NASA Landing Team To Be Replaced by "Beachhead Team"?

Keith's note: Charles Miller has joined the NASA Landing Team. No word yet as to whether the conflict of interest checks for Alan Lindenmoyer and Alan Stern have been completed. Given that Steve Cook (who works for a SLS subcontractor) made it onto the team to work SLS issues, this should not be taking as long as it has. Then again the presence of these commercial add-ons to the NASA Landing Team was imposed upon NASA Landing Team leader Chris Shank by Trump Tower to correct an imbalance in team expertise so some foot dragging is to be expected.

Given the rapidly approaching Inauguration (the point at which all Transition Team activities halt) Chris Shank has been proposing a "Beachhead Team" that would start work at NASA on 20 January with himself as Chief of Staff. Shank's proposal is that his job and others on the Beachhead Team would only last for 120 days and that the new NASA Administrator would then pick their own permanent team. This of course assumes that a new NASA Administrator is named and that they get through the confirmation process within 120 days without hitting the traffic jam posed by some of the more controversial appointees that looms ahead. Based on prior experience, when "temporary" people arrive at the 9th floor at NASA headquarters, they tend to hang around for a long time.

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