 3 years later. The A-12 was truly revolutionary, and still is to some degree, and it shows what a well led team can do.

SpaceX certainly embodies a lot of the right characteristics for efficient product development, but there are plenty of companies that can also do that. But unfortunately I wouldn't put Boeing in that group, and they publicly stated they would not bid on Firm Fixed Price contracts anymore, which kind of tells you that they don't think they can bid and manage programs very well.

I worked for a government contractor once that lost a lot of money on a large contract, and you know what they did? They tightened up the review of their bidding process so that they could ensure that they truly understood what the requirements were, and how they were going to meet those requirements. And it worked, they stopped losing money on Firm Fixed Price contracts.

NASA has no shortage of programs that are over schedule and over budget. The SLS Mobile Launcher (ML) 2 is a great example of this, where Bechtel bid a $383M Cost-Plus contract for delivery in March 2023, but now the contract value has skyrocketed to $960M, and it won't be ready until October 2025. Oh, and an independent review team thinks the cost will go up to $1.5B, and it won't be ready until November 2027.

By my count SpaceX will have built, and made operational, no less than THREE launch platforms for their Starship during that same amount of time, and I'd wager they will spend far less than $1.5B per launch mount - even though the Starship is far larger, and the launch mount is also a landing platform.

There are competent engineering teams out there who can produce pretty accurate estimates, but that is because they are well led teams. And NASA Administrators are the top managers at NASA, and they enforce management discipline down into the organization. Of course unrealistic due dates and clueless Congressional mandates don't help, but that is also why a NASA Administrator has to have the ability to push back on unrealistic goals.

And we did see Jim Bridenstine try to do that with the return-to-Moon program (not sure it was Artemis then), when he threatened to not use the SLS. But the Trump Administration didn't have his back on that, so he backed down.

But the biggest reason you don't start with a "uninformed" date is that it KNOWINGLY wastes money. Because some parts of a complex program CAN make that date, but then they are sitting around twiddling their thumbs waiting for everyone else, where they could have done something else instead. And waste is NOT good.

So if the NASA Administrator is not the person to be in charge of reducing waste at NASA, who is? No one? We should ignore it? Because that would sure seem like it would be encouraging institutionalizing bad behavior...

I think you are comparing apples to oranges comparing consumer products with developing extremely complex systems.  My software background is developing software that touches both engineering and manufacturing.  Our software will configure products inside of 3D CAD systems, it will do manufacturability tests on components and assemblies to check for problems with machine tools and it will configure shop floor routings.  I have seen the inside of more than a hundred companies that manufacture a wide range of products.  Very few of these companies have to come up with brand new technology to manufacture their products.

If you look at the A-12, the earliest design work by Kelly Johnson was in 1958.  They went through several design iterations for Archangel 1 through 11.  iteration 11 is where they won the competition with Convair for their design which became the A-12.  The A-12 first flew in 1962 but didn't become operational after it was refined in flight testing until 1967.  It was ended in 1968 as it was being replaced by the SR-71.

Lockheed won the competition because Convair was proposing an unproven and far riskier ramjet engine design.  One of the biggest challenges for the A-12 and the SR-71 was accurately machining large titanium pieces for the complex shapes of the engine inlets.  They ended up bypassing the problem by breaking up the larger ideal pieces into far smaller components and fitting them together.  If they hadn't figure out that solution, the A-12 may have been delayed significantly or canceled.

The A-12 had far fewer components that needed breakthroughs to make the plane as a whole work than recent projects that push the technology envelope.  It also had systems that were isolated and easier to develop than modern digitally integrated systems which are usually far more capable.

I have a few acquaintances that worked on developing the C-17 working on avionics software.  It was supposed to be ready by 1990 and wasn't ready until 1995.  Delays were attributed to multiple reasons including two years where Congress reduced funding do to a shaky economy.  Other reasons included the specs changed.  Some of the specs turned out to be unrealistic.  Other new specs were added as they figured they were necessary as they studied the what the aircraft needed to do.  As usual, the software was more challenging to develop than expected.  After the delays and cost overruns, the C-17 which is not perfect turned into a magnificent aircraft that has done a very good job of providing airlift to the military even though it can't go into many of the smaller airfields it was promised to be able to.

When companies that we work with that make a wide variety of products,  most get in the ballpark on development schedule and costs because they aren't pushing the development of some new manufacturing process, nor pushing the limits of what the technology can do.  Any of the big NASA projects mostly do.  When they do you get surprises and schedule slips.  If you want to eliminate schedule slips and cost overruns, you stop doing breakthrough work.

