New NASA Administrator?

The rumor has been going around since late yesterday afternoon, but now Frank Sietzen at UPI has the story–Sean O’Keefe, currently a deputy at OMB, will be replacing Dan Goldin. O’Keefe has been intimately involved in the ISS budget mess, and given NASA’s inability to manage their programs or their budgets, they could probably do a lot worse than someone from the Office of Management and Budget. I just hope that he’ll have Administration support for the housecleaning that the agency direly needs–he unfortunately probably won’t get it from Congress.

An informed Washington source tells me that we should take any press pronouncements concerning new NASA Administrators with a healthy dose of sodium chloride, for the moment. So perhaps it’s not as done a deal as the reporting would indicate.

Well, according to Spaceref, and based on this White House Press Release, it is a done deal (assuming that the words “the President intends to nominate” imply that the nominee has accepted).