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The U.S. space program's leadership black hole

This piece is part of a leadership roundtable with four expert contributors — Wharton Professor Peter Cappelli, Space Policy Institute Founder John Logsdon, NYU Professor Kerry Sulkowicz, and former NASA leadership program director Gail S. Williams — about the leadership challenges of shuttering NASA’s iconic space shuttle program.

There are too many leaders of the U.S. civilian space program, and not enough leadership. These several leaders at this point are not in agreement regarding how best to transition away from 30 years of the space shuttle being the visible centerpiece of the U.S. human space flight effort. Attempts at leadership without agreement among leaders is a recipe for short-term confusion and longer-term drift.

But isn’t space program leadership the responsibility of the NASA administrator and deputy administrator, selected by President Obama and confirmed by the Senate?  It would certainly be desirable for that to be the case. Yet that would require some form of consensus among the country’s overall policy and political leadership regarding NASA’s future direction, and that agreement is sorely missing.

So NASA Administrator Charlie Bolden and Deputy Administrator Lori Garver find themselves pulled between the rather incompatible directions coming from the White House and those emerging from the elements in Congress with a particular interest in NASA. Their job is to implement policy, not set it; and they are not getting the clear guidance they need to deal with the challenges of convincing NASA’s workforce that the agency’s future is bright.  Bolden’s and Garver’s public statements are relentlessly positive, but they have not persuaded the NASA rank-and-file to accept their optimism. And this hobbles their ability to lead.

In more than 40 years of close observation of the U.S. space program, I don’t think there has ever been more uncertainty and fear of impending program collapse. One result of the current confusion is the too-widespread impression that  the final flight of the shuttle means that the U.S. program of human spaceflight has come to an end. This is most certainly not the case. Many American astronauts will be living and working on the International Space Station for the decade to come. And yet equating the end of the shuttle program with the end of human spaceflight is symptomatic of the failure of national leaders to agree on and then communicate a vision of the U.S. future in space.

Latest Space News 2011-07-09 | Latest Space News - Echoes of Apollo

Kalpana Chawla (PH.D.) – NASA Astronaut died aboard STS-107 Columbia (January 16 to February 1,2003). The 16-day flight was a dedicated science and research mission . Working 24 hours a day,in two alternating shifts,the crew successfully conducted approximately 80 experiments. The STS-107 mission ended abruptly on February 1,2003 when Space Shuttle Columbia and her crew perished during entry

Four Atlantis astronauts today will inspect perform robotic inspections to make sure critical heat shields weren’t damaged during Friday morning’s blastoff from Kennedy Space Center,the last by a shuttle . Mission commander Chris Ferguson,pilot Doug Hurley and mission specialists Sandy Magnus and Rex Walheim awoke at 4 a.m. EDT for their first full day in orbit ,to the Coldplay tune “Viva la Vida A Different Perspective

 
This is one of a series of images taken by the station crew of space shuttle Atlantis in Earth orbit. Seen at the rear of the cargo bay is the Raffaello multi-purpose logistics module,packed with supplies and spare parts for the orbiting outpost. The shuttle 'posed' for photographs and visual surveys and performed a back-flip for the rendezvous pitch maneuver. A 400 millimeter lens was used to capture this particular series of images.

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