Hot Seat Makes a Good Fit for NASA’s Shuttle Manager

Ron Dittemore, the manager of NASA’s space shuttle program, has a tough job. Since Saturday, it’s gotten a lot tougher.

“As the manager, he’s responsible for the most complicated space vehicle in the world, from the nose cone to the tail,” said a good friend, Bruce Hilty, a top-ranking NASA official.

On Saturday, Dittemore became NASA’s face to the world, the man who has to sit before reporters and cameras, day after day, explaining the agency’s decisions, some hotly questioned, that preceded the final, doomed mission of the spacecraft Columbia.

Those questions are often pointed and antagonistic, but most reporters and officials agree that his answers, careful and well considered, have been candid and straightforward.

“He can always admit when something is screwed up,” said another friend, Gary Coen, a former NASA official who hired Dittemore for his first job with the agency more than 25 years ago. “He’s a straight guy.”

For the 50-year-old Dittemore, the crash of Columbia was a tragedy both professional and personal. To him, the seven astronauts who died were more than business colleagues. He frequently refers to them as family.

Dittemore admitted to the news media Monday that it hasn’t been easy.

“As long as I’m at work, I can stay pretty well focused,” he said. “The hardest thing I had to do was drive home Saturday, alone with my thoughts.”

What has helped the most, he said, is the support of family, friends and fellow professionals in the space program.

“What has been therapeutic for me at home is to sit down and read a lot of those e-mails,” Dittemore said. He said he is convinced he and the space program will recover from the loss of Columbia.

“Just like the Phoenix, we will rise from the ashes,” he said. “We’ll be the better for this terrible tragedy.”

Dittemore’s career has been a NASA success story.

Born April 13, 1952, in Cooperstown, N.Y., he was raised in Washington state, earning bachelor’s and master’s degrees in aeronautical and astronautical engineering from the University of Washington and marrying Shirley Ann Seibolts of Spokane. They have two adult children, Gary Dean, 25, and Nicki Rae, 24.

Dittemore’s first engineering job, in 1976, was with the Airsearch Manufacturing Co. in Arizona, where he was responsible for the design and testing of jet engines.

A year later, Coen hired him as a propulsion systems engineer at the Johnson Space Center in Houston.

“I never regretted it,” Coen said. “Any time you asked him to do something, he could do it.”

After eight years as a propulsion engineer, Dittemore began moving up.

In 1985, he was named a shuttle flight director, overseeing critical aspects of at least nine spaceflights until 1992. In 1993, he was named a deputy manager. In 1997, he was given responsibility for certification and operation of shuttle vehicles, and in 1999 he took over his current job, handling the overall management of the space shuttle program.

He doesn’t pass the buck.

A lot of attention has focused this week on a chunk of fuel tank insulation that apparently struck Columbia’s left wing on liftoff. The incident was at first considered a likely suspect in the crash, and controversy arose when Dittemore told reporters that engineers reviewing film of the glancing blow several days after the takeoff had decided it was inconsequential and, in any case, nothing could have been done about it.

“I’m the accountable individual,” Dittemore told reporters. “Ultimately, it’s my decision.”

It seems increasingly likely that it was the right one too. Evidence cited by Dittemore on Wednesday indicates that the cause of the crash lies somewhere else, as yet undiscovered.

His friends said that was typical of Dittemore.

“What you see is what he is,” Hilty said. “He wears himself on his sleeve.”

What you see is a rather serious-looking man in a conservative business suit -- tall, slim, bespectacled, with gray beginning to fleck his dark brown hair.

He’s something of a techno-nerd, salting his presentations with terms like “outgassing” and “popcorning” that leave many reporters glassy-eyed.

Coen said Dittemore is a religious man, a devout member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

“We used to have kind of wild parties,” Coen said. “Ron would show up for 10 minutes, and then he’d go home. He’s not a party animal.”

Milt Heflin, NASA’s chief flight director, described Dittemore as “logical, analytical.”

“He’s probably as good as anybody at knowing what not to go do and what to concentrate on,” Heflin said. “That’s a great strength for what is happening now for NASA. He is determined to get to the bottom of this while showing the public what is going on.”

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Times staff writer Scott Gold contributed to this report.