Roy S. Estess | |
---|---|
Born | January 5, 1939 |
Died | June 25, 2010 |
Occupation(s) | Test engineer, Director of Stennis Space Center, Acting Center Director of Johnson Space Center |
Roy S. Estess was the fourth director of the Stennis Space Center (SSC), having held a variety of managerial positions at the center that prepared him to lead the facility during the dynamic years of the 1990s. Estess, a native Mississippian and a graduate of Mississippi State University, came to the center as a Apollo Program Engine quality control engineer in 1966 and worked his way up through the ranks to the Director of the Stennis Space Center.
During his early years in key positions at the facility and while serving on temporary duty at NASA Headquarters, Estess came to be known as a "straightshooter." Many describe him as a no-nonsense manager who has the ability of cutting through the chaff to get to the heart of a problem or situation.
His first assignment at SSC, known then as the Mississippi Test Facility, was as a test engineer working on the Saturn V S-II second stage test program, part of the Apollo Project. When the facility's manager, Jackson Balch, began diversifying the installation in the early 1970s, he assigned Estess to serve as one of his marketers. Balch tasked Estess with searching for new and compatible federal and state agencies to share in the vast facilities and diverse programs starting up at the center.
Estess was then named head of the Applications Engineering Office that related to the new agencies and the public sector. He later served as deputy of the Earth Resources Laboratory (ERL). His organizational and management skills were further developed during his tenure as director of the Regional Applications Program (RAP). The RAP was an innovative approach to assist the 17 Sun Belt states in the application of remote sensing technology to resource planning and management. Estess was selected as the center's deputy director in 1980 when the facility was known as the National Space Technologies Laboratories (NSTL).
As deputy director, from 1980–1989, Estess was asked to handle several significant tasks that led to the further development of the center. He served for three years as the Agency's Equal Opportunity officer, interim director of the ERL, and completed the Advanced Management Program at Harvard School of Business.
In 1989, he was named Center Director of Stennis and served in that role until 2002. He also served as (acting) Center Director of Johnson Space Center. [1]
David Cornell Leestma is a former American astronaut and retired Captain in the United States Navy.
John McCreary Fabian is a former NASA astronaut and Air Force officer who flew two Space Shuttle missions and worked on the development of the Shuttle's robotic arm. He later led the Air Force's space operations.
Roy Dubard Bridges Jr. is an American pilot, engineer, retired United States Air Force officer, test pilot, former NASA astronaut and the former director of NASA's John F. Kennedy Space Center and Langley Research Center. As a command pilot, he has over 4,460 flying hours, and is a decorated veteran of 262 combat missions during the Vietnam War. He retired as a U.S. Air Force major general, last serving as the Director of Requirements, Headquarters Air Force Materiel Command, Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio, from June 1993 until his retirement. He is married with two adult children.
Kenneth Donald Cameron, , is a retired American naval aviator, test pilot, engineer, U.S. Marine Corps officer, and NASA astronaut.
The NASA Exceptional Achievement Medal is an award of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration established in 1991. The medal is awarded to both civilian members of NASA and military astronauts.
Miguel Rodríguez is the Chief of the Integration Office of the Cape Canaveral Spaceport Management Office.
James Robert Thompson Jr., known as J.R. Thompson, was the fifth director of the NASA Marshall Space Flight Center located in Huntsville, Alabama. He served as director from September 29, 1986, to July 6, 1989. Thompson also served as NASA's deputy director from July 6, 1989, to November 8, 1991.
Daniel R. Mulville is an American engineer who served briefly as Acting Administrator of NASA in 2001.
Gerald D. Griffin is an American aeronautical engineer and former NASA official, who served as a flight director during the Apollo program and director of Johnson Space Center, succeeding Chris Kraft in 1982.
William H. Gerstenmaier is an aerospace engineer and policymaker who is Vice President, Build and Flight Reliability at SpaceX. He previously served as NASA's Associate Administrator for Human Exploration and Operations between 2005 and July 10, 2019. While in that role, he was described as "arguably the most influential person when it comes to US spaceflight." Prior to being Associate Administrator, Gerstenmaier served as the International Space Station Office Program Manager, at Johnson Space Center, a position he began in June 2002. He spent a total of four decades with NASA.
Axel Roth was born in Darmstadt, Germany, on October 25, 1936. He was the son of Ludwig Roth, an original member, of the German Rocket Team. He survived World War II, RAF bombing of rocket development facility at Peenemünde, Germany, August 17–18, 1943, known as Operation Crossbow. He arrived in the US in New York City, NY in 1946, a year after his father arrived there as part of Operation Paperclip, aboard a converted troop transport. He moved first to Ft. Bliss, Texas, and then to Huntsville, Alabama in 1950 when the German Rocket Team was relocated to Redstone Arsenal, Alabama.
Robert M. Lightfoot Jr. is former Acting Administrator of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), serving from January 20, 2017 until April 23, 2018. Succeeding Charles Bolden, Lightfoot became the space agency's acting Associate Administrator on March 5, 2012. That job became permanent on September 25, 2012. He had previously served as the eleventh Director of the NASA Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, from March 2009 until his promotion in March 2012. On March 12, 2018 he announced his retirement from NASA effective April 30, 2018.
William W. (Bill) Parsons is an American engineer. He served as the ninth director of NASA's John F. Kennedy Space Center, and as the fifth and seventh director of NASA's John C. Stennis Space Center.
JoAnn Hardin Morgan is an American aerospace engineer who was the first female engineer at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) John F. Kennedy Space Center and the first woman to serve as a senior executive at Kennedy Space Center. For her work at NASA, Morgan was honored by U.S. President Bill Clinton as a Meritorious Executive in 1995 and 1998. Prior to her retirement in 2003, she held various leadership positions over 40 years in the human space flight programs at NASA. Morgan served as the director of the External Relations and Business Development during her final years at the space center.
Arthur Eugene "Gene" Goldman is the executive director for Aerojet's Southeast Space Operations division. Before retiring from NASA in August 2012, he last served as acting director of the Marshall Space Flight Center located in Huntsville, Alabama. He was appointed as acting director effective March 5, 2012, following the promotion of the previous director, Robert M. Lightfoot, Jr., to Acting Associate Administrator of NASA.
Christine Darden is an American mathematician, data analyst, and aeronautical engineer who devoted much of her 40-year career in aerodynamics at NASA to researching supersonic flight and sonic booms. She had an M.S. in mathematics and had been teaching at Virginia State University before starting to work at the Langley Research Center in 1967. She earned a Ph.D. in engineering at George Washington University in 1983 and has published numerous articles in her field. She was the first African-American woman at NASA's Langley Research Center to be promoted to the Senior Executive Service, the top rank in the federal civil service.
Walter Charles Williams was an American engineer, leader of the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA) group at Edwards Air Force Base in the 1940s and 1950s, and a NASA deputy associate administrator during Project Mercury.
Stephen G. Jurczyk is an American engineer who served as the Acting Administrator of NASA. He previously worked at Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia.
Andrew John Stofan is an American engineer. He worked for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) at the Lewis Research Center. In the 1960s he played an important role in the development of the Centaur upper stage rocket, which pioneered the use of liquid hydrogen as a propellant. In the 1970s he managed the Atlas-Centaur and Titan-Centaur Project Offices, and oversaw the launch of the Pioneer 10 and Pioneer 11 probes to Jupiter and Saturn, the Viking missions to Mars, Helios probes to the Sun, and the Voyager probes to Jupiter and the outer planets. He was director of the Lewis Research Center from 1982 to 1986.
This article needs additional citations for verification .(December 2010) |
This article incorporates public domain material from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.