AP Interview: Ex-NASA Head Critical of Obama Move

In this Wednesday, March 26, 2008 file photo, NASA administrator Michael Griffin, speaks to...

In this Wednesday, March 26, 2008 file photo, NASA administrator Michael Griffin, speaks to reporters at a news conference after space shuttle Endeavour landed at the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Fla. Griffin has moved from the administrator's suite atop NASA headquarters in Washington to the small, bare office of a new engineering professor at the University of Alabama in Huntsville. (AP Photo/John Raoux, File)

(AP)

Michael Griffin has moved from the administrator's suite atop NASA headquarters in Washington to the small, bare office of a new engineering professor at the University of Alabama in Huntsville.

Griffin, 59, wanted to remain as head of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, the job he held for almost four years under President Bush. But that was never a possibility when President Obama's administration took over.

"There wasn't any discussion," Griffin said flatly during an interview Wednesday.

So wearing a salmon-colored golf shirt and slacks rather than a Washington power suit, the former head of the nation's space agency is figuring out what comes next in the world of academia while keeping an eye on his previous employer.

Griffin was pleased with Obama's selection of former astronaut Charles Bolden as his successor. Griffin — who was sometimes faulted for what some described as a prickly personality — said Bolden has the experience, smarts and people skills for the job.

"It would be very hard to think more highly of him," he said. "He's way better with people than I am."

But Griffin doesn't have the same warm feelings about the administration's decision to study NASA's plan for the manned spaceflight program. Critics both outside and inside the agency have questioned NASA's plans for returning to the moon and, eventually, traveling to Mars.

"This review is not, in my judgment, necessary from a technical point of view," he said. "But it does seem to be necessary if we are going to quiet some of the criticism of what NASA is doing, and if we are going to get the new administration on board."

NASA had skeptics aplenty during Griffin's tenure.

Coming in as administrator more than two years after the Columbia disaster, Griffin became the leading voice of NASA's plan to retire the space shuttle next year and send astronauts back to the moon by 2020 using a pair of giant rockets called Ares.