Implementing amidst Conflict

Implementation of the Mars Exploration Program, elevated to a more favored basis, and projected to grow substantially by O’Keefe, ran into an unfavorable environment soon after he left. On March ii, 2005, the White House announced that Michael Griffin would be replacing O’Keefe. Age 56, Griffin was a lifelong space enthusiast who had started his career at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory and later headed the ill-fated Moon-Mars initiative of George H. W. Bush. He had an engineering PhD and several other degrees and was viewed as arguably the most qualified man in the country to implement Bush’s Vision for Space Exploration, from a technical standpoint. Griffin had coauthored a technical book, Space Vehicle Design, and had also written about the policy need for NASA to go beyond the shuttle and space station and get back to its true mission: exploration. He came to NASA from Johns Hopkins University’s Applied Phys­ics Laboratory, where he headed its Space Division. While his orientation was human spaceflight, he was also an advocate of robotic exploration and had, as a young engineer, worked on robotic missions to Mars at JPL.1 One of his reasons for leaving JPL and NASA was the erosion of robotic Mars activity after Viking. Although very different in style—Griffin was shy and taciturn whereas Goldin was outgoing and manic—he shared Goldin’s passion for space. Like Goldin, he returned to NASA to fulfill a life’s dream.

A big difference, however, was that Goldin favored the robotic Mars pro-

gram and looked for savings in human spaceflight, particularly the shuttle. For Griffin, human spaceflight took precedence in his mind, even if science had to suffer as a result. Griffin wanted to focus on getting the shuttle back to flight, completing the International Space Station, and especially implementing Bush’s Moon, Mars, and beyond human spaceflight vision. This required an empha­sis on building an expensive new rocket and other equipment relevant to the Moon. He looked to his Science Mission director to run the robotic science pro­gram, including Mars. The science directors who served under Griffin during his tenure had their own problems with implementing the “follow-the-water” strategy and particularly technical and cost issues with Mars Science Laboratory development. As much as he might have wanted to concentrate on the human program—and felt he had to do so because of national policy decisions—Griffin found that contentious decisions regarding science and Mars kept coming to his desk. A man who savored rationality and disliked politics, he found himself embroiled in the politics of space science.