The manufacturers we have worked with add a new manufacturing process, they buy a new machine tool that the manufacturer of the tool has done the bulk of the risk reduction on the process.  When we deal with machine tool manufacturers that come up with a new way to cut and bend metal, they have had plenty of massive delays.  If they don't take these risks, they will pretty much guarantee that they will be out of business when their competitors succeed.

NASA is doing some risk reduction work before committing to building a next generation telescope with capabilities far beyond Hubble and Webb.  There will be a lot risk reduction you can't do without actually designing and building the proposed massively bigger space telescopes.  If you want to push the state of the art and possible view planets in other solar systems, you're going to have to take risks that could significantly bust the budget and schedule.

The only way to avoid missing target dates on large scale projects that significantly push the state of the art in capabilities and manufacturing technology is to not do them.  You are not going to find a mythical team that can promise you the Moon and not have unpredictable overruns and delays.  They don't exist.  That's not to say that projects are uncancelable.  Decision makers have to judge if reasonable progress is being made versus the potential return from success.  There has to limits on what is affordable and what else the money could be spent on.

When you mention what SpaceX does for a lot less than NASA, SpaceX doesn't hit their target dates very often.  When Musk first announced what became Starship, he gave what he thought was a realistic date it would be in service.  That has passed by.  Were his dates fake?  Or were they the best guess he thought at the time?

I agree that NASA has its share of projects like the mobile launcher that are inexcusably late.  That hasn't changed from the first Apollo mobile launchers.  Bucyrus-Erie (a Wisconsin based company) won the bid on a fixed price contract to build two for 12 million dollars.  Wisconsin's own Senator Proxmire was outraged that they could make an excessive profit if they brought it in faster and cheaper than expected.  Marion Crane was then awarded the contract on a cost plus.  It turns out that after they got the contract and got started, they had no idea how to do it.  They poached the engineer from Bucyrus that had figured it out and built them at a cost to NASA of 14 million and behind schedule.  Proxmire cost NASA an extra 2 million and his own state lots of jobs.  An administrator and a project chief engineer, often can't stop the meddling of a powerful member of Congress.  Sometimes this is completely out of their hands.  Think Senator Shelby with Constellation and later SLS.  I also don't think when the initial target dates for a Moon landing were set, that they spent much time addressing the mobile launchers because they didn't think it was high risk. 

With what I read about on NASA projects and what I've experienced on projects that push technology (my own and what I see my customers doing), target dates on these kind of projects should always be treated as aspirational.  They are not the same as engineering projects that using existing proven technology.  The only way to guarantee a date one hundred percent is to do the project and say this is what it took.

[Coastal Ron]

Jim Bridenstine is winning this poll because of the Artemis program and his ability to sell it on both sides of the aisle.  Nancy Pelosi was even singing his praise for promising to put the first woman and person of color on the Moon which helped get support in Congress.

Vice President Mike Pence, when he announced the return-to-Moon program, stated:

“To be clear: the first woman and the next man on the moon will both be American astronauts..."

So it wasn't Bridenstine that promised to put the first woman on the Moon, Pence did.

As to the first person of color, as of September 21, 2020 NASA was still just saying "the first woman and the next man", and the first reference I can find about "the first woman and the first person of color" is from the Biden Administration on April 9, 2021. Which if true, would mean that Bridenstine didn't have anything to do with the "person of color" aspect.

Can anyone find a reference to show that Bridenstine changed the goal to "the first woman and the first person of color"?

I'm just trying to make sure that what people are praising Bridenstine for, that he actually did that.

He also made people feel like we're finally going somewhere again after years of stagnation in human spaceflight.

OK, but Bridenstine didn't create the return-to-Moon program, V.P. Pence announced it, and Presidents are responsible for those decisions. And sure, Bridenstine was a champion of ALL the programs that under his purview, but don't ALL NASA Administrators do the same? Heck, Bolden gets docked by a lot of people for being a huge supporter of the SLS - probably a bigger supporter than Bridenstine. So are you just forgetting that all the other NASA Administrators have been cheerleaders too?

He will be remembered as the administrator when Artemis got started as an official goal to get back to the Moon.

Right, the person who had the program fall into their lap. He didn't create it though, and while you may want to give him all the credit for the good parts of the Artemis program, are you going to deduct credits for all the bad parts? I mean, Artemis is going to be years late, isn't he responsible for any of that? And if not, why?

Bill Nelson is just staying the course.  It may be exactly what is needed and the best possible right now.  But it doesn't make him all that memorable.  This is a popularity contest as viewed by voters who are mostly outside the agency.

I did NOT want Bill Nelson running NASA. At all. So yep, placeholder is a good description.

I think the results are very predictable so far for these reasons.  Bridenstine's tenure isn't that long, but it is memorable.

