LOGAN — Mike Griffin, NASA's administrator, was feisty in defending the space agency's deep cuts in science projects during a question-and-answer session Monday at the Utah State University Small Satellite Conference.

Hundreds of scientists, engineers and students from the United States and other countries gathered in the Eccles Conference Center for the meeting, which is marking its 20th year. When Griffin spoke, the auditorium was packed. Many stood in the doorway or along the walls.

In the formal part of his talk, Griffin lauded small satellites, explaining they may do important work in the future — mapping or serving as communications relays for moon and Mars projects. He also talked about gambling on entrepreneurship to handle some future tasks.

But during the question-and-answer session that followed, fireworks flew.

The brightest sparks came when Gil Moore grilled Griffin about funding student experiments. Moore, a professor who taught at USU and the Air Force Academy before retiring to Monument, Colo., has been a longtime champion of student involvement in space.

Among many student projects he has helped with were the Get-Away Specials, the so-called GAS cans that flew aboard the shuttle carrying experiments of budding scientists and engineers.

"I respectfully disagree with you that you have to wait until you're an employee of an aerospace company to start getting enthusiastic about space, to start learning the discipline that will make a good employee," Moore said.

"The generation that you need to be targeting . . . is the educational level of the university student."

In the past, USU officials could promise students they were recruiting that by the time they graduated or earned a master's degree in an aerospace field, they could fly an experiment of their own in a GAS can, he said. That was a time-honored program that "went on for 25 years."

"There's no present access for students in space," he added.

Universities could pay for Russia to fly the experiments, but they don't want to turn in that direction, according to him.

"Can't you figure out a way to get us some opportunity to fly on U.S. launch vehicles?" Moore asked. "We're not asking you to pay for the satellites. Just get us some rockets, get us some access to space."

The room erupted in applause when he finished.

Griffin responded that he has a lot of problems ahead of that one.

"NASA cannot be responsible for everything that needs being done in the space community," he said.

"NASA is not the galactic overlord of space and shouldn't be."

If educators want to negotiate with firms to get students' experiments into space, he added, "I wish you well. But it is not my job to be the broker for those launches."