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NASA Administrator speaks with his "outer voice" on Shuttle and ISS

It's unfortunate that NASA Administrator Michael Griffin got caught using his "outer voice" here . I imagine his Public Affairs people were scrambling to do damage control, which explains his subsequent announcements.
Some folks at work were upset by his USA Today interview - I wasn't. The Shuttle and ISS are good vehicles, and there's good people working in both programs that have overcome enormous obstacles to keep both vehicles operating as they are. However, neither vehicle has lived up to their original billing (due to a lot of geo-governmental politics), which leads to the major drawbacks for both vehicles. Griffin's comments reflect most "techie's" assessment of the situation.
The reality is that we need both vehicles to fly in the near term (at least to 2010, to finish ISS assembly), and then we need a healthy US aerospace industry NASA can contract out to on a flight-by-flight basis, to buy upmass/down mass logistics capability.

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