Griffin Doubts He'll Remain NASA Chief

NASA Administrator Michael Griffin said today that he doesn't expect to remain the agency's chief in president-elect Barack Obama's administration.

"I serve at the pleasure of the president," Griffin said. "So if the next president wants to ask me to continue, I'd be happy to do it. I doubt that that will happen."

Griffin addressed Kennedy Space Center employees during an "all hands" meeting that was broadcast on closed-circuit TV at the space center.

He also said he wasn't sure if the roughly $2 billion Obama promised to add to NASA's budget during the presidential campaign would extend space shuttle flights beyond 2010, speed up development of the Constellation program rockets and spacecraft that will replace the shuttle, or both.

If the funding promise is kept, he said, NASA would need to propose to the new administration and Congress how the money can most effectively be spent.

"But, man, give me that problem," he told the audience assembled in the space center's training auditorium. "That's a problem I'd like to have, wouldn't you? So let's hope that occurs."

Griffin was appointed to lead the agency in 2005 as it recovered from the Columbia disaster in 2003, and put together NASA's plan to return American astronauts to the moon.

NASA has estimated 3,000 to 4,000 jobs will be lost at Kennedy Space Center after the 2010 retirement of the shuttle fleet.

Current plans project a five-year gap in manned spaceflight between the shuttle program's end and the first flight of the Ares 1 rocket and Apollo-style Orion crew capsule.

"It's possible that it might make sense to fly shuttle a bit longer," Griffin said. "The closer we look at that, the harder that is to do."

Griffin said he would continue as administrator under the right circumstances: if the new president maintained current policy direction, if he had freedom to choose his leadership team and if the agency's budget wasn't cut.

"We certainly can't get by on any less than we're doing, and I don't want to be a figurehead for claiming that we can do something we can't do," he said.

He added: "I think we've done the experiment at NASA to see whether or not people who don't know anything about the space business can run NASA, and it doesn't work. And I don't want to be party to doing it again."

Griffin expects Obama will have plenty of talent from which to choose a new NASA administrator.

"I just hope whoever they pick loves it as much as I do, loves the agency and loves what we do as much as I do," he said.

IMAGE NOTE: Click on the images to enlarge them. Above, NASA Administrator Michael Griffin's official portrait. Below, Griffin (right) congratulates the team in the firing room at Kennedy Space Center after the successful launch of space shuttle Discovery on its STS-124 mission in May. Photo credit: NASA/Kim Shiflett