2 sources, independent, are saying that the next NASA administrator is Major General Charles Bolden. More over the fold.
BTW, This is my one breaking diary, so I get to use breaking
(thanks to Pluto for the pic)
Bolden is a former astronaut. Both NASAwatch and MSNBC are reporting it. He is the first African American NASA administrator.
It is known that Bolden was Senator Nelson personal pick.
How this will impact the upcoming Blue Ribbon Panel I have no idea. I will say that I hope the panel will be able to move NASA away from the level of funding that is pork derived. In particular, I'd like to see a discussion about if we are going to continue to use ICBM needs to continue to fund and fly SRBs.
Finally, one thing that has me slightly concerned, is this quote from an interview Maj. General Bolden gave a few years ago
Are you for or against space tourism?
I’m a big fan. Every time we can send a human into Earth’s orbit, that’s one more person that becomes aware of the value and joy of doing that, and knows what that vantage point affords us. The more of it the better. We need to be careful we don’t let people go about it in a cavalier manner. We need to put as much training into the space tourists as any government-sponsored space exploration.
Those last 2 sentences have me slightly concerned, because when he says equivelent training, does he mean years and years? And does that include something like suborbital flight?
I ask this because I would really like to see NASA push space development, and to refocus human spaceflight to be about making us spacefaring, and not in some distant Star Trek future, but now.
Anyway, I'll give more when we now more. With ISDC coming up, we may see him there.
BTW, tips to NellaSelim for catching it. He has a diary up about it as well