William “Invoice” Gerstenmaier in his former role as NASA Associate Administrator for Human Exploration and Operations.
NASA/Invoice Ingalls
SpaceX is most effective a pair of months a ways off from its first strive at launching astronauts and the company has brought in one in all the basic consultants in human spaceflight to back it attain so successfully.
William Gerstenmaier, the previous chief of NASA’s human spaceflight program, has now begun working at SpaceX headquarters in Hawthorne, California, folks acquainted along with his hiring suggested CNBC. In his new role Gerstenmaier is reporting to SpaceX vice president of mission assurance Hans Koenigsmann, those folks said, because the company prepares to starting up up launching astronauts.
A SpaceX spokesperson confirmed that Gerstenmaier is a guide for the company’s reliability engineering crew.
Beforehand Gerstenmaier served because the NASA Associate Administrator for Human Exploration and Operations for almost 14 years. In complete he had a four decade occupation with NASA, engaged on programs starting from the Home Shuttle to the World Home Plight. Gerstenmaier is widely regarded as one in all the field’s high specialists in flying folks in house, typically testifying before Congress on the topic.
His circulate to private side of the house industry comes after Gerstenmaier modified into demoted at NASA in July, in a surprise shake-up of high management. A memo from NASA administrator Jim Bridenstine announcing Gerstenmaier’s reassignment did no longer veil the explanation for the swap, nonetheless merely thanked him for providing “the strategic imaginative and prescient for some of NASA’s most simple efforts.”
His hiring at SpaceX comes at a basic time for Elon Musk’s house company, which is planning its first starting up of NASA astronauts between April and June of this Twelve months. Called “Demo-2,” the mission would soar two astronauts in a SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule to the World Home Plight. It regularly is the principle time for the reason that close of the Home Shuttle program in 2011 that the U.S. has flown its have astronauts to accommodate.
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