What Qualified Bill Nelson To Be An Astronaut? Politics.
Trump’s NASA pick faces blistering criticism on Capitol Hill, Politco
“Nelson is the committee’s ranking Democrat. He’s also the only sitting congressman to have flown on the space shuttle and hails from the part of Florida that includes Cape Canaveral. During the hearing, Nelson said that Bridenstine’s “time as a pilot and your service to our country in the military is certainly commendable,” but he said it doesn’t qualify him to “make the complex and nuanced engineering, safety and budgetary decisions for which the head of NASA must be accountable.”
Keith’s note: Odd. Nelson overtly used his political position to force NASA to fly him on a space shuttle mission. His only professional qualification? He was a lawyer. That’s it. His (not so) secret astronaut nickname was “ballast”. If NASA can teach a lawyer how to be an astronaut then I am certain that a fighter pilot with extensive combat experience (just like 3 previous NASA Administrators and many, many astronauts), 3 terms in Congress, with a MBA can be taught to run NASA. Just sayin’.
Yep. These Congress-critters like Nelson are such shameless hypocrites.
Nelson insisted on the last pick as NASA Administrator. That was his choice that he forced on the Administration.. That was a disaster and left NASA far weaker than even at the time of his confirmation. Nelson has done much damage.
My memory not being what it was, I simply don’t recall the circumstances around the appointment of the General.
More to what I think is your point, though— are you saying that Sen. Nelson’s influence was improper? If so, was it improper because the results were poor?
My own sense is that Sen. Nelson hasn’t even been in the batter’s box this past decade or so when it comes to assuring a dominating spot for Florida as a home for space.
I’d rather see the best person for the job, someone who has some relevant experience and demonstrated pertinent ability. Someone who has thought about the issues and written their thoughts down and who can explain them coherently.
Nelson flew on Bolden’s crew, they got along great, Bolden once was an astronaut, so Nelson lobbied…Obama was ready to announce 2 or 3 others, but never had the chance thanks to Nelson.
There was no reason to think Bolden would make a strong NASA leader, certainly not his Shuttle experience. Read about 60 and Wake Shield, which wasn’t even the primary payload but the crew was so enthused that they wanted to fix it, and they disrupted every other activity on the mission. Thats the commander and lead flight directors not doing their jobs.
Prior Administrator who was an astronaut was equally bad. Most astronauts, especially out of the military/pilot side are simply not equipped to do the job. They like things in black and white, they like to know that if A happens, they do #1, B, #2. Sorry there is no procedure for Administrator.
With all the administrators we have had that people are ultimately dissatisfied with, what would we have had to lose if the “old boys” had given Garver a chance as administrator? Her vision was a future in which there might be no footprints on Mars but dozens and ultimately hundreds of people actually living and working in LEO. That required an emphasis on new developments that could make human spaceflight less spectacular but more practical, like the now-abandoned propulsive landing for the Dragon.
He is probably worried that Rep. Bridenstine has a new space background having owned one of the teams in the old Rocket Racing League. He is probably afraid he will not fully support the SLS and might delay it so those New Space upstarts like SpaceX and Blue Origins reach the Moon first 🙂
No, 3 people passed on being NASA admin before Charlie said yes (because Lori was part of the deal). The big fear is SLS will end in FY 2019 and it just might.
Do you mean they turned down the job because Lori was to be deputy? Or something else? As to the end of SLS, that would give an administrator considerable resources he could influence and choices he could make.
yes. Lori was part of the deal because of what she did for Obama during the election. Yes, ending SLS would free money for commercial alternatives. MSFC is no longer capable of producing a launch vehicle because civil servants are lacking experience and competence, sprinkled with corruption. SLS is on a slow and expensive death spiral. What could SpaceX, ULA or Blue Origin do with 3+ billion a year in new launch vehicle development funding? How many new rockets could we have?
Actually it was a little more complicated than that.
Hi Keith. Not saying you are wrong, but can you please give the exact conditions and timeline surrounding what you said – “overtly used his political position to force NASA” – what sort of clout or threat or persuasion did he have over the decision makers (i.e., “force”) at NASA regarding flying him? And why has no one else, excluding Glenn, done this since?
Jake Garn
Yea he used the same political arm twisting – but he also had an extensive amount of time piloting high performance fighter jets – more than many astronauts. Still, it was a joy ride.
Yes, but was exact “political arm twisting” was done, in either case, that “forced” someone in NASA to cave into such tactics?
Don’t forget, then Secretary of the Air Force Pete Aldridge was to fly as a payload specialist on STS-62A, the first polar flight of a shuttle from SLC-6. Political flights seemed to be the trend back then.
In fairness, ‘back then’ NASA was looking to broadening Shuttle’s mission; from the beginning it was thought that Shuttle would be available to ordinary humans at some point. (I hope I’m right here).
I’m not sure if the idea every went as far as “ordinary humans”, but the categories of mission specialist and payload specialist were intended to broaden the job. I’m not sure if you could really say flying congressmen was justified along those lines.
At the same time, flying foreign nationals for the sake international politics was a long-standing tradition in the 1970s to the 1990s, both in the United States and the Soviet Union/Russia. It that’s acceptable, flying congressmen for the sake domestic politics doesn’t seem so strange. But that doesn’t make them experts on spaceflight, any more than you’d say Mr. Tito would be by virtue of paying for an orbital vacation.
fcrary – I worked with many foreign nationals (Hans Schlegel for instance) and the ones that I knew earned their seats. Now some flew that might have been given an easier test (the Saudi astronaut comes to mind) but even he seemed competent. Now on the Salyut and Mir programs the guest cosmonauts joked about coming down with red hands – the doctors asked what happened and they were told that every time a guest cosmonaut tried to touch something a cosmonaut would slap their hand!
