NASA Critic Nominated to Head Agency

President Bush on Wednesday nominated Sean O’Keefe, an outspoken critic of NASA’s budget-busting, to take the helm of the space agency as it struggles to fulfill its mission and meet demands for stricter accounting and tougher management.

The appointment of O’Keefe, 45, an experienced government belt-tightener who is deputy director of the White House Office of Management and Budget, will likely mean more cost-cutting and upheaval at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.

It puts the former Navy secretary in a position to implement the recommendations of a Bush administration task force that recently criticized the $5-billion cost overrun for the international space station. That task force was initiated by O’Keefe.

If confirmed by the Senate, O’Keefe will succeed NASA Administrator Daniel S. Goldin, who will retire this week after nearly nine years.

Given his recent calls for a “cultural change” at NASA, O’Keefe’s pending arrival was viewed with some apprehension within the agency and on Capitol Hill.

“He’s coming from the organization that has been seen as the black hat with respect to NASA,” said John Logsdon, director of the Space Policy Institute at George Washington University.

Last week, Rep. Dave Weldon (R-Fla.) chastised O’Keefe at a hearing for failing to provide more in NASA’s budget. Weldon warned that the U.S. may fall behind other countries in space research and exploration.

“We’re losing our competitive edge,” Weldon told O’Keefe. “The budget you submitted seems to continue right on that same path.”

The Bush administration has budgeted the space agency at $14.5 billion for the fiscal year 2002, about a 2% increase.

Weldon--who was meeting with O’Keefe on Wednesday as the appointment was announced--said in an interview that he still has reservations.

“I would have picked someone with more of a vision for the space program,” Weldon said. “But I imagine he’s there to straighten out the budget and then move on.”

O’Keefe could not be reached for comment.

At his appearance last week before the House Science Committee, O’Keefe stressed the need for budget reform at the space agency, which employs 18,000 workers.

“Technical excellence at any cost is not an acceptable approach,” he said. O’Keefe also spoke of the need for new leadership, though his impending nomination was not publicly discussed.

“The administration recognizes the importance of getting the right leaders in place as soon as possible, and I am personally engaged in making sure that this happens,” O’Keefe said.

White House officials said Wednesday that O’Keefe would help lead the space agency into a new era.

“Sean O’Keefe has the solid leadership skills and excellent management background that the president was looking for in a NASA administrator,” said White House spokeswoman Anne Womack. “He’s a key advisor to the president who has a strong relationship to the White House staff.”

Some NASA observers are optimistic that O’Keefe will provide the kind of “tough love” that they believe NASA needs and open the door to free-market ideas that have encountered resistance in the past.

“NASA has been the 800-pound gorilla, getting in the way of some of these ideas,” said Edward L. Hudgins, director of regulatory studies at the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank in Washington.

Among other things, Hudgins and others predict O’Keefe will explore the possible privatization of the space shuttle program; improve the agency’s method for calculating program costs, and look into closing some space centers to shave costs.

O’Keefe’s background at the Defense Department, where he served as chief financial officer from 1989 to 1992, might also lead to a more active role by NASA in space-based defense programs, Hudgins said.

In 1992, O’Keefe was appointed by former President Bush as secretary of the Navy, where he also was known as an aggressive cost-cutter. As Navy secretary, he sought to kill funding for the controversial Osprey military aircraft.

In March of this year, O’Keefe was confirmed as deputy director of the OMB, where he also had been serving as chair of the president’s management council. The council coordinates management reforms and issues government-wide.

At NASA, reining in costs for the international space station will be O’Keefe’s first priority. The project, which includes 16 nations, has been poorly managed and is now nearly $5 billion over budget, according to the task force formed earlier this year.

The task force recommended a series of reforms, including redefining the project’s science goals and scaling back the number of planned crew members based at the station.

O’Keefe takes over an agency that has already endured sharp cutbacks. Goldin, a former executive at TRW Space and Technology Group in Redondo Beach, led NASA with the motto, “faster, better, cheaper.”

That meant halving the agency’s work force during his unprecedented tenure, which spanned three presidents.

But Goldin oversaw the agency during some high-profile flops, including back-to-back failures of missions to Mars.

“There is no more dedicated group of people serving any agency in the federal government,” Goldin said Wednesday in a statement. “I am sure NASA’s creative and diverse work force will give Sean the same outstanding support it’s given me these many years.”