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Shadowed By Controversy, NASA Won't Rename New Space Telescope
NPR ^ | September 30, 2021 | NELL GREENFIELDBOYCE

Posted on 09/30/2021 5:22:15 PM PDT by BenLurkin

NASA does not plan to rename its new $10 billion technological marvel, the James Webb Space Telescope, despite concerns about it being named after former NASA administrator James Webb, who went along with government discrimination against gay and lesbian employees in the 1950s and 1960s.

The space agency tells NPR it has investigated the matter and decided to keep the telescope's name as is, ahead of the long-awaited launch in December.

"We have found no evidence at this time that warrants changing the name of the James Webb Space Telescope," says NASA administrator Bill Nelson.

The powerful telescope, often viewed as the successor to Hubble, will be able to see light from the earliest galaxies in the universe and analyze the atmospheres of planets orbiting distant stars, searching for gases in the air that might indicate the presence of life.

But some people, while thrilled about the scientific promise of this telescope, have taken issue with naming it after Webb, who ran the agency during the key years when it was working to put astronauts on the moon.

Controversy erupts

Earlier this year, over 1,200 people, mostly astronomers or astronomy enthusiasts — including scholars who want to use the new telescope for their own research — signed a petition urging NASA to rename the telescope, saying that Webb seems to have been complicit in the purge of homosexual people from government jobs during his time in public service, including when he served in a high-level position in the U.S. State Department.

They cite evidence such as the interrogation of NASA employee Clifford Norton, who was fired in 1963 while Webb was directing the agency. "The historical record is already clear: under Webb's leadership, queer people were persecuted," the letter says.

"At best, Webb's record is complicated," says Chanda Prescod-Weinstein, a cosmologist at the University of New Hampshire who co-authored an article calling for the telescope to be renamed. "And at worst, we're basically just sending this incredible instrument into the sky with the name of a homophobe on it, in my opinion."

She notes that Norton was arrested for gay activity, interrogated by the police, and then picked up by NASA's head of security and questioned at the agency.

"I haven't seen evidence that Webb knew about this incident," she says. "But I think we have two options here: Either he was a wildly incompetent administrator and didn't know that his head of security was interrogating employees in NASA facilities, or he knew exactly what was going on and he was in some sense party to overseeing the interrogation of someone for being gay."

In response to the controversy, NASA opened an investigation "to examine Webb's role in government," but the agency has offered no other details about how that review was conducted or who evaluated its findings — other than mentioning that historians were involved.

"We've done as much as we can do at this point and have exhausted our research efforts," senior science communications officer Karen Fox told NPR in an email on Wednesday. "Those efforts have not uncovered evidence warranting a name change."

The lack of transparency is all the more troubling to Prescod-Weinstein.

"I have to tell you that I'm concerned that they have chosen not to be public about this," she says.

As a Black, queer person, she says, she wishes the agency would explain its reasoning, especially given the facts that have already been openly discussed.

"I'm basically a NASA fan girl," says Prescod-Weinstein, who adds that she is a member of multiple NASA collaborations and was in a NASA postdoctoral program. "And so this is particularly hard for me, to feel like I'm being gaslit by the agency that I have spent my career looking up to, and that I have committed parts of my career to."

How Webb ended up on a telescope

The decision to name this telescope after Webb was made by a different NASA administrator, Sean O'Keefe, who is now at Syracuse University. Like Webb, O'Keefe didn't have a background in science before coming to NASA, but rather he had one in professional management and administration.

He says in his field, Webb was a towering figure, who helped establish the National Academy of Public Administration and was a thought leader in developing the best ways of bringing people from diverse fields together to pursue ambitious goals.

When O'Keefe took over the top job at NASA, he says, everyone was referring to an exciting new space telescope that was in development as the "Next Generation Space Telescope."

"That's about as illuminating and exciting as, you know, whatever," says O'Keefe, who previously served as secretary of the Navy, a role that involves deciding on the name of ships.

He decided, after casual conversations with others at NASA, to name the new telescope after Webb. "There was no appointed group of commissioners to come up with a name," says O'Keefe, who said everyone he spoke with seemed to like the idea.

One astronaut told O'Keefe that NASA probably wouldn't have continued to exist if not for the way that Webb established the agency. And when the telescope's new name was announced, in 2002, The New York Times noted that astronomers didn't seem to care. They were mostly glad that the project had the support and attention of the agency's top officials.

In 2015, however, sex and relationship advice columnist Dan Savage wrote an article titled, "Should NASA Name A Telescope After a Dead Guy Who Persecuted Gay People in the 1950s?" Since then, there's been online debate about Webb in blogs and Twitter that has increased in the past year, as astronomers and historians have weighed in and the December launch date draws near.

"It's unpleasant to think that NASA's awesome new telescope, whose exciting capabilities underpin so many current and future careers, is named for someone who helped enact a campaign that ruined so many peoples' lives," wrote Lucianne Walkowicz, an astronomer based at the Adler Planetarium in Chicago.

To O'Keefe, all of this controversy came out of the blue. But he understands the concern.

"This is an important matter of history, to understand how it is we could possibly have tolerated the purging of talented professionals on the basis of their personal preferences," says O'Keefe. "That's just so objectionable. No question about it, and I applaud the effort to surface the visibility and awareness of it."

