Leadership in Space: Selected Speeches of NASA Administrator Michael Griffin, May 2005–October 2008 (review)

Since T. Keith Glennan first took command on August 19, 1958, eleven men have served as administrators of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (with eleven more serving as acting administrators). Michael Griffin's time in that post (April 14, 2005–January 20, 2009) was about average for NASA administrators. However history assesses his record, he will certainly be remembered as the best educated of the bunch—what with a bachelor's degree in physics, six master's degrees (aerospace science, aerospace engineering, electrical engineering, civil engineering, applied physics, business administration), and a Ph.D. in aerospace engineering, not to mention certification as a flight instructor, with instrument and multiengine ratings.

He is also the only administrator to have published a volume of his speeches. While Griffin admits, "public speaking does not come naturally to me," he regarded his responsibility to represent NASA in public forums as one of his most important, an opportunity to explain the ideas and principles that guided his decisions as NASA administrator. The major theme that links the twenty-seven speeches included in this volume, and which describes the fundamental direction of Griffin's years as administrator, is the attempt to provide "an intellectual rationale for human space exploration" (ix).

In the opening section, Griffin argues for the importance of a vigorous program of human space flight as a means of achieving national security, economic competitiveness, global leadership, and new opportunities for scientific and technical discovery. In a second series of talks, he underscores the role of military and civil space efforts in the development of systems management and systems engineering, the keys to our ability to manage complexity.

Griffin made headlines and created some consternation within NASA by arguing that the agency had struggled "without a guiding vision" for three decades following the conclusion of the Apollo lunar landing program. On one memorable occasion, he suggested that the "space shuttle and the International Space Station—nearly the whole of the U.S. manned space program for the past three decades" were a terrible mistake (Traci Watson, "NASA Administrator Says Space Shuttle Was a Mistake," USA Today, Sept. 27, 2005). In a final group of talks, he outlines his course correction for the agency, which involves returning astronauts to the moon, and eventually traveling to Mars, using a new generation of ballistic launch vehicles and manned spacecraft featuring heat shields and other elements of the Apolloera approach to space travel.

Mike Griffin accepted President George W. Bush's challenge to develop a new program that would enable NASA to retrace the path of the Apollo astronauts to the moon. Time alone will judge the wisdom of that decision. Whatever the future holds, the author provides a summary of the benefits of pushing back out of near-earth orbit, the neighborhood in which we have been operating for the past three decades, and his blueprint for returning to the moon. While this book is not destined for the best-seller lists, it does serve as a useful window into the thinking of the man who attempted to redirect the national space effort at a critical moment.