This guy has no space related qualifications. He’s not an astronaut. He’s not an astrophysicist. He never worked for NASA in any way. He was never a scientist of any kind. His degrees are in Economics, Psychology, and Business. He served in the Navy flying an E-2 Hawkeye, a large propeller plane, “in support of the War on Drugs” according to the Wikipedia; not a supersonic aircraft, not capable of breaking the sound barrier or flying near orbit; not requiring the skills of an advanced aviator. He is a career politician and has done nothing relating to space other than serving on a Congressional committee for it. NASA is not going anywhere other than the ground with this guy. It’s up to MUSK to reach space. Flake is also a bitch.
James Webb, who served as NASA Administrator from 1961 to 1968 – a period of time when NASA undertook a somewhat large project you might possibly have come across in your reading – also was “not an astronaut,” “not an astrophysicist,” “never worked for NASA in any way,” and was “never a scientist of any kind.” He was a Marine Corps pilot for two years, flying propeller planes which were “not a supersonic aircraft, not capable of breaking the sound barrier or flying near orbit; not requiring the skills of an advanced aviator.”
Is it your position that Webb was also a spectacularly bad choice?
Your point is well taken, except for the part about “never worked for NASA”. NASA was founded in 1958, so it’s not particularly relevant to say someone “never worked for NASA in 1961” vs someone never worked for NASA in 2018.
As for the OP, this sounds more like a rant than a debate. Can you clarify what the debate is?
Alright, you’re not wrong, the example of Webb proves that someone doesn’t have to have a space related background to be good for the job. Yet, from looking up Webb, he had a more impressive resume before being selected to run NASA, than this Bridenstine character.
"With Webb’s assistance, Pou was influential in pushing through the first legislation of Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal during the first hundred days of Roosevelt’s term. "
“As a result of their interactions, Morgan hired Webb as the personnel director and assistant to the president of Sperry. Between 1936 and 1944, Webb became the secretary-treasurer and later the vice president of Sperry. During his tenure, Sperry expanded from 800 employees to more than 33,000 and became a major supplier of navigation equipment and airborne radar systems during World War II.”
“President Harry S. Truman next nominated Webb to serve as an undersecretary of state in the U.S. Department of State, which he began in January 1949. Webb’s first assignment from Secretary Dean Acheson was to reorganize the Department, adding 12 new Presidential appointees and reducing the power of subordinate officers. Webb also consolidated the flow of foreign policy information and intelligence through the secretariat. When the new organization became law in June 1949, the Department, which had been losing power and influence to the military, strengthened its ties to the President.”
“On 25 June 1950, the North Korean Army invaded South Korea. Webb and Secretary Acheson and devised three recommendations: involve the United Nations, send the Navy Pacific Fleet into the Yellow Sea, and authorize an Air Force strike on the Korean tanks.”
This sounds just a little bit more experienced in getting shit done, than Trump’s appointee, doesn’t he? You can’t really argue against that, can you?
Before you get too hard on the E2, it’s a turboprop. Jet engines spin propellers. It’s the plane that has the dome on the top, that’s radar. Made by Grumman I think. They use that plane direct airstrikes, then they return that beast to, and land on, the aircraft carrier they left hours earlier. So, that alone qualifies him as one of the best pilots out there. Hard to fault a man who served his country being shot off an aircraft carrier for never being in space.
At the time James Webb was nominated, there were few people who were “space professionals”, and none at the level of experience to be an administrator who were not previously engaged in large scale military programs which is something that Kennedy wanted to avoid the apperance of with his civilian space agency. Webb had previously served in budgetary roles and as an Undersecretary of State, so while he had no space policy background (and neither did anyone else) he brought experience with large scale administration and budget management, and was ably supported by Hugh Dryden and Robert Seamans in their previous experience with NACA and NASA.
The genuine criticisms of Bridenstein, aside from his relative in experience in space exploration and technology aside from serving on the House Committee on Science, Space, & Technology, are his ethics issues, his flat denial of global climate change and criticism of NASA doing any kind of Earth climate surveillance, and his insistence of privatization of space exploration activites. (Never mind that operation of the Space Transportation System (“Shuttle”) and the forth coming Space Launch System is being performed by the United Space Alliance is a private contractor responsible for nearly all parts of vehicle integration.) Given the crucial role of NASA in performing Earth and space weather surveillance in partnerships with NOAA and the USGS, his refusal to acknowledge the scientific validity of what the vast majority of climate scientists agree is a real, measureable, and progressing phenomenon is enormormously problematic.
