Gary Kitmacher is from NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston Texas.  Mr. Kitmacher serves as the Space and Life Sciences manager for Space Flight Safety and supports Space Station and Shuttle missions and commercialization initiatives.  Mr. Kitmacher has served in several capacities since coming to the space center in 1981.

During the Shuttle-MIR program, he was the U.S. manager responsible for the last MIR module, Priroda, and directed integration and operations on MIR.  He led U.S. efforts to develop, certify and integrate systems and payloads on MIR.  One of the systems developed at his direction is the logistics system now in use for International Space Station.  Previously he worked in the commercial Spacehab program and managed the STS-60 Spacehab 2 mission.  During the design and definition stage of the Space Station, he was the Man=Systems system architectural control agent and later applied this experience to the design of manned Moon and Mars habitats, rovers, and landers.  In 1985-86 he served as the subsystem manager for Space Shuttle Crew Equipment and Stowage.  Mr. Kitmacher has Masters and Bachelors degrees in Management, Geology, Astronomy, and Education and is an Adjunct Professor in the University of Houston School of Business teaching a course in the commercialization of space technology.  Mr. Kitmacher is married and resides with his wife and daughters in Houston Texas.

Recent Technical Papers:

Design of the Space Station Habitable Modules.  AIAA 2002

Entrepreneur’s Guide to Human Space Flight.  NASA 2002

Photography on the Apollo 11 Mission.  NASA Headquarters History Office 1999

Flight Hardware Acceptance for the International Space Station Program.  NASA 1998

NASA-MIR, Mission Science, Operations and Integration.  NASA JSC 1997