Gerstenmaier Joins SpaceX as Consultant
CNBC reports that SpaceX has hired William Gerstenmaier, who formerly headed NASA’s human spaceflight program, to serve as a consultant for the company’s reliability engineering team.
The move comes as SpaceX prepares to fly its first Crew Dragon mission with astronauts later this year. The flight test is currently scheduled for the second quarter.
The crew plans to dock with the International Space Station (ISS). A successful flight would clear the way for certification of the vehicle to fly crews to ISS on a commercial basis.
Gerstenmaier was demoted from his position as NASA associate administrator for human exploration and operations last July over continued delays with the Space Launch System and Orion programs. He had served in that position for 14 years.
Gerstenmaier’s reassignment as a special adviser to Deputy Administrator Jim Morhard was his first step out the door. He left NASA in December after 42 years with the space agency.
38 responses to “Gerstenmaier Joins SpaceX as Consultant”
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That’s a canny hire by SpaceX and a telling choice by Gerstenmaier.
“over continued delays with the SLS” … what a truck load of bullshit. Doug, you should at least have added “claimed incompetence”. Why would SpaceX, of all organisations, hire someone who had proven to be incompetent? I have stated here and elsewhere (SpaceNews) the real reason(s) for Jimbo sacrificing Gerst and Hill at the altar of political expedience. 🙁
Gerst have to sign a NDA to work for anyone. He is limited by the SpaceX disclosure policy in whom he can talk to and about what without consulting higher up SpaceX management. AFAIK Gerst have nothing to do with public affairs at SpaceX.
That remains to be seen. But it’s certainly true that if one scruples to take the king’s shilling, one must do the king’s bidding. SpaceX may well decide that Gerst should play an occasional public role on behalf of SpaceX.
This could also be a poke at Boeing seeing as how he will be bringing his experience to SpaceX in the same area where Boeing seems to be having problems.
I don’t know if “poke” is exactly the appropriate word. But going aboard SpaceX is certainly an implicit acknowledgement that Boeing just isn’t that attractive a place to work in the wake of its manifold chickens coming home to roost. It’s hard to imagine that Boeing didn’t make a run at getting Gerst on-board, especially given all the times Gerst has rolled over for Boeing over the last several decades. But I think Gerst could plainly see that his role at Boeing could never be more than just another hand manning the pumps as the corporate ship continued to take on water. Being now at an age where a man tends to think more about his legacy, I think Gerst decided that he didn’t want his to be “Boeing’s doormat.”
Why are you claiming he was incompetent? He was at the center of many successful space projects.
SLS/Orion was forced on NASA with Congress telling NASA, specifically him, how and what to do. He could not fire boeing, or l-mart, etc. All he could was try to keep these companies on track, while they milk the hell out of America ( not sure who has stolen more from America: china, North Korea, Boeing, or l-mart ).
Haliburton
Reading comprehension please. Paul isn’t saying Gerst was incompetent in his executive role at NASA – that would be me. Paul thinks Gerst was terrific and that his dismissal was strictly political. I think it was deserved and long overdue.
Nor has Gerst been “at the center of many successful space projects.” He started with Shuttle but was hardly “at the center” of that. And Shuttle was, at best, a very qualified success. Same with ISS which has, on balance, been useful, but not to nearly the degree it could have been under better leadership. Then there is Gerst’s very unimpressive “management” of Commercial Crew and Constellation/SLS-Orion programs.
Examples of such would include his failure to ever hold legacy contractors responsible for failures and derelictions and to actually reward them in spite of same. The only contractors I can recall that got chopped on Gerst’s watch were Rocketplane-Kistler on COTS/Commercial Resupply and Sierra Nevada and Blue Origin on Commercial Crew. The beneficiaries in every case were members of the NASA Legacy Contractors Club.
SpaceX may well benefit from access to Gerst’s expertise, but only if he’s kept in a non-executive role.
What Gerst has quite unarguably proven incompetent at is project management. He’s hardly the only good engineer who has proven incompetent when promoted into such a role, merely one of the most high-profile ones.
But his engineering chops are apparently still good enough that Elon has said on a number of occasions that he talks to Gerst about engineering with some regularity. Now he can do it daily if he so desires.
So there’s no conflict between acknowledging the dreadful job Gerst did running HEOMD and his potential usefulness as a consultant – not executive – for SpaceX.
“Jimbo” dismissed Gerst from his long-time NASA sinecure for cause, not for “political expedience” – of which there was none anyway. Bridenstine’s dismissal of Gerst cost Bridenstine politically rather than helping him.
So there would seem to be no basis for any institutional bad blood between Bridenstine and SpaceX as it hasn’t hired Gerst to do the sort of thing that got him fired at NASA. The personal relationship between Gerst and Bridenstine will, I’m sure, be problematical in future, but I don’t expect SpaceX will be expecting him to interface directly with “Jimbo” much if at all.
Believe what you will, Richard, as will I. IMO, Gerst did as good a job as he could given the situations presented to anyone in that role at NASA. He fostered and promoted US HSF quite admirably. He lasted in the role for over a decade, during which, also IMO, he secretly encouraged as many non-OldSpace participants as he dared. When directed by Shelby to allocate all the funds to Boeing (“one supplier”, as it was put), he had to make a career breaking decision. IMO, he knew SpaceX/Musk desperately needed the financial support and that it was in the best interest of US HSF that two human rated systems be produced and, boy, has he been vindicated in that call. Regards, Paul.
