Susie Bright’s Journal on discusses the slap in queer faces that comes with every stunning NASA space photo from the deep space telescope that we’ve enjoyed the last two days and hope to enjoy for a long time, but really prefer under different cover.
What a dumb idea to name an instrument of such power literal universal beauty for a McCarthy era leader who invented PsyOps and was a leader/participant at the highest levels in the effort to purge employees become the mission of a hardworking band of scientists working in and around the telescope. The short film they’ve made is worth your time, fascinating for the research and insight into James Webb as it is into the how today’s activists think and are being heard as well as effective.
Susie Bright and the video introduce some history, the pressures of the time and the timeless insecurities of toxic masculinity in the bureaucratic layer, along with the tradition of independent nerds and homosexuals throwing themselves into big beautiful projects like NASA, Star Trek, and this effort both in space and to name it correctly.
One of the more obvious insults is to the memory of Frank Kameny, an astrophysicist thrown out of NASA for suspected “perversion” but whose bravery and determination and outrage set the stage for our movement, even coining the phrase, “Gay is Good”.
“I call our big beautiful new space station, The Next Generation Telescope.
Why?
The organically-named project, inspired by the *vision* of the science that created it — was changed at the last minute *on a whim* by one clueless bureaucrat. Sean O’Keefe. He says he “didn’t know,” and then later, didn’t care, that his hero James Webb was an architect of PSY-ops warfare & the Red/Lavender Scare. He was right at the top of it all.
The short documentary below tells quite a story. Most people today don’t know about the Cold War Red-scare and “Lavender” interrogations that tore NASA apart. It was uglier than anyone would admit at the time. Just like Alan Turing, our country was ready to destroy its finest minds for the sake of misogynist, puritanical posturing….
Read the rest at Susie Bright’s Journal
Read the rest and watch the well researched and produced video by an impressive band of activist scientists. They’re referring to the “Next Gen Space Telescope” instead of “James Webb Space Telescope” and encourage tweeting with tag @NASA and #renameJWST.
You can also sign the petition to rename the telescope (I believe the last question is asking if you proposed using the telescope in your field??) and join their group, the Just Space Alliance.
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