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Sean O'Keefe was administrator of NASA a little more than three years. In that eventful and turbulent period, he dealt with numerous issues. Appointed to cope with a huge cost overrun on the International Space Station, he was soon engulfed in the Columbia shuttle accident and its investigation. Subsequently, he engineered a presidential decision that NASA return to the moon and go eventually to Mars. He also sought to terminate the immensely popular Hubble Space Telescope. The Moon-Mars decision was O'Keefe's most important achievement, as that involving Hubble was his most controversial action. This essay tracks O'Keefe's role at NASA as a case study in leadership and change.
Sean O'Keefe was administrator of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) from December 2001 to February 2005, a little more than three years.1 During that time, however, he achieved what Doig and Hargrove (1987) set as a key requirement for effective entrepreneurial leadership-the establishment of a new mission for his agency. His prime legacy to NASA was the presidential decision that the agency return to the moon and then eventually go to Mars. Called the Vision for Space Exploration, the decision was broader than the Moon-Mars initiative and entailed an ongoing quest to explore space through robotic and human flight. Moon-Mars was the focus, particularly the moon, but the key word in the decision was "exploration."
Getting NASA's manned space program out of Earth's orbit and back to the moon and its original exploration mission had been a goal of space enthusiasts since the end of the Apollo era. That O'Keefe steered this ambition into decision, and did so in so brief a tenure, was not only notable but also an unexpected accomplishment.
O'Keefe did not come to NASA as a space enthusiast. He was a generalist administrator whose expertise was financial management. He was sent to NASA primarily to mitigate the International Space Station's $4.8 billion overrun problem. He specifically rejected destination-driven goals (i.e., Moon-Mars) in favor of science-driven objectives in his first year (O'Keefe 2002). Yet, in late 2003 and throughout 2004, he promoted the Vision for Space Exploration and thus the Moon-Mars goal, and he reorganized and reprioritized NASA to implement the new mission. What caused this change? And why did he...