Not, frankly, one of SpaceX’s more inspired hires. Perhaps Elon just wanted to eliminate him as a malign influence on the outside on the theory that it’s better to have Gerst inside SpaceX’s tent pissing out than to have him on the outside pissing in. As for Gerst, his SpaceX pay package is doubtless a nice bump up from his NASA wages and, with Boeing and the rest of legacy aerospace looking none too robust, perhaps he’s just disinclined to take another job where he might well find himself involuntarily treading water again.
Wonder if Musk has ever considered writing a few million dollar check directly to Shelby ( R-AL )
Won’t work. Musk have to located some major facility in Alabama as well.
He should dangle the Gigafactory for the Cybertruck in front of him. Lots more jobs than space.
Shelby would just renege.
There’s an old saying about danegeld and Danes.
I think Elon’s strategy anent Shelby and the rest of the Alabama Mafia is to run right over them in hob-nailed boots.
Who would be an inspired hire though? There’s nobody else out there more SpaceX than SpaceX themselves, so inevitably who they hire would have less SpaceXness. But SpaceX is not perfect, there’re things they’re still learning, such as how to win government contracts (see the EELV LSA loss, also the loss of Lucy), how to deal with NASA’s human spaceflight culture/bureaucracy (very useful now they’re preparing to launch astronauts), how to deal with international partners (could be very useful for future joint Mars missions), etc. Hopefully the new hire would be able to help SpaceX on these.
Wow. Just wow. So in your world, SpaceX is perfect, without any possible improvement ever. You, sir, need to transition back into the real world with the rest of us…
Not Invented Here: “But SpaceX is not perfect, there’re things they’re still learning,…”
Lee: “Wow. Just wow. So in your world, SpaceX is perfect, without any possible improvement ever.”
Reading comprehension doesn’t seem to be a core competency of far too many of the commenters here.
I think a lot of it is motivated reasoning. SpaceX makes my group look bad=SpaceX evil. ..I am vested in a company= it can do no wrong and will succeed….Just a short step to reading what is expected and responding to that.
Yes, as a consultant he would be able to help guide SpaceX through the NASA bureaucracy and also help with ESA.
Lolol
A likely scenario
🙂
I read elsewhere that Gerst will be a direct report to Hans Koenigsmann so it would seem utilizing Gerst’s engineering chops is going to be job one. Advising Elon and Gwynne directly on NASA and Congressional relations is probably unofficial job two. Perhaps SpaceX will even send Gerst out to represent the company before Congress or in other venues.
So long as SpaceX doesn’t make the mistake of putting Gerst in charge of running anything, the relationship might well prove fruitful.
After 42 years at NASA and a nice pension, whatever SpaceX pays him will be “mad money.” Best part of this is that it’s a poke in Bridenstine’s eye.
yes I am sure the latter is important
Hopefully, he will help SX working with Bigelow to get a private space station into leo. Put up several BA330s, and start training other nation’s astronauts for going to the moon. At same time, this helps get manifests sorted out by these private company.
Bigelow is not looking for a ride. He’s looking for partners. I don’t think Musk wants to be Bigelow’s partner.
Don’t bet on it. To go the moon profitablly, SX will need a lot more than just NASA as riders. And simple tourism will not work. A month in leo will likely cost some 30 m. A month on the moon is likely over 100 M. Damn few can afford that.
Given some reasonable development time, I believe prices could hit a tenth of that and still give decent profits. Others of course will suggest a tenth of my thoughts. After launch costs drop a lot and reliability is solid of course. At anything resembling current costs and risks, ain’t happening.
Maybe. I’ve seen the subject of Bigelow come up in Musk interviews perhaps three times. He had something tepidly nice to say on one of those occasions. Bob is a bit of a weirdo, what with the UFO stuff. Also, he’s laid off his entire workforce more than once, which is mercurial behavior. The latest thing is Bigelow’s decision to take a pass on the ISS module, ceding the foothold he already earned to Axios. Finally, there’s the Wayne Newton grooming habits. I’ve never been near Bob Bigelow, but I get the impression that he wears a lot of cologne.
More than once, I’ve heard Musk say that something that is he has come to regret on multiple occasions was hiring people for their talent and accomplishments but despite their character. Character probably counts for a lot in a business partnership as well. So maybe Musk will team up with Bigelow. He’s certainly a real character.
Interesting. Thanx.
a good choice for both sides…SpaceX needs some professional help and Gerst needs a job
As long as said help isn’t managerial in nature, SpaceX stands to benefit from Gerst’s expertise and experience.
As for the job, I can think of another organization that requires a great deal more “professional help” than SpaceX and it’s one toward which Gerst has shown a history of favoritism over the years. That he didn’t wind up there says some interesting things about Gerst’s personal estimate of where things are going to go over the remainder of his working life, how fast they’re going to happen and what they’d mean in terms of his own legacy – definitely an issue as Gerst is hardly a spring chicken anymore and probably expects this new tie-up to be the capstone of his career. I think he took a cold, hard-eyed look at the aerospace industry at large and decided that he’d rather spend his last few years in harness helping gin up the settlement of the Solar System than laboring at damage control in a flooding corporate engine room.
As long as said help isn’t managerial in nature, SpaceX stands to benefit from Gerst’s expertise and experience.
what do you think it is going to be? Kind words lol
No comment on this revolving door cronyism?
Gerstenmaier is a many of integrity, so we just give him a pass for this impropriety?
How big is the pool of experienced human (orbital) spaceflight project managers who aren’t associated with NASA?