CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. -- NASA Administrator Michael Griffin took his seat in front of the television cameras, U.S. senators on each side of him, and leaned forward on the table.

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All around him, people were hustling and whispering. Congressional leaders discussing who would speak and what they would say; reporters and photographers crowding into each other.

A crooked smile crawled across Griffin's face.

The smile seemed out of place, considering that his engineers had just pulled the plug on the highly anticipated -- and long-delayed -- launch of space shuttle Discovery. Surrounded by congressional members who control his space agency's funding and its future, and facing questions he couldn't possibly know the answer to -- yet -- Griffin was calm, even bemused.

He understood that those around him, agitated as they might be, were doing their jobs. And he was doing his.

Griffin's job, the one he had assumed just three months and one day before the July 13 launch postponement, is to stay focused on the big picture, the overview. The United States' Vision for Space Exploration.

That's what the National Aeronautics and Space Administration calls it. That's its label.

The vision, spelled out by President Bush in a January 2004 address to the nation, calls for America's return to flight aboard the space shuttle; the completion of the International Space Station; and the development of a new space vehicle -- currently dubbed the Crew Exploration Vehicle -- to carry Americans back to the moon and eventually to Mars.

Born in Aberdeen, Md., in 1949, he has become much more than "a simple aerospace engineer from a small town, which is how Griffin describes himself. From a youngster whose first book was about astronomy, he has become the man who will usher America back into space.

"I am an unabashed supporter of space exploration in general and of human space flight in particular," Griffin said. "I believe that the human space flight program is, in the long run, possibly the most significant activity in which our nation is engaged."

Griffin has degrees in physics from Johns Hopkins University, aerospace engineering from the University of Maryland, and electrical engineering from the University of Southern California. He's collected a handful of achievement awards and is a certified flight instructor.

Griffin is the 11th administrator at NASA, an embattled agency with a $15 billion a year budget. He'd like to get that up to $20 billion.

"We, as a nation, quite literally spend more on pizza than we do on space exploration," he told the members of the Senate Subcommittee on Commerce, Justice and Science during his confirmation hearing. "So I don't think we are overspending on space."

Griffin breaks the NASA budget down to $50 a year from each American, "or less than 14 cents per day."

"A really robust space effort could be had for a mere 20 cents per day from each person," he said. "I spend more than that on chewing gum."

Yet as mindful as he is of the money and the mission, Griffin is most concerned with his people. That's why he had no qualms about delaying Discovery's launch when a faulty fuel sensor acted up 2¹/₂ hours before liftoff.

"Every journey begins with a single step," he said. "The first step in that journey is to return -- not rush -- the space shuttle to flight."

His decision won him quick praise from the congressional delegation that traveled to the Kennedy Space Center for the aborted launch.

"I'm very proud that Administrator Griffin is doing the right thing by always putting safety first," said Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, R-Texas, a member of the subcommittee overseeing NASA. "That is something that we asked him to do. It's something that he assured us is his priority. He is not going to take any chances and that is the way it should be."

NASA is unique in its mix of politics, science, private contractors and a military mindset. Reporters who have covered the space agency for years say that it can be a tough beat, especially since the many successes aren't nearly as newsworthy as the few failures.

People in the space agency accept that, but they don't like it.

When Griffin took the helm from former Administrator Sean O'Keefe in April, he inherited an agency mired in controversy and concern. The fiery destruction of space shuttle Columbia in 2003 -- claiming the lives of the seven astronauts aboard -- had forced the program to re-evaluate its equipment, its procedures and its priorities. There was talk that the 20-year-old shuttles were no longer flight-worthy and that the people responsible for them had lost sight of their mission. Was anyone really paying attention? The media? The public? The people at NASA?

In an environment that has sometimes been hostile to inquiries -- and occasionally as tightly sealed as an astronaut's space helmet -- Griffin's focus and frankness are a breath of fresh air.

His responses are not couched in protective covering or ornamentation. Asked if the astronauts are prepared for their mission, he says simply, "They are pumped." If the answer to a question is "No," that is the one word that he says.

