Only days before his agency faced down the dreaded Galactic Ghoul at Mars, NASA Administrator Mike Griffin gave a rather dour assessment of his organization’s current status to a Washington Space Business Roundtable luncheon.
According to an account over at Jeff Foust’s Space Politics blog, Griffin said this is a “time of incredible turmoil” due to the:
- pending retirement of the space shuttle, which will cause mass layoffs;
- upcoming change in presidential administrations; and,
- failure of Congress and the President to agree on a new budget.
Apparently, none of the chaos engulfing NASA results from any bad decisions by Griffin, although the administrator did acknowledge the severe budget and schedule pressures affecting NASA’s shuttle replacement, Constellation. The system may not be ready for human flights until five years after the shuttle is retired and may need billions in additional funding.
On this, Griffin’s basic message was something akin to the USC Trojans fight song: Fight On. “When the going gets tough, let’s not reoptimize for low Earth orbit,” Griffin said.
Well, perhaps this isn’t quite as inspiring as the USC fight song, penned in 1922 by dental student Milo Sweet as his entry into the Trojan spirit contest. So, if this will help boost morale of anyone at NASA experiencing incredible turmoil, here’s the USC Marching Band performing Fight On. Just substitute “NASA” for “‘SC”, “space agency” for “alma mater,” and make it gender neutral. And maybe try to make it rhyme.
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