Bridenstine's is the most recent of the "former" Administrators, and for those that are fans of returning to the Moon he happened to be sitting in the NASA Administrator seat when the President created what is now Artemis.

But I don't think anyone has still really outlined what Bridenstine has done that makes him an "exceptional" NASA Administrator, other than just being a "popular" person...

[yg1968]

Of the choices presented, I chose Daniel S. Goldin, specifically because he instituted the "Faster, better, cheaper" philosophy, which TRIED to address the cost growth with space programs.

My second choice is Charles Bolden, even if I didn't like his enthusiasm for the SLS. If you look at the NASA OIG reports for large programs, he was able to make huge improvements on cost and schedule growth compared with Michael Griffin, which is why I prefer NASA Administrators to have a demonstrated management background. If you don't have a management background, like the last two NASA Administrators, then that makes it harder to see thru all the BS being presented as fait accompli, whereas a real manager knows better.

And I'm not 100% cost focused, as I think both of the above also did good PR for NASA, but what is the use of having a budget and schedule if you can't manage them good enough to accomplish anything? Just look at the Artemis program today, with the totally made up 2024 human landing date - that has probably cost the U.S. Taxpayer $Billions already in misspent money, and unfortunately both Bridenstine and Nelson are on the hook for that.

Bolden, second choice, really? He initiated, The Journey to Nowhere.  Even Bolden doesn't think that he accomplished that much for BLEO human space exploration. However, in Bolden's defense, it's hard to accomplish big things when the President essentially gave up on BLEO human space exploration when he didn't get what he wanted in the 2010 NASA Authorization bill. Furthermore, it was obvious that Bolden wasn't President Obama's choice, he was Bill Nelson's choice. Bolden initially even opposed commercial crew as Lori Garver points out in her book. To his credit, Bolden eventually endorsed commercial crew but it took much longer than it should have and probably lead to Obama not trusting him initially. Bolden seems like a really nice guy but as an administrator, he wasn't that great (although he was better under Obama's second term).

[yg1968]

Can anyone find a reference to show that Bridenstine changed the goal to "the first woman and the first person of color"?

The first person of color was added as a slogan by the Biden Administration but the Artemis Cadre already had several persons of color, so it was going to happen anyways. Just to be clear, Bill Nelson said that the first person of color may not be under Artemis III, it could be in a later mission. So essentially, it was a change in slogan only, the policy is the same as it was before. 

[Eric Hedman]

Jim Bridenstine is winning this poll because of the Artemis program and his ability to sell it on both sides of the aisle.  Nancy Pelosi was even singing his praise for promising to put the first woman and person of color on the Moon which helped get support in Congress.

Vice President Mike Pence, when he announced the return-to-Moon program, stated:

“To be clear: the first woman and the next man on the moon will both be American astronauts..."

So it wasn't Bridenstine that promised to put the first woman on the Moon, Pence did.

As to the first person of color, as of September 21, 2020 NASA was still just saying "the first woman and the next man", and the first reference I can find about "the first woman and the first person of color" is from the Biden Administration on April 9, 2021. Which if true, would mean that Bridenstine didn't have anything to do with the "person of color" aspect.

Can anyone find a reference to show that Bridenstine changed the goal to "the first woman and the first person of color"?

I'm just trying to make sure that what people are praising Bridenstine for, that he actually did that.

He also made people feel like we're finally going somewhere again after years of stagnation in human spaceflight.

OK, but Bridenstine didn't create the return-to-Moon program, V.P. Pence announced it, and Presidents are responsible for those decisions. And sure, Bridenstine was a champion of ALL the programs that under his purview, but don't ALL NASA Administrators do the same? Heck, Bolden gets docked by a lot of people for being a huge supporter of the SLS - probably a bigger supporter than Bridenstine. So are you just forgetting that all the other NASA Administrators have been cheerleaders too?

He will be remembered as the administrator when Artemis got started as an official goal to get back to the Moon.

Right, the person who had the program fall into their lap. He didn't create it though, and while you may want to give him all the credit for the good parts of the Artemis program, are you going to deduct credits for all the bad parts? I mean, Artemis is going to be years late, isn't he responsible for any of that? And if not, why?

Bill Nelson is just staying the course.  It may be exactly what is needed and the best possible right now.  But it doesn't make him all that memorable.  This is a popularity contest as viewed by voters who are mostly outside the agency.

I did NOT want Bill Nelson running NASA. At all. So yep, placeholder is a good description.

I think the results are very predictable so far for these reasons.  Bridenstine's tenure isn't that long, but it is memorable.

