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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