NASA BOSS VISITS DRYDEN O'KEEFE'S MAIN PLEDGE: LESS RED TAPE.

Byline: Jim Skeen Staff Writer

EDWARDS AIR FORCE BASE - NASA's new top administrator told Dryden Flight Research Center workers Thursday he doesn't know what changes might be in store for the space agency.

Sean O'Keefe, a former federal budget official, said President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney have refrained from rhetoric about what they want from NASA because they want the agency to frame its own objectives.

That might take a few weeks, and then he will try to match resources to the objectives, said O'Keefe, who visited Dryden as part of a tour of all National Aeronautics and Space Administration centers.

``I'm not Carnak. I don't have the answers in an envelope,'' O'Keefe said. ``I don't have an agenda.''

O'Keefe told the workers he will try to get rid of irrational agency regulations that erect ``an impediment to doing things smart.''

But he added, however, that he thinks many such situations are simply practices that have built up over the years, rather than the result of specific government regulations.

``Much of this is selnflicted, I think we'll find,'' O'Keefe told Dryden workers.

O'Keefe took over the space agency Jan. 2 and must find ways to pay for billions of dollars in cost overruns on the space station.

Talking with reporters after his visit, O'Keefe dodged questions about his priorities for aeronautics research, Dryden's specialty, and about the likelihood of space shuttle modification work shifting from Palmdale to Florida.

Bush's budget, due out Monday, will give an indication of NASA's priorities, he said, and the shuttle modification decision will be announced soon.

O'Keefe said Dryden's projects are an example of the ``amazing things and capabilities of NASA.''

O'Keefe also said he wants to encourage collaboration among NASA centers, which include the Langley Research Center in Virginia, Johnson Space Center in Texas and Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

O'Keefe had been deputy director of the federal Office of Management and Budget, appointed by Bush, and he was former President George H.W. Bush's secretary of the Navy and Defense Department chief financial officer.

In between Bush administrations, he was a business and government professor at Syracuse University in New York and a graduate school dean at Pennsylvania State University.

At his first news conference last month in Washington, D.C., O'Keefetold reporters that he doesn't know whether some NASA field centers will need to be closed to save money.

O'Keefe is spending his first months at NASA learning about the agency and developing a strategic plan, officials say.

NASA officials said O'Keefe plans to model his management philosophy on the president's management agenda.

President George W. Bush's management agenda mentions in passing a controversial congressional statute that hampered former NASA administrator Dan Goldin's plans for Dryden.

Goldin envisioned Dryden as a center of excellence for aeronautics and wanted to consolidate the agency's aircraft operations at Dryden.

NASA did move two civilian versions of U-2 aircraft and a modified DC-8 from the Ames Research Center in Mountain View, Calif., to Dryden, but Congress passed a law blocking the agency from moving aircraft east of the Mississippi River to the high desert.

The president's management agenda cites that statute as an example of managers having their hands tied in efforts to trim cuts.

NASA officials said they do not know whether O'Keefe will seek a repeal of that statute.

Dryden has a long history in aeronautics research, dating back to the 1940s when a handful of engineers came to Edwards to prepare for tests of the X-1 rocket plane later flown by Chuck Yeager.