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I have been watching NASA with great consternation lately. The space agency has maintained its budget (which is good, in today’s world of brutal trench-warfare politics), however for 15 months NASA has had no leader and it seemed to be stuck in a holding pattern, unable to move forward on missions. Finally, in April, the President’s candidate for the position of head administrator was confirmed, Jim Bridenstine a fundamentalist congressman from Oklahoma who does not believe in global warming and opposes LGBTQ rights. He is the first non-scientist chief administrator in the agency’s history.
Bridenstein does however have a background as a Navy officer which is promising. It is possible he can put his more recent background as a divisive political agitator and an ignoramus behind him. His first major speech was somewhat encouraging: he reaffirmed the United States’ commitment to send missions to both Mars and the Moon in the not-enormously distant future. The historic first moon landing was 49 years ago and the last manned mission to the moon took place in 1972 (three years before Bridenstein was born). The new administrator compared these missions to the Lewis and Clark Expedition and went on to say it is time for NASA and private aerospace ventures to work on building a transcontinental railroad to space in the current era. That is a fine metaphor (although I don’t trust private aerospace ventures any more than people of the 19th century trusted crooked railroad monopolies). Bridenstein needs to back up his elegant words with real plans for NASA. Currently, the USA can’t even put a human in space, much less send one to the moon or another planet. Bridenstein needs to act quickly and decisively to show that he is not an agency head like Scott Pruitt, Ben Carson, or Jeff Sessions (which is to say a leader who embodies the opposite & antithetical values from the agency they were sent to run).
I liked your railroad metaphor, Jim, but you need to appoint a lot of smart people to organize a meaningful and coherent schedule for America’s favorite agency.
ferrebeekeeper 