on June 28, 2005. On March 11, 2005, President
George W. Bush announced his intention to nominate Griffin to serve as the 11th Administrator of NASA. He was confirmed by the
Senate on April 13, 2005. Griffin was subsequently sworn in by Vice-president
Dick Cheney, a rarity for a NASA administrator and signifying the importance NASA held to the Bush Administration. Administration even recalled its former NASA transition Team Director and Chief of Staff,
Courtney Stadd, to assist Griffin. On September 28, 2007, Griffin said that NASA aims to put a man on Mars by 2037. In an interview with
The Guardian in July 2008 Griffin stated, in
criticism of the Space Shuttle program, that an opportunity to push on to Mars by extending the Apollo program was squandered by a change in focus to Shuttle and space station programs that only reached orbit: "I spent some time analysing what we could have done had we used the budgets we received to explore the capabilities inherent in the Apollo hardware after it was built. The short answer is we would have been on Mars 15 or 20 years ago, instead of circling endlessly in low Earth orbit."
Questions concerning NASA budget management Griffin has been criticized by space research organizations such as
NASA Ames Research Center life sciences group for shifting portions of NASA's budget from science to human spaceflight. Griffin had stated that he would not shift "one thin dime" of funding from science to human spaceflight, but less than six months later, in February 2006, after NASA Constellation funding did not reach requested levels, NASA revealed a budget that reduced space research funding by about 25%, including indefinite deferrals of planned programs such as the
Jupiter Icy Moons Orbiter, the
Terrestrial Planet Finder, and the
Space Interferometry Mission. The logic was that funding
Project Constellation, a presidentially mandated program, was the top priority of the space agency. Funding for a New York Company to research the
Prometheus space nuclear program has also been put on hold, although Griffin has said he is anxious to pursue Prometheus after the earlier-priority development of the new spacecraft is completed. Earlier, in November 2005, funding for life science research conducted largely out of Ames Research Center was cut by 80%, prompting representatives of the Ames life sciences group to write a scathing letter to Griffin criticizing this cut. NASA field centers focused mainly on science rather than on human spaceflight, such as Ames and
Glenn Research Center, have seen general budgetary downsizing, and many science contracts with outside researchers have been canceled. Griffin attributed these cuts, along with cuts in the human spaceflight budget, as being necessitated by a $3.2 billion shortfall. The
National Research Council also concluded that NASA's total funding has not been enough to fulfill all its mandates and remain strong in science. However, during Griffin's term, science budgets were, as a percentage of NASA's total budget, in line with those during Project Apollo. There has been some discussion, after the release of the Summary Report by the Human Space Flight Committee that NASA has not been funded sufficiently to pursue a strong science program while continuing to focus on aeronautics and space exploration, the two key mission of the NASA. Limitations on NASA's budget include a mandated continuation of the
Space Shuttle program, including safety upgrades and testing; the mandated construction of the
International Space Station; the mandated development of the Vision for Space Exploration architecture; programs outside of human spaceflight, consisting of science research and aeronautics research; and an ever-increasing share of NASA's budget devoted to line-item earmarks sometimes characterized as
pork barrel spending.
Struggles to complete ISS before Shuttle program termination Vision for Space Exploration, announced by President Bush in 2004, mandated that NASA must use the Space Shuttle to finish construction of the International Space Station by the end of 2010. By June 2006, due to ongoing concerns with the safety of the Shuttle in the wake of the
Columbia disaster, only one flight had been performed. Per the Presidential mandate of the Vision for Space Exploration, Griffin mandated that 18 more Space Shuttle flights be performed in the remaining four and a half years. Griffin approved the launch of Space Shuttle
Discovery for July 2006 to perform the second return-to-flight mission, overriding the NASA Chief Safety and Mission Assurance Officer,
Bryan O'Connor. Although O'Connor said there were still unresolved concerns that foam insulation could break off of
external fuel tank and damage the orbiter, Griffin characterized the risk as acceptable, arguing that it would be better to test one change at a time. With that flight NASA was testing the removal of protuberance air-load ramps from cable and fuel line fittings on the exterior of the external fuel tank. This launch proved that the changes made to prevent shedding of foam at the air-load ramps were successful, allowing the Shuttle program to work towards completion of the ISS by the presidentially mandated year of 2010. The construction of the ISS was completed in early 2011, and then the Space Shuttle was retired.
Global warming views In a follow-up interview to his May 31 interview with
NPR's
Steve Inskeep airing June 1, 2007, on NPR News'
Morning Edition, Griffin said: Some climate scientists referred to his remarks as ignorant. In particular,
James E. Hansen, NASA's top official on climate change, said Griffin's comments showed "arrogance and ignorance", as millions will likely be harmed by global warming.
Jerry Mahlman, a scientist at the
National Center for Atmospheric Research, said that Griffin was either "totally clueless" or "a deep antiglobal warming ideologue". In a closed-door meeting on June 4, 2007, at the
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Griffin said: "Unfortunately, this is an issue which has become far more political than technical, and it would have been well for me to have stayed out of it." "All I can really do is apologize to all you guys. ... I feel badly that I caused this amount of controversy over something like this." In a phone call on the day after the election, Senator
Bill Nelson (D, FL) requested of
Lori Garver, who led the incoming
Obama Administration's Transition Team, that the Administration allow Griffin to remain as NASA administrator to provide programmatic and management continuity. However, his resignation (required of and offered by all agency heads due to an incoming president) was accepted. In part, this was because of disagreements between Griffin and Garver over the state of Project Constellation. Griffin gave a farewell address to NASA on January 16, 2009, in which he praised NASA for its recovery from the
Space Shuttle Columbia disaster and urged employees to support the new administrator, whoever it may be. He left office the day President Obama was inaugurated. == Later career ==