George Abbey

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George Washington Sherman Abbey was the Director of the NASA Johnson Space Center's Flight Crew Operations Directorate (FCOD) for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). He presided from the first group of space shuttle astronauts, the class of 1978 (commonly referred to as TFNGs--Thirty Five New Guys) up to 1988. He returned in 1996.

During his leadership period in the 1980's, he was despised by many astronauts because he never gave information about flight assignments to astronauts, he never discussed any issues with them, and he never attended the meetings. Richard "Mike" Mullane describes him in his book Riding Rockets as a "...midlevel bureaucrat...[who] had supreme authority over shuttle mission assignments. Morale suffered significantly under his despotic and secretive leadership style, and many astronauts came to loathe him." John Young, the chief of astronauts during this time, was said to resemble Abbey. Nevertheless, he can be credited with being the driving force behind the development of the International Space Station (ISS) during a period of turbulence following the financial crises affecting the Russian space agencies and was notable for allowing each selected astronaut to fly at least one mission.

He was succeeded by Don Puddy in 1989.

Director during both the Skylab space station project in 1973 and the Apollo-Soyuz U.S.-Soviet space cooperative venture in 1975; Director of Flight Operations 1976 to 1985; and Director of Flight Crew Operations until 1988, when he became Deputy Associate Administrator for the Office of Space Flight. He became Acting Director of JSC in 1995.

He has also served on important planning and policy boards, including the Synthesis Group, and was Senior Director for Civil Space Policy for the National Space Council, Executive Office of the President.

Prior to his NASA career, Abbey was a pilot and an officer in the United States Air Force, accumulating over 4000 hours of flying time. He earned a Bachelor of Science degree from the United States Naval Academy and a Master of Science degree in electrical engineering from the Air Force Institute of Technology.