Elon Musk may be an enthusiast about Mars, but this does not translate into other important aspects of space exploration and technological innovation in general (nor is Musk’s “goal” of colonizing Mars a sensible use of effort and money, but that is another discussion). NASA is to date the only agency to launch missions to the outer planets (in conjunction with ESA for Cassini-Huygens), the only agency to successfully explore the surface of Mars, and the one of only two agencies to operate multiple orbiting observatories covering wide areas of the spectrum not available to terrestrial observatories. NASA has and continues to perform ground-breaking observations of solar activity and phenomena, and operate the only network capable of deep space communications for missions beyond Jupiter. NASA also has many ground test facilities which are unique and unlikely to be replaced by any commercial entity, several of which SpaceX has used in testing and certifying the Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy vehicles.
Whatever your opinions are about what the role of NASA should be going forward, it has crucial capabilities and operates unique missions that are not going to be fulfilled by any other government agency or commercial entity in the foreseeable future, and a qualified administrator should be focused on ensuring that the agency is providing maximal scientific benefit for its budget. There is no indication that Bridenstein has either the experience or objectivity to do that. But hey, it could be worse; we could have gotten Ben Carson for NASA Administrator, and he’d spend his time proving that the universe is only six thousand years old and trying to prove that the Egyptian pyramids are actually grain siloes. So…there’s that.
What impressed me about Webb’s background was his time at Sperry. Since much of the NASA job at the time was dealing with contractors, someone with experience on the inside of a contractor was very valuable. That doesn’t discount his other excellent qualifications.
Look, I’m not denying it’s a highly skilled job, and I was maybe selling him too short by saying “it doesn’t require the skills of an advanced aviator.” I only even brought it up in the first place to pre-empt the people who are inevitably going to try to defend him by saying, “hey, he was a Naval Aviator, just like Alan Shepard, hey, Navy, planes, space, astronauts, see, he does have credentials.”
Yes, this is another part of it that I didn’t even mention in the OP (although the linked article brings it up), but I should have, because it’s important. There is a general scientific consensus that climate change is a serious issue with dire consequences, and to go against that, in this day and age, is comparable to believing in “phlogiston” and “humours.”
AIUI, Flake was a “no” vote and VP Pence would have cast the tie-breaking “yes” vote, but was unable to make it there. Flake was convinced to flip based on his vote being ultimately irrelevant whenever Pence was able to get in to cast his vote.
(Note that I added the "question’ and “answer” tags for clarity.)
As I read that, he doesn’t “deny” change. He questions just how much human influence contributes to the phenomenon, but doesn’t question (a) that it’s happening, or (b) that there is some aspect of human behavior that affects it. He just questions how string the human aspect is.
He also argues that even if human activity is as influential as the current estimates indicate, the US is not the only group of humans, and points out that we’re not the nation with the biggest carbon footprint:
Can you share what specific factual disputes you have with those statements, if any? As I read that interview, it does not support your claim of “flat denial of global climate change,” or include “criticism of NASA doing any kind of Earth climate surveillance.”
You should had know already, with so many past discussions on the issue, that by now the position of “continue to study” and “we are not sure about how strong the human contribution is” are delaying tactics and current talking points coming from climate change deniers.
That “Climate’s changed before” is also one of the main boilerplate contrarian talking points that has been replied to many, many times in the past:
But he (Bridenstein) doesn’t say that humans aren’t a factor in today’s climate change; he questions to what degree human activity is involved. Are humans 98% responsible? 80%? 50%? 15%?
Sorry, yours is the ineffective refutation. As noted the intention of guys like Bridestein is to delay action by questioning the human factor, to unnecessary levels after all the research that has been done.
What you forget is that current deniers do want to repeat refuted talking points like that because they do know that there are many out there that still believe in those delaying talking points.
Very few Republican senators aren’t. Flake, McCain, Paul, and half a dozen others sound almost reasonable about half the time when the cameras are on, but then vote along with Trump anyway. The rest sound crazy all the time, and vote along with Trump.