Kathy Lueders Retires And Ken Bowersox Will Replace Her
Pictured left to right; NASA’s Kathryn Lueders and Ken Bowersox. Credits: NASA
NNASAWatch
Keith’s note: According to NASA PAO “Kathryn Lueders, associate administrator of NASA’s Space Operations Mission Directorate, announced Monday she will retire from the agency at the end of April. Lueders’ current deputy and astronaut, Ken Bowersox, will become the new head of Space Operations, effective Monday, May 1.” More
5 responses to “Kathy Lueders Retires And Ken Bowersox Will Replace Her”
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So Lueders retires after fewer than three years at the helm, to be replaced by an astronaut. Lori Garver’s book is echoing in my head. What’s going on? Several possibilities occur to me, but I’d really rather see better-informed comments than what I can offer. Any sense of what’s going on here, Keith?
Or maybe Kathy just wants to spend more time with her grandchildren. Sometimes it is just simple as that.
She has worked there for 30 years. How long does she have to stay in your opinion?
My thoughts were more on the brief tenure at the top. Speaking for myself, I’d want to stay longer once I reached that point, to better ensure that my priorities and philosophy had gained enough of a foothold to have some durability. There was a sense, when she was appointed, that they were taking a bit of a chance, not perhaps making their first choice of the usual astronaut in that position. Her early departure from that position makes me wonder what the direction of NASA in human spaceflight will be after her departure. Is the move to a new way of doing business irreversible at this point, or will things drift back toward big slow-moving projects on cost-plus contracts that never really get anywhere? I see Kathy Lueders as perhaps the key player in pushing NASA into a new way of doing business among the current drop of administrators. With her and Dr. Z gone, I’m concerned about what will come next.
The whole reorg and split so she wasn’t heo head was always kind of a slap in the face to her abilities for some of us. There are rumors that her retirement was forced upon her. She is big advocate of commercial and let’s be honest nelson is clearly in the SLS and Orion must not be challenged camp.