Sadly, after all this, a teenager who also shares the name James Webb has said he can no longer wear his hoodie showing the name James Webb Space Telescope because, apparently, the asshole destroyed several careers with his homophobic views. It's one thing to hold views. It's another to use those views to harm others. Fuck James Webb and his telescope.
Everyone in the past has some abhorrent view. Remember that Barack Obama was publicly against gay marriage until 2010 (after he became President); he seems to have found his conscience about the same time most of the rest of America did. While Webb's role in the Lavender Scare shouldn't be dismissed, it should be remembered that attitudes on homosexual rights were very different 70 years ago and because of those attitudes--and the need for homosexuals to therefore remain closeted--there was an arguably valid national security concern that gays were more vulnerable to blackmail. Not saying that was right, just saying that's how it was. Webb had a long and distinguished career after that and oversaw many accomplishments in the United States' space program, including Mercury and Gemini. He's been dead 30 years; had he been alive today, he'd very likely have evolved in his views just as others have.
Difference is, Obama didn’t fire/prevent the hire of homosexuals (as far as I know). Still, how short of a memory should we have? Imagine what those he prevented from having a job at NASA could have obtained? Should we just allow him his accolades after he denied them to someone else? I don’t hold to the “it was the times” attitude. If it wasn’t homosexuality he opposed, it would have been something else. People want someone to hate. And those people should not be allowed accolades they deny others.
Eh, I know plenty of people who never evolve in their views (or if they do, it's in the wrong direction). We forget that in years immediately following WWII, not only were there people decrying Communists and gays, but also fervently pointing out that many of the leading Nazis in Germany (at least before the war) were gay. William L. Shirer's otherwise excellent book, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, is marred by his constant insinuations that the reason some Nazis were so evil was that they were gay. It should be noted that Shirer had been effectively blacklisted in 1947 by the folks behind the "Red Scare" and struggled to make a living until Rise and Fall was published in 1960 (and became a huge best seller). Webb was obviously a highly ambitious man and likely seized upon any opportunity to advance his career. During WWII, he went from being treasurer at Sperry Gyroscopes, to VP, then in 1944, he re-enlisted in the Marines was scheduled to join the invasion of Japan but didn't see deployment due to Japan surrendering. You're the number two man at a company with 33K employees and you give that up to be a jarhead at the age of 38? I'm thinking that introspection isn't one of your strong suits. Were he still around, he might simply offer the familiar, "I was just following orders" defense.
It's one million miles to L2, we've got a full tank of gas, half a pack of cigarettes, it's dark, and we're wearing sunglasses.
Good article about Webb: https://www.houstonchronicle.com/ne...w-James-Webb-Space-Telescope-the-16707013.php
I'll admit it, a small part of me wanted to see the JWST launch go. But I'm looking forward to seeing the first images it takes.
I found this on the NASA website. It's a rundown on the milestones as it heads toward the Lagrange point. * Cue ZZ top*
And this tells you where Webb is, how fast it's going, how long until it gets to its orbit, and when it's going to deploy the various parts.
Y'know, I've never seen a documentary on the application process scientists have to go through to get time on a major telescope. What interests me is how the powers that be make their choices. I'm sure there are superstars *ahem* in the field who are going to have a leg up when it comes to getting time on, say, Hubble, but I also wonder if some fringe types who might be considered borderline crackpots might be the very ones who could make groundbreaking discoveries. I mean, Einstein spent a lot of time on the margins before some of his wackier predictions started being confirmed. I guess it boils down to scientists trying to solve the ancient riddle of the chicken or the egg. I did see a YouTube video with Neil deGrasse Tyson talking about "cage fights" for time on the Webb. The scientist from the Webb team he was talking to mentioned that they've set aside 100 hours of time to look at the planets from Mars outward, just to see what they can find by looking at them in infrared. That could turn up some new discoveries or just bring back pretty pictures. But that's the kind of slightly out there thinking that could turn up some really important stuff. It was almost on a whim that they turned Hubble to an "empty" part of space and brought back the deep field image that fundamentally changed some assumptions about the nature of the universe.
Sounds like the most profitable piece of space exploration currently is looking through telescopes. Maybe Space X and Blue Virgin and other space companies should be putting their resources into telescopes rather than vanity shit like sending bezos and shatner into space.
SpaceX isn't in the same league as Blue Origin and Virgin Galactic. SpaceX is making other worlds accessible, and teaching us to rethink rocket technology.
