…where NASA has never gone before. It’s apparently official that the president has nominated the agency’s first black administrator. But Lori Garver won’t be its first woman deputy administrator — that was Shana Dale.

Of course, they still have to be confirmed by the Senate. And while there were rumors that the administrated wanted “hoopla” associated with the announcement, the first day of a holiday weekend seems like a strange time if that was the goal. I’d have done it at the ISDC in Orlando later this week, with a lot of space-interested attendees present. I wonder if either of them will address the gathering? Lori used to be the executive director of NSS, which puts it on.

What does it mean? Heck if I know. I suspect, though, for good or ill, that neither of them took the job to shut down the NASA human spaceflight program.

And meanwhile, the Hubble-repair crew is stuck in orbit for another day, with continuing much-needed (though not nearly as much needed as it was a week ago) rain and thunderstorms on the Florida east coast. I don’t think they can put off landing past tomorrow, so it’s hoping for good weather at the Cape tomorrow morning, or going to sunny California.

[Update a few minutes later]

“Rocketman” isn’t happy, with what is arguably a slightly racist post (and accompanying comment from an anonymous commenter). I don’t think that either the ATK connection or the fact that he was briefly a “lobbyist” for them are or should be issues (with regard to the latter, the activity wasn’t within the ostensible administration guideline of the past two years). The amount of advocacy seemed to be pretty minimal, and there may even be bad blood there now.

I’m much, much more concerned about the prior (if not current) close relationship with George Abbey. I hope that he won’t be looking there for any advice.

[Update a couple minutes later]

Bobby Block over at the Orlando Sentinel has a story up now. This part concerns me a little:

There has been concern by some in the administration that Bolden would be biased towards human spaceflight and NASA’s current troubled Constellation program to return astronauts to the moon as a first step towards going to Mars later this century.

The Constellation program is wrestling with financial and technical woes and the president has called for a review of the current plans. The White House wanted to make sure Bolden had an open mind before nominating him.

An “open mind” with regard to what? More innovative and affordable means of carrying out the goal? I’m all for it. Or about the goal itself, and turning humanity’s back on space beyond low earth orbit? I hope not.

[Update early afternoon]

For me, the biggest strike against Bolden is that Bill Nelson was such a heavy supporter, and got his way. I should also add that the last time we had an astronaut as administrator (Dick Truly), it was kind of a disaster. He actively lobbied against the Space Exploration Initiative on the Hill in the early nineties, defying his own president. He was fired for his troubles, and replaced by Dan Goldin. But one shouldn’t indulge in the fallacy of hasty generalization and draw any grand conclusions about astronaut administrators in general from a single example.

[Update a few minutes later]

Jeff Foust is rounding up Congressional reaction, from Florida space coast congresswoman Suzanne Kosmas, Florida Senator Bill Nelson, and the chairs of the Science & Technology and Space committees in the House, Democrats all (and the latter, Gabrielle Giffords of Arizona, is a former astronaut herself married to an astronaut).

[Update a couple minutes later]

More reaction from Marc Boucher over at NASA Watch:

Ok, it’s now finally official, but what does this mean? NASA’s has some tough budget years ahead of them with Constellation over budget and negative or zero growth budgets coming. President Obama is a science guy and perhaps not so much a human space flight exploration advocate. The reality is that no matter how many speeches he gives where he touts the inspiration of NASA, it takes hard cold cash to make things happen, especially human space flight.

NASA’s fiscal year 2010 budget request of $18.686 billion includes $456M increase for science and $630M increase for Exploration. Some of that increase is because of the one time Recovery Act stimulus money. If you look at projected budgets for fiscal years 2011, 2012, 2013 you see either negative or zero growth. Already sources say Bolden expressed concern at his meeting with President Obama because he was told that further cuts to human spaceflight in future budgets might be needed.

I have no doubt Bolden is a leader, the question is, with the projected budgets he’ll have, can he get Constellation back on track and on schedule? And what effect will the Human Space Flight Review Panel have going forward?

It’s great to see a nominee like Bolden put forward but really how much can he accomplish? Will Bolden be bold in his leadership?

Good questions, all.