Biden To Tap Bill Nelson To Lead NASA (politico.com) 44
President Joe Biden is expected to nominate former Sen. Bill Nelson of Florida to lead NASA, settling on a longtime booster of the space program to lead the agency's return to the moon, POLITICO reported Thursday, citing sources. From the report: If confirmed by the Senate, Nelson would lead the space agency as it partners with the new crop of private space companies to establish a long-term presence on the lunar surface in preparation for sending astronauts to Mars. A Senate staffer and a second source familiar with the decision told POLITICO that the administration has picked Nelson, and that the announcement will come on Friday. Both sources spoke on background because they were not authorized to speak ahead of the formal announcement. Nelson, 78, who himself spent six days in orbit when he flew to space in 1986 aboard the Space Shuttle Columbia, served as the top Democrat on the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee during his 18 years in Congress, where he was instrumental in establishing many of NASA's current priorities.
Is that like tapping a keg? (Score:2)
Willie Nelson? (Score:2)
Bill "Ballast" Nelson (Score:5, Interesting)
Someone who earns the nickname/callsign "Ballast" from astronauts is someone who is not very well respected.
Very poor choice here.
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Ballast is good. It's weight used for a useful purpose, usually for stability. Ships have ballast tanks able to take in water so they can be leveled out and stabilized. Many a ship has been lost because they did not decide to take in ballast and ended up in an upset condition that violated stability (and thus capsize).
So it implies he's there to keep things stable and on track, b
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Very poor choice here
Biden and Nelson both strongly resemble Fire Marshall Bill - coincidence?? I think not; at the very least, those two are wearing similar models of humansuits.
Terminally Bland Choice (Score:2)
Other than being from Florida, I don't see why he as any connections to NASA or its missions. How come a respected scientist cannot be the leader? Erniz Moniz would be a much better choice, He was a Sec. of Energy and a physicist. So he could manage the politics and the science.
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It might be the former astronaut thing. Just a guess.
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Maybe he was related to Tony Nelson, another famous astronaut from the sitcom documentary series.
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It might be the former astronaut thing. Just a guess.
Yeah... he got to become an astronaut because he was a congressman, [tampabay.com] not the other way around.
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It might be the former astronaut thing. Just a guess.
Not a real NASA astronaut, he went to space as a tourist for taxpayers money because he was a politician, getting nicknamed "ballast" by other astronauts.
It was the gold time for STS, when it was considered a space-liner by HQ, and NASA kept taking passengers, who had enough influence to force their place on the Space Shuttle (for free of course, i.e. payed by taxpayers). Astronauts hated the idea, as not only it took valuable places, but posed serious hazards for them, as e.g. one of such "passengers" was
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... correction sorry for the "Sunday night", as the flight took place on Tuesday. The described issue is from the book - not sure about this delay.
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Former astronaut + former senator seems like a pretty good qualification, even if he isn't exciting. Moniz is both an prominent scientist and a capable administrator, but he's not specifically a space scientist. He might be a better choice if you were interested in reorienting NASA away from manned missions though.
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So I guess we'll be squandering more money on manned missions polluting Florida's beaches and oceans with Mormon perchlorates from SLS/Ares/Constellation/whatever they're calling PROK this week.
Re:Terminally Bland Choice (Score:5, Interesting)
He pulled political strings to get himself on the Shuttle and was nicknamed "Ballast" by the crew. He also helped make sure Constellation got resurrected as SLS and was fully funded while Commercial Crew struggled along with half its requested funding, in fact arguing for devoting all of the Commercial Crew funding to SLS.
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Are all space tourists classified as astronauts now?
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So in other words, same ol', same ol' (Score:2)
where he was instrumental in establishing many of NASA's current priorities.
Well it sure doens't seem like NASA is going to be changing much any all, which is a shame - they have done excellent work on Mars but it sure seems like they could use some exciting new vision overall.
Who will pay for it? (Score:2)
Vision is not the problem; funding is. The unmanned probes and rovers accomplish great scientific goals at relatively low cost. Manned missions are orders of magnitude more costly and accomplish much less, even pulling money away from the unmanned missions. The only reason we're even thinking of going back
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Don't underestimate the ability of corrupt management to divert every amount of funds to the pockets of "the right people" without accomplishing anything of the main goals.
SLS is such a convenient sink, that it would be very bad to actually complete its R&D - as long as it's "in the making", the contractors can absorb any amount of money thrown at the project and meet project goals without making any actual progress. Boeing, Lockheed, these are the corpos in-the-know, they know how to maintain a proper
Yawn...moon (Score:2)
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Good.
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Should we allow bleach? You might drink it. How about chainsaws? Or motorcycles? Or neodymium magnets? You might eat them.
You see where that goes?
SLS supporter (Score:2)
This is good news for pork, and bad news for SpaceX, Blue Origin, and other commercial space companies -- except, of course, Boeing, Lockheed, and their buddies.
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Gerontocracy? (Score:1)
Is this the only guy older than the President that they could find to do the job?
Sure, I get he's qualified and all, but he's ancient.
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Because he's a booster booster (Score:1)
Politician who said politicians shouldn’t ru (Score:3)
He is a dreadful choice, unless you want NASA to do anything other than soak up pork.
It has to be pushed by the lobbyists for the SLS contractors.
https://arstechnica.com/scienc... [arstechnica.com]
Disaster in the making (Score:2)
Back in the 1980s when the Space Shuttles were supposedly making access to space "routine" members of congress did what they do best - served their own interests. The US Senate and the US House each sent a member into space. The Senator was Jake Garn (a Republican) and the House member was Bill Nelson (Democrat). NASA, which is funded by congress, was compelled to train these to clowns and give them rides while smiling and pretending all was well. They each flew as "payload specialists" even though neither
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Don't be sad yet. It's Politico, and so far their record in predicting Biden appointments is...laughably off.
Loved his early work (Score:2)
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=... [youtube.com]
Because... (Score:2)
Because it's always a good idea to put a know-nothing lawyer in charge of technology. ...As long as he is a loyalist and toes the party line. We're nothing like Putin.