NASA chief Bolden turns 65 with big challenge ahead

By Marco Mierke Aug 18, 2011, 12:40 GMT

Washington - Charles Bolden Jr learned what it is like to accomplish the seemingly impossible on November 22, 1963.

A substitute on his high school football team in South Carolina, Bolden replaced the injured starting quarterback during the state championship game, threw the decisive pass and led his teammates to victory.

The self-described 'lousy football player' suddenly became a local hero.

Bolden, who turns 65 on August 19 as administrator of the Washington, DC-based National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), still enjoys telling this story.

That he chooses it to describe his life is an example of his modesty.

He could, after all, boast of his space flights, his combat missions as an aviator in the Vietnam War, his experiences as a Marine Corps major general or as CEO of a small enterprise in the aerospace industry.

But the anecdote aptly encapsulates Bolden's entire career, during which he has repeatedly accomplished what first must have seemed inconceivable to him.

Upon graduation from high school Bolden sought admission to the US Naval Academy, hardly an easy matter for a black man in the South in the era of racial segregation.

So he wrote a letter of request to US Vice President Lyndon Johnson - to no avail. Bolden was not about to give up, though. After Johnson became president, Bolden wrote him another letter. A few weeks later, a Navy recruiter knocked on his door.

This was the ignition for what would be a stellar career. The son of two educators, he earned a bachelor of science degree in electrical science at the Naval Academy, was commissioned as a second lieutenant in the Marine Corps, became a naval aviator and was selected as an astronaut candidate in 1980.

Bolden travelled into orbit aboard space shuttles four times, first as a pilot and later as commander.

After numerous promotions within NASA's Astronaut Office, he returned to active duty in the Marine Corps and held top posts in Kuwait and Japan.

In 2002, then-president George W Bush wanted to make Bolden NASA's chief. But the idea was rejected by the secretary of defence, Donald Rumsfeld, who did not want to lose Bolden's services.

After several years in private industry, Bolden was tapped as NASA administrator in 2009 by President Barack Obama, becoming the first Afro-American and just second ex-astronaut to head the storied agency in its more than 50-year history.

Now Bolden has yet another difficult task ahead of him. With the end of the space shuttle programme last month, NASA is facing an identity crisis.

It no longer has vehicles to carry its astronauts into space and must now rely on foreign rockets to ferry supplies to the International Space Station. What is more, there is little money for ambitious new projects such as putting Americans on Mars or an asteroid.

Bolden, however, is girding optimistically for what is likely to be his last big challenge.

'I am not about to let human spaceflight go away on my watch,' declared Bolden, who never tires of touting the importance of NASA and manned space exploration.

To a sceptical public he paints the development of future spacecraft by private US companies as a solution, not an austerity plan.

'American leadership in space will continue for at least - at least - the next half-century because we've laid the foundation for success,' he said. These are big words. But they come from a man of action.