Kennedy Space Center Director Robert Cabana will be the guest speaker for the National Space Club meeting held at 11:30 a.m. Tuesday at the Radisson at the Port, Cape Canaveral. His presentation is titled "NASA/KSC Status Update."Cabana is the tenth director of NASA's KSC, where he manages a team of approximately 2,200 civil servants and about 13,000 contractor employees. A former U.S. Marine Corps officer, Cabana graduated from the U.S. Naval Test Pilot School and logged more than 7,000 hours in 36 different aircraft.
He has flown four shuttle missions, two as commander.
For reservations, call 383-6135 or e-mail LaDonna.J.Neterer@boeing.com.
4 comments:
Pardon me for being a little off subject, but what qualifies an astronaut to be a NASA center director? Mr. Cabana was a military officer, test pilot and astronaut. So where is the management experience related to the processes at KSC? Seems old astronauts cycle through various managment positions to more or less spice up their resumes before heading off to a VP figure head position in private industry. In any event, Mr. Caban was a great astronaut but now has to deal with the big job losses coming to KSC. Hope he is up to this task.
9:31 a.m.: You must be joking, right? No management experience? How bout this:
Cabana served three years as the Chief of NASA’s Astronaut Office. Following STS-88, Cabana served as the Deputy Director of Flight Crew Operations. After joining the ISS Program in October 1999, Cabana served as Manager for International Operations. From August 2001 to September 2002, he served as Director, Human Space Flight Programs, Russia. As NASA’s lead representative to the Russian Aviation and Space Agency (Rosaviakosmos) and its contractors, he provided oversight of all human space flight operations, logistics, and technical functions, including NASA’s mission operations in Korolev and crew training at the Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center in Star City. Upon his return to Houston, Cabana was assigned briefly as the Deputy Manager, International Space Station (ISS) Program. From November 2002 to March 2004 he served as Director, Flight Crew Operations Directorate, responsible for directing the day-to-day activities of the directorate, including the Astronaut Corps and aircraft operations at Ellington Field. He was then assigned as Deputy Director, Johnson Space Center, where he served for 3 ½ years. He next served as the Director of the Stennis Space Center in Mississippi.
All this is from his bio:
http://www.jsc.nasa.gov/Bios/htmlbios/cabana.html
It's quite a resume, I'd say.
Mr. Halvorson, thanks for the summary. He does have an impressive resume and has managed astronaut duties all over the world. Plus, director of Stennis. There have been other directors at KSC that were astronauts, e.g. Loren Shriver (sp?) for one. I'd rather see someone from the engineering ranks as director, but so it goes when launching operational launch vehicles. As I mentioned in the original post, I don't envy his position during these times of layoffs and disgruntled employees. I do wish him luck.
Astronaut Hall Of Fame Member Loren Shriver was deputy director at Kennedy Space Center for several years before becoming the Vice President for Engineering and Integration and Chief Technology Officer at United Space Alliance, the joint venture partnership between Lockheed Martin and Boeing that operates the shuttle fleet on a day-to-day basis.
You can look up his history here:
http://www.jsc.nasa.gov/Bios/htmlbios/shriver.html
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