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Bridenstine has proven to be a popular NASA administrator.
When James Frederick Bridenstine was announced as Trump’s nominee for NASA Administrator in September 2017, there was an uproar.
Bridenstine’s apparent lack of qualifications for the position, coupled with his falsely held views on climate change, made him seem like an odd and controversial choice for a science-focused agency.
“The head of NASA should be a space professional, not a politician,” Democratic Senator Bill Nelson said in a statement at the time, while Republican Senator Marco Rubio told Politico: “I think it could be devastating to the space program. “
Despite concerns, in January 2018 Bridenstine was confirmed as NASA Administrator by a narrow 50-49 vote in the Senate, a year since his predecessor Charlie Bolden had resigned, and NASA had been without a Full administrator between two administrations in history.
What followed has been a very successful period as administrator of NASA. He has support across the political spectrum, having led NASA in a bold new direction, and is a popular figure with space fans both in the United States and around the world.
Now, many are wondering, in the event of a Biden victory over Trump in the upcoming presidential election, should Bridenstine continue as administrator of NASA, a rare olive branch across the political divide?
There are increasing calls for Biden to retain Bridenstine if he becomes president.
Immediately after becoming an Administrator in January 2018, Bridenstine sought to allay some of the concerns about his tenure.
First, in May 2018, he changed course on climate change. “I do not deny the consensus,” he told a NASA City Council meeting. “I fully believe in climate change and that humans are contributing to it in important ways.”
Then he set about giving NASA a strong overriding goal to aim for: a mission to the Moon, eventually leading to missions to Mars. The goal remains, for now, to get both a man and a woman to the Moon by 2024, not too subtly the end of a presumed second Trump shift, and Bridenstine gave it a name: Artemis.
“I think it is very beautiful that 50 years after Apollo, the Artemis program takes the next man and the first woman to the Moon,” Bridenstine said in May 2019. “I have a daughter who is 11 years old and I want her to see in the same role as the next women who go to the Moon. “
NASA, with its Artemis program, wants humans to land on the Moon again.
Elsewhere, Bridenstine set out to turn to the commercial sector like no NASA administrator before. In March 2019, at a hearing in front of the United States Senate, he made a bold statement: NASA was considering commercial rockets to get to the Moon, not its much-ridiculed and delayed rocket, the Space Launch System (SLS).
“SLS is struggling to meet its schedule,” he said. “We must consider, as an agency, all options to achieve that goal.”
Despite some discussion, his relationship with SpaceX CEO Elon Musk remains important, considering SpaceX’s vital role in transporting NASA astronauts to orbit. In May 2020, they made history with the first private launch of astronauts into orbit, the beginning of a close trade partnership.
It also awarded contracts for lunar landers to commercial companies, developed a new exploration code, and enlisted help from startups with NASA’s Artemis program, among other accomplishments.
Musk and Bridenstine, pictured after the successful launch of Demo-2.
Despite all the ills of the Trump presidency, Bridenstine is a rare success story. He has proven to be a popular NASA administrator to space fans across the political spectrum, prompting growing calls for him to remain administrator, even if Biden wins.
Such a move would be unprecedented: Dan Goldin served as a NASA administrator in the George HW Bush administration, the Clinton administration, and briefly the George W. Bush administration in the 1990s and early 2000s.
“Bridenstine now has strong support from both Republicans and Democrats,” Jeff Foust wrote for Space News earlier this year, noting that his achievements had “led to a quiet push in the space industry to encourage the Biden’s campaign to retain Bridenstine. “
In an opinion piece by David Lindgren in The Hill yesterday, meanwhile, Lindgren also advocates for Bridenstine to stay. “Despite our hyperpartisan politics, Bridenstine has proven to be a reliable and non-partisan defense of the role of NASA and the United States in space within the international community,” he wrote.
“Bridenstine has proven her worth and should continue to have the opportunity to prove herself regardless of the results on Election Day.”
It remains to be seen if that would happen, or if Bridenstine would even want to remain trustee under President Biden. But there is little doubt that such a move would prove popular, and to prevent an upheaval at NASA once again with a new administration, it is also quite a useful move.
