In a statement late in the day on Wednesday, Feb. 19, NASA reported that associate administrator Jim Free was retiring effective yesterday, Feb. 22. Free had been associate administrator, the top civil-service position in the agency, since the retirement of Bob Cabana at the end of 2023.
Free was previously associate administrator for exploration systems development, a position NASA created in 2021 when it split the former Human Exploration and Operations Mission Directorate into two directorates, one overseeing exploration programs and the other the International Space Station and related operations. Earlier in his 30-year NASA career, he was director of the Glenn Research Center in Cleveland.
I know that I've mentioned Jim Free by name here in the blog many times, and
while I don't claim any sort of insider knowledge of life inside NASA,
I think the first mention that I remember by name was June 16, 2023 when I
reported that he was arguing NASA should drop fixed price contracts and
use only cost-plus. It's simply hard to sum up how much I differ from Free on that.
His argument is that if a fixed cost contract doesn't deliver on time, the
buyers are stuck; the problem is he completely ignores that big, cost-plus
contracts (think SLS) are also late and you pay more for them to be delivered
late. There's simply no evidence that cost-plus contracts deliver better results sooner.
Primarily based on his position, when Bill Nelson and Pam Melroy stepped down as NASA administrator and deputy administrator at the end of Biden's administration, Free was expected to take the top spot. In fact, SpaceNews reports that on inauguration day, NASA's website listed Free as acting administrator.
However, several hours later the White House announced it had selected Janet Petro, director of the Kennedy Space Center, as acting administrator. The decision reportedly even took top agency officials by surprise.
There has been puzzlement over appointing Janet Petro so it's worth pointing out that back before the election, Free had voiced concern that a new administration might drop the priority on Artemis, saying, “We need that consistency in purpose. That has not happened since Apollo. If we lose that, I believe we will fall apart and we will wander, and other people in this world will pass us by.” Contrast that view of Artemis, which necessarily includes SLS, with the talk of going to Mars instead of the moon (and rather than both). If you're a fan of SLS with its absurd cost overruns and schedule slips, it seems out of line with the current administration.
NASA Associate Administrator Jim Free at an agency "all hands" event in December 2024. Credit: NASA/Bill Ingalls
Hmmm. Seems the New is just the Old. Yikes. Mayhaps the New has had a change of heart about SLS. Hopefully.
ReplyDeleteFixed price is predictable, allows for a budget plan. Cost plus is unpredictable and almost invariably increases cost. The only reason to prefer the second over the first is if you personally profit from it....
ReplyDeleteCorporate vultures are corporate vultures, comes with being granted the position, if your not part of cabal you are not getting near such an office. Thats part of the executive machine and its built in directorate which isolates itself from any and all natural law, they are an entity created to be the untouchables, i just can not see a freebooter, that is if Jared is not a protege of some kind long groomed for such a position. Remember the pant's suit when she and others under the executive umbrella, Chaney is another, their quotes how they answer to a higher power. Besides their primary function as tax money launderers. Strange though it seems, they operate at that level under a very old clause, where they have to tell us shat they are doing to us, it is under their organizations "Implied consent" clause. Tricksy they are, you see how movies are employed, nany a plot is nothing but cover to dish out that implied consent, IOW's, see we showed you what we are doing to you, you did not complain, therefore tacit consent is given to us, we fulfilled the letter of the operational clause, tough sh$t too late sorry not sorry nothing you could do in any case. Who can you propose is gonna fill such positions? Yeah, actors and agents who are trusted to comply with orders and go to the wall to create cover where we are non the wiser. Its how organized criminal racketeering functions due to how much money is laundered inentirety. Half a billion here, 300 million over there, 10 billion systematically siphoned off less what gets disbursed to job welfare for lower level operatives, plus they have to create something resembling a big fat very fancy purposefully non function, of course over runs are stuffed into tge money laundering, got to squeeze the last bucks when feasible out of all programs, those small trainches of siphoned off tax dollars add up over decades to serious filthy lucre, (go really look at the Roman Empire, history not just repeats, it is truly generational, as one of the higher skim recipients are the ancient bloodlines who are generational stake holders in the central banks who finally take in the take and having been cleansed, disburse it back to their compatriots, and used for every sort of global domination game agenda and funds for their incarnate diaboliucal acts of global genocide and population reduction), its incredibly thick soup, gives you brain cramps trying to think thru the unknown unknowns and unknown unknown unknowns what with them spraying us like cockroaches with chem trail toxins, so a barely functioning rocket in Artemis sake/form, rocket ship. And talk about telling us what they are doing, check out who and what history tells about the "real" Artemis. These people go back centuries, this executive cabal is built in central "soviet", the master management class, very high up servants, present time, really a interregnum,
ReplyDeletea period between governments
after normal government is suspended, (or in a state of/period of "suspended insurrection" which it appears short trump has initiated), particularly regimes or reigns. So these latter day Nomenklatura, using the kayfabe system of telling us what they are doing in a twisted sense, so what none of us or all of us do or do not get it, these Nomenklatura run things they are untouchable figures but more so its the positions within the money laundering system thats untouchable, hey, why not drop a popular figure into one of those seats for a spell, give the slaves an illusion somebody fights for us.
Its truly terrible things to say. But look at the USC, its a document of executive tyranny, adminstrative centralized tyranny, no where are us little people mentioned, GOD only once in the beginning of the preamble, they had gotten rid if all scripture as prerequisite for passing test for office, and no one really knows who composed this unholy parchment of centralized power structure which has never created an iota of Liberty, do you notice the patterns in detail providing patterns of detail here? Once I seen them I can not unsee them. They be everywhere.
SpaceX posted details on flight 7 starship RUD.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.spacex.com/updates/#flight-7-report
Thanks for the update!
DeleteAccording to the government contracting training I had years ago, Cost Plus should be used ONLY for unknown/ new projects where it isn't known if the project will work at all, let alone when.
ReplyDeleteMature technology is supposed to be Fixed Price to keep down costs. At this point orbital spaceflight is mature.
Jonathan