Appearing before a congressional committee in Washington, D.C., last month, he detailed how he will get NASA in line with the president's mandate, a path that he expects will determine the space agency's direction for decades to come. And he means to stick to it.

The International Space Station, he said, is important because it is our working platform in space. America has a commitment to it -- both financially and contractually -- and it is vital to the next steps into space. Should something ever go wrong, the space station is only a few hours from the safety of Earth. The moon is three days away and it is many months to Mars.

And that is where we are going under Griffin's leadership. The Crew Exploration Vehicle being developed to replace the shuttles will be capable of ferrying astronauts to and from the space station as well as to and from the moon and Mars.

Griffin also is restructuring the space agency. He is giving more authority to the program managers at the 10 NASA field centers in Florida, Texas, California, Alabama and elsewhere. He and the others at NASA headquarters will focus more on policy, programs and budget needs, he said.

"Frankly, NASA headquarters staffing has grown too large over the last several years," he told Congress. "And some outdated facilities need to be modernized, closed or mothballed." He is studying "which facilities belong in which category."

Then there is the matter of NASA's list of things to do. Between satellites, telescopes, exploration robots and the space station, it's just too long.

"NASA cannot afford everything on its plate today," Griffin said. "We must set clear priorities and remain within the budget NASA has been allocated.

"We are taking a 'go-as-you-can-afford-to-pay' approach toward space exploration."

Private industry will be counted on for huge contributions to the Vision for Space Exploration. A Texas-based company called Spacehab, for example, is a leading provider of commercial space services on manned and unmanned missions. The company puts business cargo such as satellites in orbit via Atlas and Delta rockets and is the contractor re-supplying the International Space Station on the Discovery mission being launched tomorrow.

Spacehab officials boast that they can get a business payload into space and recover it, if necessary, "with the same reliability you would expect when dropping off a package to your local parcel delivery service."

Founded in 1984, the company is expected to be heavily involved in NASA's next step -- the design and development of "lunar outpost architectures" and the vehicle that will get us there.

The Crew Exploration Vehicle is still on the drawing board. Engineers haven't even figured out the best way to get it off the ground. But they're working on it.

And they need to work fast. The current fleet of space shuttles is down to three vehicles -- Discovery, Atlantis and Endeavour -- all of which will be 30 years old by 2010, when Griffin is determined to retire them, even though congressional leaders have said they will not hold him to that date.

"The key for me," Hutchison said, "is that we work to bring the CEV up to use at the same time as the shuttle retirement so that there is never a gap in the United States' ability to put humans into space.

"All of us [in the congressional space and science delegation] are going to work to make sure that America keeps its commitment to keep humans in space, to do the research at the space station, to get all of the information we can to be pre-eminent in space."

Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Fla., another member of the Senate's science subcommittee, echoed her concern about the CEV being ready when the shuttles are sent to the Smithsonian. America cannot, he said, have a stretch of time when we are incapable of going into space.

"We don't want to lose that corporate memory by suddenly shutting down a good part of your launch team, and then five, six, seven years later, you have to ramp up again," he said.

"There's also a geopolitical reason. We don't want to rely on some other nation for our only human access to the completed International Space Station. We don't know what the geopolitical alignments will be like in 2015."

And then there's the national security issue, Hutchison said. America must always be able to put satellites up and keep them working.

Griffin is optimistic that NASA can achieve this.

"President Bush said [we'd need the CEV] not later than 2014," Griffin said. "He didn't say we couldn't be smart and do it early."

Griffin would like to have a single contractor lined up for the vehicle early next year.

In the days after the July 13 launch postponement, the House Science Committee approved a NASA authorization bill that sets annual spending goals for the next five years.

The legislation, which gives NASA -- and Griffin -- more flexibility, also includes instructions regarding science, aeronautics and exploration programs. The full House passed the bill on Friday. The Senate has yet to act on the measure.

And there is no shortage of supporters in the Senate.

"Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison and I are very proud of our new leader at NASA, Michael Griffin," Nelson said. "He is an authentic rocket scientist, and ... he has brought this NASA family together."