Trump Nominates Mike Griffin for Defense Post
Former NASA Administrator Mike Griffin
President Donald Trump has nominated former NASA Administrator Mike Griffin to serve as principal deputy under secretary of defense for acquisition, technology, and logistics.
Griffin, who led the space agency from 2005 to 2009, was most recently chairman and CEO of the Schafer Corporation, a provider of scientific, engineering, and technical services and products in the national security sector.
In his new position, Griffin will serve as the principal staff assistant and advisor to the secretary of Defense and deputy secretary of Defense for all matters concerning acquisition, technology, and logistics.
During his stint at NASA, Griffin established the architecture for space shuttle replacement and human return to the Moon and initiated the first development of commercial cargo delivery service to Earth orbit in the agency’s history.
He is a recipient of the NASA Exceptional Achievement Medal, the AIAA Space Systems Medal, and the Department of Defense Distinguished Public Service Medal.
Dr. Griffin is a graduate of Johns Hopkins University, the Catholic University of America, the University of Maryland, the University of Southern California, Loyola College; and George Washington University.
16 responses to “Trump Nominates Mike Griffin for Defense Post”
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I’m sure he’ll do the same stellar job on defense as he did for NASA. I guess I had better start learning more languages. Chinese, Spanish, or will the invasion be Other?
Griffin ranks as probably one of the worst NASA admins in history, as a complete unmitigated disaster. The man is single-handedly responsible for botching the opportunity of doing something with VSE, wasting a decade and generally managing NASA HSF into dustbin of history
Lets give this man another job
Another job is somewhat more charitable than I had in mind,unless you mean at Leavenworth or similar.
And yet, he/W were the ones responsible for getting new space going with COTs.
Obama/bolden kept it going, but there is little doubt that this would never have happened without a tag team effort.
No he isn’t. COTS wasn’t invented by Griffin. Commercial access to ISS plans existed way before him, like Alternate Access to Station programs etc. Griffin doesn’t get the credit for rubberstamping what was Bush admin official policy.
Indeed, Griffin prevented COTS-D, aka commercial crew, for four years. Along with killing Prometheus and the majority of the tech development program, and about a quarter of the science program.
Which raises the question. Has NASA ever had a good Administrator that was an engineer or scientist?
Probably not. I’d say James Webb and Sean O’Keefe were two of the best, neither of them would have stated their career path to be engineering or science
Who would have thought, running a federal agency of tens of thousands of people and megabillions in expenditure takes some political and accounting chops ?
O grief–he was worse than Griffin. Hubble would be dead. Griffin kept it alive–have to give Mike that one
Sean O’Keefe was by far the worst, Griffin a close send worst…
Nah.. Fletcher making the decision to use Segmented solids?
How about the decision by Fletcher to add the 1080 Mile Cross Range ?
That meant the Double Delta wing replaced the straight wing.
How about the decision to go for the Saturn V? A moon architecture wrapped
around the Saturn IB would have increased production on everything.
Instead of about 100 F-1 engines being built we’d have had about 250 H-1 engines getting built and twice the number of J-2 Engines getting built.
Then you have something.
Mike Griffin is a very smart man, and I’d rather have a really smart man up there, then a political hack. He will thrive or fail depending upon his staff. If he has some clever political aides and a good chief of staff, he will do a great job.
Yeah i agree on Apollo would have worked much better if done around EOR. I don’t think anything would have saved Shuttle, apart from declaring it a short lived first generation attempt at a resusable vehicle before it was committed to.
Mike Griffin may be smart, but he is also incredibly arrogant and seems to think he’s the smartest guy around. That gave us ESAS and Ar(s)es I and V
I don’t agree with that at all. Shuttle derived heavy lift had a friend in him–and I thank him for that.
Besides–he was the one with Musk on that Russia trip where they all but spat in Elon’s face.
It was Griffin who told Musk that he could build his own rockets–and Griffin has always believed in HLLVs–so he is the co-farther of BFR and SLS both in a way.
Griffin also butted heads with Musk’s real enemy–the EELV lobby who wanted both Ares and Falcon dead.
Here is an idea. Make Griffin head of the New Space Corps–but call it the ABMA.
And BFS?
Call it Rombus.
May the spirit of Phil Bono forgive me.
Man – where do you get all this fake data? Regular Fox news guy?
Not a Fox fan actually HLN is as probably a pure news-source as there is–everything is is commentary.
While unexpected, it’s not out of line with his work on ballistic missile defense.