A lot of people consider Webb the best Admin NASA ever had, and it's not entirely nostalgia for the glory days of Apollo.

But when I think about what made Webb great, it's inextricable from Apollo, which gets me to thinking about how each NASA Administrator has been product of his (NASA's) times.

Webb was the quintessential Cold War engineering manager, who'd worked both the private and Federal sides of the street his whole life. He was a perfect choice to command a high-priority well-funded national project. But when times got hard for NASA in the late 60s they got hard for Webb too--he no longer had the clout he needed in Congress to get what he needed by demanding it, and he lacked the subtler political and bureaucratic skills needed for a low-profile NASA carrying a tin cup to Capitol Hill.

So, after Webb, NASA got Admins who kept their heads down and were appropriately modest in their ambitions. There was what's-his-name and whozit, and then Challenger exploded. The right Administrator post-Challenger had to be an astronaut, somebody who'd been there, done that, and had risked his ass on the Shuttle. So we got Truly.

Conservatives were on a roll in the late 80s, on the warpath for faster, better, cheaper government; government run like a business, they said. So in 1993 NASA's salvation came from private industry in the form of Dan'l Goldin, the silver-tongued devil who got misty-eyed with pride every time his agency's budget was cut.

So finally I get to the point: What do the times now demand of the next Administrator? A few predictions: He'll come from the military or have strong ties to it, because the Pentagon wants into space in a big way, and the Administration is receptive. He'll be fiscally conservative and in favor of privatization, of course, and promise to outdo Goldin in running a tight ship. The ideal candidate would be a military man who became an astronaut, retired with flag rank, and then spent some time running an aerospace company. Name recognition is a plus.

Sure sounds like Buzz, doesn't it?

--Robert