Michael Griffin

Former NASA administrator Mike Griffin once likened himself to Spock in his rational, emotionally-detached approach. Now Griffin's replacement, Charles Bolden, seems ready to inject new passion into a space agency that is struggling to reevaluate both long term goals and its vision for space exploration.

NASA Administrator Michael Griffin is not playing nice with the Obama transition team, according to a post by Robert Block of the Orlando Sentinel. He reports that Griffin is resisting efforts by former NASA associate administrator Lori Garver, who heads Obama's space transition team, to "look under the hood" of the space program.

When NASA administrator Michael Griffin unveiled the agency's plans for the Crew Exploration Vehicle (CEV), he described it as "Apollo on steroids." The resemblance is easy to seeeach is a blunt-nosed, cone-shaped capsule that's strapped to a rocket and sent to the moon, where it deploys a lunar lander and then returns to Earth for a parachute landing. There are important differences, however: