NASA - National Aeronautics and Space Administration

Credit: NASA Ames Research Center / Eric James
As part of NASA’s 50th anniversary, four former Ames directors provided a glimpse into the center’s colorful history during a Director’s Round Table held Sept. 16, 2008 at NASA Ames.

Ames Director S. Pete Worden invited four of his distinguished predecessors to return to the center to share some of their memories about Ames during their careers as director.

“Each of these individuals has made significant contributions to Ames and NASA and it will be interesting to hear about the challenges they each faced and the key contributions they feel they and the center made during their tenures as center director,” Worden said.

Held in the main auditorium, the Director’s Round Table drew hundreds of employees to hear remarks from former directors Hans Mark, Sy Syvertson, Dale Compton and G. Scott Hubbard.

Jack Boyd, Ames historian and a senior advisor to Worden who worked with each of the four former directors, gave a brief introduction and welcomed them back to Ames.

First up was Hans Mark, who served as Ames director from 1969 to 1977 and then as Deputy Administrator of NASA, Secretary of the Air Force and Chancellor of the University of Texas.

“I worked for him,” said Mark, pointing at Boyd. “They all worked for me – they just didn’t know it,” Boyd jokingly responded.

Sporting a jacket festooned with patches of various NASA missions that he bought in 1970 (despite being 38 years old, the jacket still fit perfectly), Mark noted that one of the major projects during his tenure, the Tilt-Rotor, which began with the XV-15 prototype at Ames and later evolved into the V-22 Osprey Tilt-Rotor aircraft that is still in use today by the U.S. Marines Corps.

Mark was followed by Sy Syvertson, who began his career at Ames in 1948 (“about 20 years after Jack”) conducting research in hypersonics and was named Ames center director in 1977.

Syvertson, who retired in 1984, recalled that in those early days, a three-bedroom bungalow cost only $5,000. He said he has always been impressed by the quality of the staff at Ames, “that started when I came to Ames in 1948.”

Compton joined Ames in 1958 and rose through the ranks of the center’s aeronautics and space sciences divisions before being named center director in 1989. He said during his tenure as director, he worked hard to bring the center’s facilities up to good condition, to improve the center’s project management capabilities, and to retain Moffett Field under NASA’s control after the U.S. Navy closed its naval base.

Hubbard arrived at Ames in 1987 and served in various project management and science mission management capacities. He served as center director from 2002 to 2006 and currently is a professor at Stanford University. He cited three “guiding principles” from his tenure, including achieving research excellence; maintaining a connection to space and staying grounded with Silicon Valley.

Following their brief remarks, the former directors fielded questions from employees, ranging from how they viewed Ames as a research center, to what it took to become a center director. They noted that it was a combination of “dumb luck”, doing a good job and being recognized for their hard work that led to their being named as center directors.

“If you’re given a job and do it well, promotions will come,” Compton concluded.
Michael Mewhinney
News Chief, NASA Ames Research Center NASA Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, Calif.