David Radzanowski's first introduction to space was in his backyard in Pittsburgh during the summer of 1969. It was night, and the windows of his house, as in most houses, shone with a pale blue light as the television in the living room glowed. It was tuned to coverage of Apollo 11-the mission of Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, and Michael Collins. David, who was then only four, had followed his father out to the backyard. As the two stared up, his father pointed to the incandescent moon in the night sky and said, "See that? That's where they are."
So began a lifelong love affair with space for Radzanowski. It wasn't unusual for a child of his generation to want to be an astronaut-what was unusual was how long that dream stuck with him. As an adolescent, he remained glued to the television, watching coverage of the Viking 1 and 2 landing on Mars. As a teenager, he excelled in the sciences at the same time the Space Shuttle was being developed. As an undergrad at the University of Wisconsin, he declared his major to be astronomy-physics and cried along with the rest of the world as he watched the Challenger explosion.
One of his professors was an investigator with the Hubble program, and as Radzanowski followed the bureaucratic and engineering problems that plagued that project as it lurched forward in fits and starts, he thought, "There has got to be a better way to do that." The problem, he realized, wasn't scientific, it was managerial. Despite a lifetime of childhood dreams, he came to realize that it was not only the astronauts who made the shuttles fly and made missions succeed-it was the engineers and policymakers, too. He expanded his studies into public policy and management, finding himself back in Pittsburgh, pursuing a master's degree at Carnegie Mellon's Heinz College. After his first year, he landed a summer internship at the Congressional Research Service. A year later, he was an employee there and one of his first assignments was to write a memo about the mirror flaw in the Hubble Telescope for Congress.
Some 20 years later, Radzanowski (HNZ'90) finds himself the chief of staff to NASA Administrator Charles Bolden, who heads the agency. In a typical Radzanowski day, he might interface with the White House on public relations efforts, make sure a launch project is meeting its performance goals, or be the go-between for research scientists and Bolden on the subject of next year's budget. "I'm the guy people come to for getting things done," is how he describes his role.
It is an interesting, controversial time at NASA, as the agency moves away from the emphasis on manned missions, which once so captured Radzanowski's imagination, and moves toward a model focused on technology development, cooperation with private spaceflight firms, and partnerships with other countries. For Radzanowski, thinking about the future of space comes naturally-he has been doing it all his life.
