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The aerospace community is shaken / electrified / stunned – choose your adjective – today, after the NASA boss suddenly replaced his two major manned flight planners, claiming it was time to take on new ones. responsibilities.
On Wednesday, Bill Gerstenmaier, head of NASA's HEO (Human Exploration and Operations Branch), and Bill Hill, previously deputy to Gerstenmaier, were dismissed. Both men were regular visitors to NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Alabama and aerospace conferences in Huntsville.
NASA's director Jim Bridenstine announced the changes in an email to NASA employees on Wednesday night. Bridenstine said he was acting "to meet the challenge" of landing a man and a woman on the Moon by 2024.
Gersstenmaier was responsible for NASA's accelerated efforts to meet President Trump's deadline for a lunar return, an objective announced by Vice President Mike Pence in Huntsville earlier this year. His deputy, former astronaut Ken Bowersox, is currently replacing Gerstenmaier. Bowersox will play an acting role.
No one has to wonder what the American and foreign aerospace community will discuss today. The topic of conversation will be the reshuffle and what it means for NASA and the return to the moon. Is the new moonshot program running? Go up a gear? Opinions will differ.
Gerstenmaier is highly respected in the space community. He has been with NASA for 42 years and was one of the leaders of the International Space Station program. His last job was leading NASA's efforts to build the new large space launch rocket called Space Launch System (SLS). This development is led by Marshall in Huntsville.
The SLS itself is born of a political controversy. Former President Obama canceled his predecessor – the Constellation program – after taking office for his first term. Congress has forced Obama to accept SLS as a way to keep NASA on a big rocket, but the program has been running on a tight budget since, partly assured by the presence of Senator Alabama's leader Richard Shelby on the Senate Credentials Committee. .
The SLS calendar has lengthened – another delay was announced earlier this year – and some voices have called for a pivot for private rockets like those developed by SpaceX. Another possible factor cited by Gerstenmaier's ouster is his support for the Gateway, a small space station scheduled for lunar orbit. The astronauts would go to the bridge and then go to the surface of the moon. Some critics want to jump the catwalk and return to the Moon directly as Apollo, while others want to build a mini-station in Earth orbit and use it to organize a lunar mission.
The aerospace press reports early today such things as "rumors have been circulating for a long time, that the White House is not a fan of the Gateway." But Gerstenmaier and Bridenstine support it.
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