Are Charles Boldens Days as NASA Administrator Numbered?
how the space agency has been run. First, Congressional anger over the somewhat tortured explanations by Bolden about the Obama space plan seems only to be rising. This is coupled by the outrage over the creative use of the Anti Deficiency Act to shut down parts of the Constellation space exploration program, potentially throwing thousands of aerospace contractors out of work even before Congress has voted on the Obama proposal to cancel the Constellation program. Second, questions of a conflict of interest have arisen over Administrator Bolden’s attempt to shut down a NASA project involving an experimental biofuel project involving algae. Bolden had come to this decision while consulting with one of his previous employers, Marathon Oil, a company in which he still owns stock and which has its own rival biofuel project. Finally, Charles Bolden opined on the Arabic television network Al Jazeera that the primary mission of NASA was to help Muslim nations “—feel good about their historic
