Who is James Webb? NASA notes
The man whose name NASA has chosen to bestow upon the successor to the Hubble Space Telescope is most commonly linked to the Apollo moon program, not to science.
Yet, many believe that James E. Webb, who ran the fledgling space agency from February 1961 to October 1968, did more for science than perhaps any other government official and that it is only fitting that the Next Generation Space Telescope would be named after him.
The guy was a titan of space exploration and the operations of NASA. So, of course
Good grief, now they want to Cancel James Webb, one of the biggest figures in astronomy and NASA https://t.co/jRbiH9V4ak
— William Teach2 ??????? #refuseresist (@WTeach2) October 16, 2021
From the link
A NASA advisor quit following the agency’s decision to keep naming a $10 billion space telescope after a former administrator who was the US undersecretary of state during the dismissal of gay and lesbian federal employees in the 1940s and 1950s.
Lucianne Walkowicz, who identifies as nonbinary, wrote an open letter to NASA’s Astrophysics Advisory Committee on Tuesday, saying that they were resigning as an advisor over the way the agency had handled a request to rename the James Webb Space Telescope.
More than 1,200 people, including Walkowicz, have signed an open petition calling for the James Webb Space Telescope to be renamed. The petition cited the persecution of gay and lesbian government workers while Webb was the US undersecretary of state from 1949 to 1952. This was during the period referred to as the “Lavender Scare,” when thousands of federal employees were dismissed or forced to resign because of their sexuality.
The open petition also mentioned the former NASA employee Clifford L. Norton, who was fired in the 1960s after NASA said he made a “homosexual advance” amounting to “immoral, indecent, and disgraceful conduct,” said a record of the case on Justia, a website that keeps online databases of legal cases. The incident that led to Norton’s dismissal happened while Webb was NASA administrator.
NASA’s decision to keep the space telescope named after Webb “sends a clear message of NASA’s position on the rights of queer astronomers,” Walkowicz said in the open letter. “It also speaks clearly to me that NASA does not deserve my time,” they said.
OK, bye. I will give Walkowicz credit for quitting, since most of these cancel culture SJWs like to make a lot of threats but never put their money where their mouths are. And, unsurprisingly, she has purple hair. And, if you check that open letter link, she wants to name it the Harriet Tubman Space Telescope for some reason. Mostly, though, she was simply on the NASA Astrophysics Advisory Board, so, wasn’t actually in an important position doing space stuff.
And, of those 1,200 who signed the petition, not many seem to actually work for NASA. Many are “astronomy enthusiasts”, meaning they have a telescope in their backyard. Most have nothing to do with NASA.