Bridenstine's is the most recent of the "former" Administrators, and for those that are fans of returning to the Moon he happened to be sitting in the NASA Administrator seat when the President created what is now Artemis.

But I don't think anyone has still really outlined what Bridenstine has done that makes him an "exceptional" NASA Administrator, other than just being a "popular" person...

The whole First woman, etc. was not initiated by either Pence nor Bridenstine.  They have political operatives that work out how to sell a program with political levers.  You can't tell if the person saying this believes it's a good idea or they just know it's what's necessary to sell the program.  It is a group discussion that gets vetted by multiple interested parties.  When Bolden took heat for his comments about outreach to the Muslim world, he didn't write that speech.  Around that time I had a chance to talk with a couple of members of Congress.  They said speeches like that are often written by state department teams that try to use speeches like that to affect foreign policy.  Administrators are not loose canons.  They answer to OSTP and the Whitehouse.  They execute within the framework given them by others including Congress.  This is not like how a business is run where often one person the CEO/owner sets the agenda and tone.

Bridenstine didn't create Artemis but he was heavily involved in refining it and a member of Congress told me he did a good job of selling it to them.  The return to the Moon may not have been funded and become the program of record without him.

No one is going to get NASA to do all programs the way they want them to.  Bridenstine learned when he tried to suggest Orion on Falcon Heavy that Congress (Senator Shelby) wouldn't let him do it and slapped him down.  The Trump administration didn't go to bat for him because they may have wanted to use their political capital on something completely unrelated.  The process has long been messy and will be for a long time to come.  It is just how our government works.  You may not like it, but you're not going to change it.  I think several of these administrators did as good a job as circumstances allowed them to.  That is how I judge them.  And I think most of them were fairly good.

Charlie Bolden told me something that I will never forget.  I was chatting with him in 2010 at ISDC in Chicago.  He had recently given his Muslim outreach speech and was taking flak from lots of people.  Remember he had flown a hundred seven sorties of close air support in Vietnam.  I asked him how was the stress from his new job.  He said, "No one is shooting at me.  In comparison, everything else is easy."  He put it in perspective.

[yg1968]

OK, but Bridenstine didn't create the return-to-Moon program, V.P. Pence announced it, and Presidents are responsible for those decisions. And sure, Bridenstine was a champion of ALL the programs that under his purview, but don't ALL NASA Administrators do the same? Heck, Bolden gets docked by a lot of people for being a huge supporter of the SLS - probably a bigger supporter than Bridenstine. So are you just forgetting that all the other NASA Administrators have been cheerleaders too?

Bridenstine laid out his lunar plans (see the quote below) including his plans for the Artemis Accords in 2016 before he was nominated as administrator and he pretty much initiated what he had recommended in that blog during his time as administrator.

The Moon, with its three-day emergency journey back to Earth, represents the best place to learn, train, and develop the necessary technologies and techniques for in situ resource utilization and an eventual long term human presence on Mars. Fortunately, the Space Launch System and Orion will start testing in 2018. This system, with a commercial lander, could quickly place machines and robots on the Moon to begin the cis-lunar economy. With the right presidential guidance, humans could return in short order as well; this time, to stay. [...]

The U.S. government must establish a legal framework and be prepared to defend private and corporate rights and obligations, all keeping within the 1967 Outer Space Treaty. The United States must have cis-lunar situational awareness, a cis-lunar presence, and eventually must be able to defend freedom of action in space. Cis-lunar development will proceed with American values and the rule of law if the United States leads. [...]

Commercial launch vehicles are maturing and commercial deep space habitats are currently in development. A renewed focus on utilizing the Moon can help further these advances and achievements. The choices we make now can forever make America the preeminent spacefaring nation.

https://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=45548.msg2180309#msg2180309

The fact that VP Pence was supportive of Bridenstine and his efforts under the Artemis program was indeed very helpful. That is the kind of support that Bolden did not have under President Obama (see my post above for more on this). Nelson also has the support of President Biden which has also helped him, so far.

[19 Orionis]

This poll may not be statistically relevant.  The sample size is too low to produce a result with high confidence.  There might be a way to compare this poll to another social media site with a larger population size.

Plus the trends of bias in the sample set has to be accounted.  Such is democracy.

Let’s see what happens by the end of the poll.

[Robotbeat]

It’s just a poll of people who like to answer such polls on this website. Not anything more than that. It’s about the opinions of our site.

[eric z]

 By all means check out Charlie Bolden on tonight's PBS News Hour. There is a new film called "The Space Race" about
the contributions of the Black Astronauts, Very interesting, and Bolden is very impressive..

[19 Orionis]

I believe Jim Bridenstine has won this poll. 

Perhaps a surprise but clearly a wide difference in total votes.