Wayne Hale, who led the shuttle program for more than two years as it rebounded from the Columbia disaster, has announced his retirement from NASA effective at the end of this month. "Working at NASA has been a lifelong dream; I often tell people that I would have paid them to let me in the door rather than the other way around," Hale wrote in a NASA blog post filed Wednesday. "The achievements that we have made together will have lasting significance for all humankind."
Hale said he was leaving NASA for family reasons.
He began his NASA career in 1978 and went on to serve as a flight director for 40 shuttle missions.
He relocated to Kennedy Space Center in to become the program's launch integration manager effective Feb. 1, 2003, the day the Columbia crew was lost when the orbiter broke up during re-entry.
By July 2003, Hale was deputy shuttle program manager and influential in reforming mission management practices that Columbia investigators deemed flawed. He took over as program manager from Bill Parsons, who later became KSC's director in 2007-08.
Hale turned over leadership of the shuttle program to its current manager, John Shannon, in February 2008, and took a position as deputy associate administrator for strategic partnerships.
IMAGE: At his console in Houston's Mission Control Center on March 8, 2001, ascent flight director Wayne Hale monitors Discovery's pre-launch activities several hundred miles away in Florida on STS-102 launch day.
8 comments:
Wayne Hale is a true space hero, and NASA is at a great loss with his departure. I can only imagine what his opinions are about the termination of the shuttle program and Obama's unguided vision for NASA. Hale is the glue that kept NASA together after the Columbia accident, and now NASA will tailspin into nothingness without him there. He may say this is for familiy reasons, but he simply doesn't want to be there for the death of the shuttle and America's manned space program.
Thank you for all you've done, Mr. Hale. I'd leave too, if I were you.
Wayne has always been a nice and encouraging guy but his legacy will be accepting lower standards to avoid embarrassment or costs or something. I once went to one of his Lunch with the Manager, when I was in MOD, and asked him why the displays available to us were so clunky. He said that we only had a few years left to fly the Shuttle, and that the control center was going to be turned over to the next program. He was happy to accept poor performance - and poor tools - for several years since we only had to live with them for a short while. This happened all the time.
To his credit, he did admit that part of the reason that Columbia and Challenger were lost was his action or lack of. He did try to tweak the system to try to reduce conflicts. But what was needed was strong action.
The legacy of the Shuttle and of Wayne will be potential unfullfilled, opportunities missed.
A sad Houston guy
Mr. Hale is a credit to the US space program. From my perspective as a shuttle aero guy working for Rockwell and Boeing, he always came across as technically competent and eager to learn all about a problem so as to make a rational management decision. Too bad they couldn't have challenged him a little more with a new space program......
Wayne Hale will be missed, he is still needed but the way the program is headed it looks more like a bonified lacky from the Obama team will be more at home. There is such a feeling of intense disgust at NASA now that even more professional people will be leaving soon. The pity party of reparations and absolute incompetance is taking the reins and NASA will be what they want it to be.....a place for nincompoops and moon crickets.
Well Mark i don't think i could put it any better,so i won't.Totally agree well posted. The man is a legend.
Wayne Hale is an all around nice person on top of being brilliant, courageous and insightful. We will miss him greatly and do wonder now what direction, even though currently aimless, our agency will go. God's Speed to you Wayne - wish it wasn't so soon.
Wayne Hale did not leave because of Obama, turn off the Talk Radio and use your heads for once.
When asked whether the Shuttle should keep flying he said it was too late to change course. I believe he should say clearly whether he thinks it was right for Bush to terminate the Shuttle program (for nothing, as it turned out) after Hale and so many others had actually made it work. If the decision to cancel Shuttle was right, he should explain why we even returned it to flight. If the decision was wrong, he should admit it was a mistake. One of NASA's biggest problems is that there's no serious discussion of policy even when it makes no sense.
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