Biography|Michael Suffredini — The August He Took Charge of the International Space Station

In August 2005 William H. Gerstenmaier named Michael Suffredini manager of the International Space Station Program.

Suffredini had been deputy program manager at Johnson Space Center since August 2004.

The SpaceNews notice ran on 15 August 2005.

The job he inherited was not a finished laboratory.

Columbia had been lost in February 2003.

Shuttle flights that carried station segments were only just returning.

Assembly still had years to run.

He held the chair for ten years, longer than any predecessor.

In that decade the station reached a permanent six-person crew, the last American segments went up, and the shuttle fleet retired in 2011.

After the orbiters stopped, American crews rode Soyuz until commercial crew vehicles were ready.

Suffredini's office was responsible for design, manufacture, testing, partner interfaces, and the daily fact of a crew on orbit.

NASA and CBS both record that Kirk Shireman was named to succeed him in August 2015.

Suffredini left the agency in late 2015.

The 460-metric-ton station he handed over was no longer a construction project.

It was a laboratory the agency now expected commercial firms to help use.

That sentence is the hinge to the company he founded the following year.

Photo: NASA / Robert Markowitz, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons