Attacks on Lori Garver Backfiring
Louisiana Republican Sen. David Vitter’s attack on NASA Deputy Administrator Lori Garver during a hearing on Wednesday has apparently backfired, the Orlando Sentinel reports:
Vitter accused Garver — who was not present at the hearing — of orchestrating the cancellation of Constellation. He also seemed to suggest that Garver was running the agency, and not Administrator Charlie Bolden. Bolden later called Vitter’s comment “unfair.â€
Aerospace workers in Vitter’s home state are heavily involved in the Constellation program, which NASA wants to cancel in favor of commercial alternatives.
Garver has become a target of critics of the proposal. Homer Hickam, author of October Sky and the subject of the motion picture Rocket Boys, called Garver a “gadfly” who should resign. He said nothing about Bolden.
One response to “Attacks on Lori Garver Backfiring”
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The problem with Lori Garver is that she is not qualified for the position that she is in. The fact that the recommendations she makes are given the weight that they are is going to be very destructive to the ability of the United States to get to LEO and beyond.
(1) A “technology based” development strategy has been tried before, with very poor results. Without a destination and time table, there is no rationale for prioritizing competing sandbox projects and we wind up going nowhere, at great expense. Also, individual projects are subject to having funding cut, because there was no driving rationale behind them in the first place.
(2) The reason that the Boeings and Northrups don’t bid on commercial manned space exploration projects is that there is not sufficient demand for the service (at this point) to make a business case. US access to space will become dependent upon fully funding a start-up company (one, not two) as a sole customer, and delays and failures will be subsidized by necessity. When there’s a market, like for communications or navigation satellites, the commercial sector will respond accordingly, when the time is right. The time is not yet right.
(3) If we make a plan like Constellation and follow through with it, we have hardware and operational capability as a result. If we go 40% down one path and then shift to another, which is then followed 40% and shifted, we wind up with nothing.
(4) The reason for the ‘witch hunt’ in identifying where these ideas came from is that the Congressional committees that oversee funding for NASA were not consulted, despite language in last year’s appropriations bill that required such consultation if the program of record were to be radically changed. The proposed budget was radically changed, and congress was not consulted. So, to the extent that the proposed budget aligns with Garver’s expressed views in the past, it certainly looks as though she had a strong hand in this. Unfortunately, she is very wrong in her projection of outcomes.