Bridenstine Lists His Qualifications To Become NASA Administrator
Biographical Information Submitted by NASA Administrator Nominee James Bridenstine
“I believe NASA’s top three challenges are:
– Maintaining consistency and constancy of purpose while establishing a consensus agenda that can bridge multiple administrations regardless of party. This is essential to avoid resource-wasting program cancellations and maintain high morale both within the Agency and its contractor workforce;
– Maintaining and building international partnerships while ending dependency on unfriendly nations to avoid exploitable vulnerabilities;
– Bringing together traditional space companies and new space entrepreneurs into a comprehensive NASA vision to maximize resources and create efficiencies.”
“My committee assignments and subcommittee chairmanship placed me in a position of responsibility for oversight of America’s civil, commercial, and national security space. NASA is an incredible leadership and soft power tool for the United States of America. With NASA’s global leadership, we will pioneer the solar system, sending humans back to the Moon, to Mars, and beyond. This requires a consistent, sustainable strategy for deep space exploration. I am fully familiar with NASA’s role as a purchasing agent for NOAA and how critical this partnership is to protect lives and property. As a United States Representative from Oklahoma, I have led efforts to improve severe weather prediction and I have come to appreciate how complex Earth is as a system. NASA must continue studying our home planet. Unfortunately, Earth science sometimes gets pitted against planetary science for resources. This is not in the best interest of NASA, the United States, or the world. Mars once had a magnetic field, rivers, lakes, and an ocean on its north pole. At some point, Mars changed dramatically and we should strive to understand why. Studying other planets can inform our understanding of Earth. NASA must continue to advance both Earth science and planetary science for the benefit of mankind.”
–Mars once had a magnetic field, rivers, lakes, and an ocean on its
north pole. At some point, Mars changed dramatically and we should
strive to understand why.–
Isn’t largely explained by the lack of mass of the planet Mars- as is it’s about 1/9th of Earth’s mass.
Or it’s plate tectonic activity ceased and magnetic field diminished because it’s interior cooled.
Also our moon with it’s tidal force has helped keep earth interior warm.
I believe mars water mostly went below the Mars surface- because it could do this, as it lacked tectonic activity and the interior was cooler.
What has this to do with the Trump NASA Administrator candidate? Nothing.
We are all interested in other planets, and it’s quite possible that Mr. Bridenstine is as well. But we were not born yesterday. His statement indicates that he will try to divert resources from Earth observation to the study of other planets where NASA discoveries would be less likely to result in mitigation of global warming by regulations that might impact the fossile fuel industry. He likely has no choice in this if he wants the job.
Mass of Mars is 1/10 or 0.107 of Earth mass.
So 0.107 is closer to a ninth, no? If you’re gonna correct someone, best to be accurate?
Actually, the latest results, both from MAVEN and isotope ratios from curiosity, suggest most of the martian atmosphere was lost to space. To make it more fun, currently most of the loss occurs during extreme solar wind conditions and the current, average loss rate isn’t enough to remove all of the estimated, original atmosphere.
The current theory is that the Sun was once more active, and average solar wind conditions were once closer to today’s extreme events. That’s based on observations of other Sun-like stars. And, of course, all this depends on the fact that Mars didn’t have a magnetic field at the time it lost its atmosphere. Since it once had a global magnetic field, that creates an interesting timing problem. Mars must have lost its magnetic field before the early, active Sun calmed down. If its dynamo had lasted another 500 million years, Mars might be a very different planet. So, if you’re interested in the habitability of extrasolar planets, there are definitely some open issues.
Bridenstine’s statement is almost too political for my taste. What is he really supporting and what is he going to do? It is like he is trying to tell us he will do good, without telling us what he will do.
“Consistency and constancy of purpose.” What purpose? Is NASA’s purpose technological development? Is it spreading commerce into the heavens? Is it the creation and dispersion of new knowledge? Or is it flying exciting but useless missions? The people running human space flight wanted the latter-remember ‘Shuttle was a waste of time and ISS a waste of money’-both were big mistakes-remember the words of Griffin- and what they really wanted was to go somewhere to do exciting missions. So that was why they started Constellation. Use space to try to establish new commerce, create and disperse new knowledge? Remember it is the current management of ISS that cut funding to support science and eliminated space education because NASA’s job was to build the hardware and fly the missions. So we have an under-utilized ISS in orbit today with an ongoing but as yet undefined ‘Year of Education’. I guess that is someone’s idea of how to develop space commerce.
“Building international partnerships while ending dependency on unfriendly nations…avoid exploitable vulnerabilities” Bridenstine is probably trying to say ‘no more Soyuz seats’. Over the last 20 years if you look at the ISS program, that program has repeatedly gone the way of putting foreign nations in the role of building “US hardware” and providing services that at one time were performed by US people. Honestly, Soyuz seats are the least of my worries-why did we have Europeans building most of the US modules of the ISS? Do we even have the capability of building space modules in the US anymore? Did the ISS Program really save dollars by going this route? Why didn’t the US costs come down when they had foreign nations building and providing sustaining engineering for “US modules”? We are in an economically competitive environment and we ought to be putting US interests first in the economy of space. I think these are issues which have lowered morale-because we are no longer designing and building our own hardware, and have cost the US increasing numbers of dollars but which have rewarded our foreign friendly partners.
Bridenstine’s statement is almost too political for my taste…
Yes, it seems he going to more of bureaucrat, then say a visionary or CEO.
But as far as direction, it seems NASA going to explore the Moon and then explore Mars- a direction that Congress has signed on to.
And how fast, will be dependent on President Trump- and NASA doesn’t seem to be Trump’s highest priority. Probably more like get NASA’s house in order and go from there.
It’s important to remember his power as Administrator is limited by both the Administration and Congress so I really don’t understand why everyone is stressing over it.
He will have no options on SLS/Orion nor really on NASA Earth Science missions since those decisions will be made at a higher level (White House and Congress). Even if he was an advocate for climate change his power to do anything about Earth Science would be very limited.
Now he may be able to swing some money toward lunar exploration perhaps using New Space firms, or towards fuel depots, etc. but that is about it. Otherwise its pretty much watching the store until the next NASA crisis, which will probably be when something breaks on the ISS that serious enough to consider abandoning it.
Kinda late.