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So it's entirely possible that the sitting chief executive of SpaceX could be the nation's most important adviser on space policy, conflicts be damned. Musk possesses flaws as a leader, but it is difficult to argue against results. His intuitions for the industry, such as pushing hard for reusable launch and broadband Internet from space, have largely been correct. In a vacuum, it is not necessarily bad to have someone like Musk providing a vision for US spaceflight in the 21st century. But while space may be a vacuum, there is plenty of oxygen undefined, DC.
Let's start with NASA and firmly establish what we mean. The US space agency does some pretty great things, but it's also a bloated bureaucracy. That's by design. Members of Congress write budgets and inevitably seek to steer more federal dollars to NASA activities in the areas they represent. Two decades ago, an engineer named Mike Griffin—someone Musk sought to hire as SpaceX's first chief engineer in 2002—became NASA administrator under President George W. Bush.
Essentially, then, for the last two decades, NASA programs have sought to leverage expertise across the agency. Consider the development of undefined spacecraft, which began nearly 20 years ago. The following comment comes from Julie Kramer-White from an oral history interview conducted in 2016. Kramer is a long-time NASA engineer who was chief engineer of Orion at the time.
"I'll tell you the truth, ten healthy centers is a pain in the butt," she said. "The engineering team is a big engineering team, and they are spread across 9 of the 10 Centers... Our guys don't think anything about a phone call that's got people from six different centers. You're trying to balance the time zone differences, and of course that's got its own challenge with Europe as well but even within undefined with the different centers managing the time zone issue. I would say as a net technically, it's a good thing. From a management perspective, boy, it's a hassle."