NASA Announces New ISS Program Manager
Kirk Shireman Replaces Mike Suffredini as International Space Station Program Manager
“William H. Gerstenmaier, NASA associate administrator for the Human Exploration and Operations Mission Directorate, has named Kirk A. Shireman as manager, International Space Station (ISS) Program. Shireman has served as deputy director of NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston since 2013. Shireman succeeds Michael T. Suffredini, who is leaving the agency to take a position in private industry.”
I’m glad to see some movement in the ranks. But I think their selecting a long time NASA/ISS engineer is probably not a good thing. ISS is long overdue in the areas of industry and commerce, utilization, research, manufacturing, earth and space environment observations, There were studies done decades ago that said a research laboratory needs a singular focus on utilization and yet ISS is long, long overdue in getting someone with these sorts of understandings into a leadership position. The technical management of the system might still be important, especially when there are technical problems, but that is no longer the kind of person who ought to be leading the effort. They’ve got plenty of engineers in charge: Gerstenmiaer in DC really still seems to do a lot of the day-to-day management of ISS and while he might be a decent technical manager, what NASA has really needed is a leader-they don’t seem to have a program or a goal or a plan today; They’ve got no shortage of technical deputies in Houston and around the agency. Their utilization and research group seems really weak; they need someone to drive utilization-it is the important thing today-it has really been the important thing for about ten years now, because the lead time to establish the utilization base is significant and assembly of ISS has been over for nearly five years. They should have had this in place long before assembly was complete. At an operating cost of $2 to 3 billion per year, they are wasting a lot of money operating a system that is not seeing very much utilization in virtually any area.
didnt we set up CASIS to focus on the whole utilization of ISS.
No signs that CASIS has had any real success after 4 years. They are part of that weak utilization effort.
CASIS is an obvious example of where a vibrant press could do some actual good.
This is actually pretty typical of the failure of human space flight management over the last dozen years. They choose friends for positions rather than selecting people with the appropriate experience to make the program a success.
Im just now reading the biography of George Mueller, Doing the Impossible, and reading about the care and thought and strategy and energy that went into the selection of every manager and the manner in which Mueller had to carefully integrate every individual manager into the team. When he could not find the appropriate types of individuals within NASA who had the right experience in industry, or manufacturing, or program control, he would look at companies, other industries, the military, anywhere he could go to find the right resume. Mueller attributes that care and strategy as the reason for Apollo’s success.
Those days are long gone from NASA. These days its just “promote a friend”. Program success, ‘not a critical need’, apparently.
Congratulations Kirk!
Good luck Kirk!
You will need it.
You have to substantially change the focus of your organization.
The future of NASA human space flight is dependent almost completely on your ability to make ISS a successful and productive research laboratory.