SpaceX Vice President Hans Koenigsmann is retiring, Elon Musk’s fourth job

CNBC, vice president of construction and flight reliability at SpaceX, is retiring, has learned about CNBC and has begun transferring his role to William “Bill” Gerstenmaier, the former NASA official who joined the company a year ago.

Koenigsmann said he was considering retirement and believed it was the right time to hand over the reins to Gerstenmaier. This emerges from a memo to SpaceX employees in late January that was seen by CNBC.

SpaceX did not respond to CNBC’s request for comment.

Koenigsmann, a German-born aerospace engineer, joined Elon Musk’s The company was the fourth technical employee in 2002 and has directed many SpaceX launches and missions. He received his doctorate in aerospace engineering and production from the University of Bremen and obtained his doctorate before joining SpaceX.

He was one of SpaceX’s most respected executives and a jack of all trades: overseeing launch readiness, reviewing the quality of rocket engineering and development, analyzing risks, and identifying and resolving issues identified before and after launch.

SpaceX relied on the technical know-how of Koenigsmann from the first rocket, the Falcon 1, for which it designed the avionics. He served as the chief launch engineer on Falcon 1 launches – a position that gives the launch director the final say on whether or not the missile is operational.

King man told NASA historians that he met Musk almost two decades ago during a rocket launch in California’s Mojave Desert.

“He came to my house for the interview because we didn’t have an office, nothing. We mostly did the interview in my living room, which I thought was really awesome because it tells you so much more when you go to someone’s house . You can look at the pictures, the books, everything, “said Koenigsmann. “SpaceX launched around the same time.”

In addition, Koenigsmann was responsible for introducing Musk to Gwynne Shotwell, who now serves as SpaceX’s President and Chief Operating Officer. Koenigsmann and Shotwell previously worked together as engineers at the small satellite manufacturer Microcosm.

Koenigsmann was awarded NASA’s Distinguished Public Service Medal in 2014, an award that is reserved for non-governmental persons as the highest recognition of the space agency.

His role will be filled by Gerstenmaier, who has been reporting to Koenigsmann since joining the company in February 2020. Gerstenmaier previously served as Associate Administrator for Human Exploration and Operations at NASA for almost 14 years, leading the agency’s human spaceflight programs. That was the culmination of four decades at NASA.

Gerstenmaier was recently at the SpaceX Mission Control Center for the record-breaking launch of Transporter-1. He sat on the Fight Reliability Chair (also known as Mission Assurance) for the mission, one person familiar with the role told CNBC.

Koenigsmann will initially become a technical advisor, he said in the memo, and work part-time to support SpaceX’s work on reliability and anomaly investigations. Koenigsmann described working for Musk as the honor of his life.

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