James Webb Space Telescope

[Vern Edwards]

I didn't know where else to put this.

Congratulations to NASA and to all involved in the James Webb Space Telescope program.

My only complaint is that it is hard to see some of the pictures through tears of pride and joy for what they accomplished.

We are closer to seeing the First Light. Something to celebrate in these otherwise dark times.

https://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/thumbnails/image/main_image_star-forming_region_carina_nircam_final-5mb.jpg

If you are interested in knowing more about the telescope's namesake, James E. Webb, see The Man Who Ran The Moon: James E. Webb, NASA, and the Secret History of the Apollo Program, by Piers Bizony (2006). From the Foreward:

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Most people would say that President John F. Kennedy championed America's space agency NASA, but this isn't strictly correct. He didn't care much about space, and saw rocket exploration as little more than a Cold War contingency. It was a smart operator from North Carolina, James E. Webb, who steered the expansion of NASA from a minor collection of research labs into one of the grandest enterprises the world has ever seen.

See also, Powering Apollo: James E. Webb of NASA, by W. Henry Lambright (2000).

[formerfed]

@Vern Edwards Thanks for providing this information.  I didn’t know who he was and wondered who the telescope was named after.

[Vern Edwards]

34 minutes ago, formerfed said:

@Vern Edwards Thanks for providing this information.  I didn’t know who he was and wondered who the telescope was named after.

If Webb and his management of NASA during the Apollo Program interest any readers of this thread, they might be interested in a woman named Mary Parker Follett, a management consultant during the first half of the 20th Century whose writings influenced Webb, and who thus could be said to have contributed to the success of NASA and the U.S. in space. She has been called "the Mother of Modern Management."

According to an article by Albie M. Davis, a sociologist and negotiation theorist, which appeared in the Negotiation Journal in July 2015, "When Webb Met Follett: Negotiation Theory and the Race to the Moon," Webb wrote a letter in which he said, "Follett's influence was, indeed, profound in all that I did ... in NASA[.]"

According to Davis:

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Given the scope and scale of his new job, Webb's choice of Mary Parker Follett (1868-1933) is, in some ways, surprising because so few people knew of the connection, but it also makes sense. In every decade since the 1920s, Follett's ideas have been rediscovered in various ways: as "a challenge to the atmosphere of fatigued futility" during World War One (Lindeman 1924: ix); as "a gold mine of suggestion" (Urwick 1935: 163); "profound and fundamental" (Rowntree in Follett 1941: 8); "a proponent of creative democracy" (Harper and Dunham 1959: 224); "pioneering" in the field of interest-based negotiations (Walton and McKersie 1965: 7); a "prophet before her time" (Shafritz and Whitbeck 1978: 3); "the underpinning of the collaborative ethic" (Taft 1987: 188); "a swashbuckling advance scout" of "management" (Bennis in Graham 1995: 177-178); a "genius" and "the mother of post-scientific management" (Gabor 2000: 46); and finally as "one of the United States' foremost intellectuals about democracy and social organizations" (Marsh 2013: 1).

Remember the movie, "Hidden Figures"? Well, here's another one: Mary Parker Follett. A "swashbuckling advance scout of management!"

"Webb clearly considered Follett his mentor - some of us find living mentors, others find wisdom in the words of people whose thinking is alive even if they are not, some do both."

The things you can learn from a little reading. Some of Follett's writings are still in print, available at Amazon.com.

[formerfed]

Here’s another fascinating person from NASA.  Katherine Johnson was a female mathematician that started before computers.  John Glenn asked that she verify his space capsule trajectories before he went into space.  He doubted computer calculations and she did check everything by hand.

https://www.nasa.gov/content/katherine-johnson-biography

 

[Vern Edwards]

Katherine Johnson was one of the "hidden figures" in the movie "Hidden Figures." She was played by the actress Taraji P. Henson.

The film includes the incident in which Glenn asks that she personally check NASA's calculation of the reentry plot.

Great flick!

[formerfed]

Just finished watching the movie.  That was a thrilling time for our country when we all pulled with a national goal