Was it Nelson who set the record for the most vomiting on a flight?
Rumor has it that Jake Garn had the nickname Barfin Jake – and he had lots of time in fighters.
Big difference between running an $18B Agency and ballast, Keith.
Yeah but if a MBA can’t be qualified who can. Honestly im sure no one is prepared for the work it might take to control NASA but in actuality 7 other people probably run the individual sites and NASA chief is just the man controlling the overview. Almost a year without an Administrator is no one controlling it!
Especially one with experience and knowledge of Congress. Unlike others he won’t try to be chief scientists but focus on the actual job of Administrator which is building public and Congressional support for NASA.
So, we really dont need someone in the position after all. Why fill it and waste the money? And if you cant have a person in it who has a true understanding of the big picture, a vision for the next 50 years, then you just have a high paid position wasting time and money – just something to think about.
So NASA can continue the current direction-less absorption of calendar days?
OK, that’s harsh, and not entirely true. What IS true is the need for leadership.
Isn’t that true with all the high paid government employees?
There were several people who got on Shuttle missions that had fewer qualifications than you would have expected. Other replies list several names that are often mentioned. One that we should throw in is Valeri Ryumin – who flew on STS-91. I understand that he did not fit in well, he did not get along with his crew mates, and he even didn’t speak English well.
I totally
Brian – you sound like you know what you are talking about but in the case of the Shuttle, ISS, etc – you do need people who can at least fake it. Think about spending LOTS of time with a group of people – crammed in simulators, going over procedures, etc etc etc. Then spending time in a very cramped Shuttle, and needing to be ready to react to contingencies at a moment’s notice. All of the people who flew – Europeans, Japanese, Canadians, etc all knew how critical teamwork was. Even if all of those people were hard to get along with at times, they were able to put aside a lot when they were on a crew. I have heard from many people that Valeri was NOT like that.
Few people think that it requires a high performance test pilot to be an astronaut – I worked closely with Rhea Seddon, Dave Wolf, Jay Apt, Ellen Ochoa. None of them are test pilots. Few people would say that a test pilot was the best astronaut – I said that they needed to put teamwork very high on their priority list.
Also you say that Soyuz and future US vehicles are highly automated. If you have been around you know that the people on a crew had better be ready to take over when the system gets to a point where the automation is not programmed to know what to do.
And Yet i give you all the Apollo astronauts to disprove that Tests Pilots make good Astronauts !
Big – could you re-write your comment so that we could know what it is you meant?
“Fitting In” is really important in the military where you have a firm fixed structure and where orders are expected to be followed. Military thinking and discipline is great if the mission is simple and everyone knows what they need to do.
NASA is not military and should not be unless you want big organizations all thinking alike, making zero progress and spending lots of money. If NASA is doing its job, then they rarely know what they need to do, based on what I’ve seen. The major failures of the space program, like Columbia and Challenger, are due to people all thinking the same and thinking that was alright. The way in which advances are made is when the thinking is out of the box, when there are stand outs, individuals making progress against the mediocre, average, run-of-the-mill, follow these directions standards of performance. I think that is what pilots and flight controllers do, but it is not how R&D makes advances, which might explain NASA’s problems the last few decades. The Shuttle probably put a few too many military minded thinkers into leadership positions, and all they knew how to do was follow orders from the top.
Fitting in is vital when it comes to actual spacefligfht. The crew is isolated and despite the verbal assistance from Houston they are on thier own physically. You hear about the disasters but quite a few minor and major emergencies have been averted by teamwork and coordination. Knowing what you need to do means knowing what you need to do as a group; they must be able to train together and fly together, both for months. R&D is different, they need people who can think out of the box, but they are on the ground.
Yes, but… I’m not sure how much of that cooperation and teamwork requires the military (strongly hierarchical) approach. From what I’ve read (and seen with unmanned spacecraft operations, although I know the dynamic is very different) dealing with a problem in flight involves four things. First, and immediately, stabilizing the situation. Then you need to figure out what went wrong, what to do about it, and then do whatever you decided to do. Some of those steps allow time for (and benefit from) much more back-and-forth discussion and debate than most military organizations tolerate. Diagnosing a problem isn’t a good place for top-down management.
As a guy who retired from 27 years in the Air Force – there are situations in many organizations that require instant action and don’t allow second guessing. Unfortunately many airliner situations, oil rig events, exploration in hostile climates, etc. The military does have those situations but they are few. Almost all situations in my military career allowed us to gather information and evaluate options before moving forward. But the idea of fitting in was more about the months of training and procedure development – where people need to allow give and take. And then the reality of living for days in a very cramped Shuttle. The Russians can do that but they have a notorious top down hierarchy – just read Dragonfly (about the Mir).
One other point. Nelson bumped Greg Jarvis off his original flight and onto Challenger. He died on that flight.
What qualifies Bill Nelson to be a Senator?
A fair number of Floridians who, like myself, took a look at the ballot and punched the least offensive chad.
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He’s of the swamp. He killed a NASA security consolidation initiative a few years ago that would’ve saved the agency $M’s because one of his major Fla donors didn’t win the contract. His pockets are lined with NASA pork. Fla voters need a reality check on many fronts.
Nelson was unwanted cargo that took the place of a real astronaut.
Check out Nelson’s state pension…$.52.000 a year…..how about pension from House of Representatives and Social Security….