NASA Administrator Michael Griffin said he would be "happy" to remain in his post if President-elect Obama asked, but Griffin doesn’t expect that request from the newly-elected leader, the Orlando Sentinel reported.

Griffin made his remarks in speaking to Kennedy Space Center workers.

Still, Obama has changed his views on the space agency, during his pursuit of election to the White House.

While Obama earlier this year saw the space program as uninspiring to youth — and youth have been major backers of his candidacy — he recently has pledged strong support and billions of dollars for NASA.

Obama has said specifically he would continue the Constellation Program that is developing the Orion space capsule (crew exploration vehicle) and Ares rocket to boost it to space (he called for speeding the space shuttle’s replacement). It isn’t clear whether he also supports sending Orion to the moon, Mars and beyond, which has been President Bush’s vision for space exploration.

The Illinois senator changed to a more supportive view of NASA as he campaigned for votes in Florida, where even continuing the Constellation Program still will leave thousands of Central Florida workers in unemployment lines, once the space shuttle fleet ceases to fly. Obama is expected to press for some sort of extension for the shuttle fleet beyond President Bush’s mandated retirement deadline of October 2010.

Griffin said he isn’t interested in remaining administrator if the Constellation Program dies.

Obama has to consider long and hard in deciding the NASA leadership issue, because Griffin isn’t just any bureaucrat.

Rather, Griffin is widely admired and respected by the rank and file in NASA, and has been lavishly praised by members of Congress, not only by Republicans but notably by Democrats as well, who often open congressional hearings with Griffin as a witness by praising his stewardship of the space program and other NASA missions.

A highly intelligent man with multiple advanced degrees, Griffin also has taught at leading universities, and entered the top NASA post in 2005, after less than stellar performance by the prior NASA administrator, Sean O’Keefe.

Griffin has said if he had been named administrator years earlier, he would have fought the decision to retire the space shuttle fleet in 2010, given that the next-generation Orion-Ares system won’t have its first manned space flight until 2015, a half-decade gap that Griffin termed "unseemly." And on other occasions, Griffin has criticized policies of the Bush administration, though generally he has played the loyal soldier.