NASA Management Wants a Word and Won't Say Why

Arthur T Knackerbracket writes:

https://www.theregister.com/science/2026/06/15/nasa-management-wants-a-word-and-wont-say-why/5255702

We've all seen it: an unexpected management meeting that turns up in your calendar. It could mean HR wants a quiet and perhaps terminal word, or, in the case of NASA, something altogether different.

During a chat with Space.com, NASA astronaut Bob Hines explained that the meeting was engineered to ensure all five Artemis III astronauts would be in the same room together and introduced face-to-face.

The process space NASA uses to select astronauts has long been shrouded in mystery. The first American man in space, Alan Shepard, recalled in Light This Candle that his assignment to the Mercury 7 - the first batch of NASA astronauts - came from a caller who said, "We'd like you to join us. Are you still willing to volunteer?"

Shepard later learned he would be the first American man in space during a meeting with fellow astronauts Gus Grissom and John Glenn, plus the Director of the Space Task Group, Bob Gilruth. Gilruth said, "Alan Shepard will make the first suborbital flight." Several factors went into that decision, including the seven Mercury astronauts rating their peers.

In his memoir, Riding Rockets, Space Shuttle astronaut Mike Mullane recalled receiving a summons, along withfour crewmates, to the office of then Director of Flight Operations, George Abbey.

In that meeting, Abbey apparently asked: "We've been looking at the mission manifest, and think it's time to assign some more crews. I was wondering if you would be interested in STS-41D?"

The whys and wherefores were unimportant. The astronauts were just delighted to get an assignment.

These days, an unannounced management meeting with invitees a person might not normally see on a request is apparently how things are done. How those invitees are picked, however, remains a little opaque.

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