William Dowdell

William (Bill) Dowdell is the Deputy Director for Operations in the ISS and Spacecraft Processing Directorate at KSC.In June 1985 he got a job with Lockheed Space Operations as an Environmental Control and Life Support Systems Engineer on the space shuttle. Mr. Dowdell worked in the orbiter processing facility and at the launch pads on both ground support equipment and on the orbiter. Also got to spend some time in California supporting shuttle landings and working at Vandenburg AFB with the airforce to get the shuttle launch complex ready. In June 1989 he accepted an offer from NASA to go to work in the launch operations directorate as a NASA Test Director. Worked daily ops, worked as Landing and Recovery Director, and was promoted to Shuttle Test Director. Served in this capacity for over 2 years starting with STS 62 and concluding with STS 77. In 1996 took a job in the Space Station Hardware Integration Office. I spent much of the following 2 years in Canoga Park/Woodland Hills CA working with Rocketdyne on the Z1 and P6 Trusses.I was called an element or mission manage r. Our task was to bring human spaceflight hardware processing knowledge to the design/build effort and to help get the contractor ready for the final assembly and flight acceptance testing of these vehicles. It was a great learning experience from both a personal and professional standopoint. We became a team and built some great hardware that has been orbiting the earth and performing well since fall of 2000. He moved into a job as the technical operations director after launch of P6. Bill was responsible for the daily work effort and served as supervisor for the mission managers. In this position I have worked with the IPs to establish groundrules for how we will process their hardware, what services we will provide, and generally what they can expect when they come to FL. He also participated in the Acceptance Review process for NASA taking ownership of the vehicles the IPs built. I worked with ESA and their industry partners Alenia and EADS. This too was a great experience.