At the same time, he hasn't seen anything that convinces him that Webb was directly involved in demanding a purge of gay government officials or carrying it out. "To then suggest he'd be held accountable for that activity when there's no evidence to even hint at that — it is an injustice," says O'Keefe.

John Logsdon, a historian with George Washington University who knew Webb when he led the agency, says the NASA manager was a consummate Washington insider and "a product of the value system of his time."

"I don't think he took any particular actions that were unacceptable at the time," says Logsdon. "But in this new 'woke' world, they probably wouldn't be acceptable."

Prescod-Weinstein, meanwhile, believes that names of major scientific instruments like this one should convey the very best of what humanity can be.

For her personally, all of this brings up "the fight that I have had to have to be OK with myself as a queer person. And I don't think that that should be associated with the incredible thing that is the cosmos."


TOPICS: Astronomy
KEYWORDS: jameswebb; nasa; space; spacetelescope; telescope
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To: BenLurkin

What? A gubmit agency with b*lls?
Kudos, NASA.


21 posted on 09/30/2021 6:02:38 PM PDT by Da Coyote
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To: BenLurkin

Let’s just rename it after Robert Byrd.


22 posted on 09/30/2021 6:03:52 PM PDT by End Times Sentinel (In the conflict between the stone and the stream, the stream will always prevail.)
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To: llevrok
"At some point, you just have to tell all these whiners to go F themselves and move on."

They will NEVER "move on"... They are winning... Why should they?

There is only one solution...

23 posted on 09/30/2021 6:07:22 PM PDT by SuperLuminal (Where is another Sam Adams now that we desperately need him?)
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To: BenLurkin
So?,

Name it the Webb Hubbell 'Scope:

Chelsea and Rebecca Hubbell

24 posted on 09/30/2021 6:09:29 PM PDT by Paladin2 (Critical Marx Theory is The SOLUTION....)
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To: BenLurkin

The young, woke crowd is far more interested in the naming of the telescope, than the unutterable wonders it will reveal.


25 posted on 09/30/2021 6:14:11 PM PDT by simpson96
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To: BenLurkin

In mr. Webb’s defense: as a result the agency didn’t have a reveal of secrets by psychologically impaired queer, ala Bradley Manning.


26 posted on 09/30/2021 6:23:11 PM PDT by PhiloBedo (You gotta roll with the punches, and get with what's real.)
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To: Paladin2

That’s scary how alike they look.


27 posted on 09/30/2021 6:34:27 PM PDT by EvilCapitalist (Pets are no substitute for children.)
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To: EvilCapitalist

I had not seen that pic before.

All doubt I may have had before is forever flushed.


28 posted on 09/30/2021 6:43:05 PM PDT by Paladin2 (Critical Marx Theory is The SOLUTION....)
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To: BenLurkin

Webb, “Smaller, Faster, Cheaper.” LOL,

15 years behind schedule and 10 billion over budget. That damn telescope better work!


29 posted on 09/30/2021 6:59:06 PM PDT by jpsb
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To: BenLurkin
...You missed it.

I didn't...(heh)

30 posted on 09/30/2021 7:06:18 PM PDT by RckyRaCoCo (Please Pray For My Brother Ken.)
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To: Spacetrucker

Indeed! One funny comment deserved another!


31 posted on 09/30/2021 7:09:13 PM PDT by null and void (As usual, the GOP was either totally unprepared for the onslaught or complicit in the tyranny)
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To: EvilCapitalist

Where’s Bill in there?


32 posted on 09/30/2021 7:50:17 PM PDT by mcshot (What was once thought impossible is now here. The possibilities are frightening.)
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To: BenLurkin

being able to shove a practice cactus up your ass is by no means a qualifier for a job, outside the p0rn industry.

merit or GTFO


33 posted on 09/30/2021 9:49:34 PM PDT by sten (fighting tyranny never goes out of style )
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To: BenLurkin

I heard from a very good source some groups wanted to rename it to, “Large Orifice Space Telescope” (LOST)


34 posted on 09/30/2021 9:50:47 PM PDT by dragnet2 (Diversion and evasion are tools of deceit)
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To: twister881

Clever. First time I heard that one. Surprised though. It’s almost as it wrote itself.


35 posted on 10/01/2021 6:54:12 AM PDT by TheElectionWasStolen
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To: BenLurkin

Talk about wasting time on unimportant subjects, just to appease a perverted minority!


36 posted on 10/01/2021 7:45:24 AM PDT by Redleg Duke (“I’m not the olny one!”)
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To: BenLurkin; lightman

“Science” magazine, published by the leftist AAAS, and “Nature” magazine, published by the globalist Springer group, both have recent articles that say that the telescope shoild be renamed after all!

Here is the Nature article:

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-02678-1

The astronomers who have been protesting the name “James Webb” say that they intend to make trouble in various ways, in support of the “gay” cabal!!!!

Personally, I would like to be free of the horrible antics of the vile LGBTQs, especially in church! Christians should be free to worship without being horrified by these antics!! Scientists should also be free to pursue their research and teaching without having to bow and scrape to LGBTQs and feminazis!!!!


37 posted on 10/16/2021 10:31:38 AM PDT by Honorary Serb (Kosovo is Serbia! Free Srpska! Abolish ICTY!)
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To: BenLurkin

They could rename it the Christopher Columbus Telescope to avoid any controversy.


38 posted on 10/16/2021 10:34:38 AM PDT by Kickass Conservative (THEY LIVE, and we're the only ones wearing the Sunglasses.)
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