NASA Taps Ex-Astronaut to Head Spaceport

Bob Cabana toured NASA's massive Kennedy Space Center Vehicle Assembly Building 38 years ago, a young Navy midshipman awed by the enormity of Saturn 5 moon rockets on the eve of the Apollo 13 launch.

Then a 21-year-old honors student on a field trip, the future Hall of Fame astronaut couldn't have guessed he was destined to direct the nation's primary spaceport, as NASA winds down its shuttle program and revs up an American return to the moon.

"We had the 'gold badge tour,' and I remember walking through the VAB in the spring of 1970 with those Saturn 5 rockets stacked up to go to the moon," Cabana, 59, said Tuesday.

"I never dreamed I'd be an astronaut. You know, I held those guys in such high esteem," he said. "But I surely never dreamed I would be the director of Kennedy Space Center."

Now the director of NASA's Stennis Space Center in Bay St. Louis, Miss., Cabana will take the helm at KSC in mid-October, while his predecessor pursues a private-sector opportunity with a company that does classified work for the Department of Defense and U.S. intelligence agencies.

Current KSC Director Bill Parsons, 51, will take a job with Lockheed Martin Mission Services, which specializes in space and defense work that often requires what's known as Special Compartmented Information clearances from the federal government.

It's a world Parsons is familiar with. He worked on classified Department of Defense shuttle payloads early in his career before joining NASA in 1990.

The opportunity with Lockheed Martin came up, and Parsons decided he had reached the point in his career where he needed to decide whether to remain with NASA until retirement or pursue private-sector opportunities.

He opted for the latter.

"It was a very personal decision. It was a very difficult decision," Parsons said. "It just felt like it was the right thing to do, so I decided to go ahead and accept their offer, and let other people have a chance at running the Kennedy Space Center."

Parsons makes $168,000 a year as KSC director.

A veteran shuttle pilot and mission commander with four flights in space, Cabana has equally impressive experience in human space flight management positions.

He served as NASA chief astronaut, director of Flight Crew Operations, manager of international operations for the International Space Station program, director of NASA operations in Russia and deputy director of the International Space Station program.

Cabana also has served in "city manager"-type positions: He was deputy director of NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston before taking the center director post at Stennis.

"Bob has seen it all and done it all in human spaceflight, and done it with an open, collaborative style," NASA Administrator Mike Griffin said in a statement. "There is just no better teammate. He will be a terrific successor to Bill Parsons as director of KSC."

Parsons agreed. He's known Cabana — who was inducted into the U.S. Astronaut Hall of Fame earlier this year — for two decades, and thinks NASA could not have made a better pick.

"Bob Cabana is one of the finest. He will do a fantastic job," Parsons said. "I'm very, very happy that Bob has decided to take this on."

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