Another bad idea crawled out of the swamp of stupid inhabited by Trump and his appointed department secretaries and administrators. Trump’s recently appointed head of NASA Jim Bridenstine is reportedly exploring selling advertising and naming rights to U.S. space program rockets and other spacecraft. That’s right — the United States space program, once the pride of the nation and envy of the world, may now sell off advertising rights for “extra cash.”
The NYTimes.com on Jim Bridentstine’s “vision”: “Is it possible for NASA to offset some of its costs by selling the naming rights to its spacecraft?” he asked during a meeting of a council that advises NASA. “Or the naming rights to its rockets? I’m telling you, there is interest in that right now.”[…] Mr. Bridenstine has asked a committee of the NASA Advisory Council to explore whether it might be done, despite regulations or laws that seem to prohibit such activities. He also raised the possibility of allowing NASA astronauts to sign endorsement deals.
So who is Jim Bridenstine, the new head of NASA? Well…Bridenstine is a former US Navy pilot, executive director of the Tulsa Air and Space Museum and a three-term Tea Party GOP congressman from Oklahoma. He had a little ethical lapse while in Congress — “called on the carpet” you could say. The issue surfaced in 2015: Bridenstine was involved in an ethics controversy when it came out that in May 2013 he and nine other members of Congress and some staffers took a trip to Azerbaijan that was found to have been paid for by that country’s government-owned oil company. Bridenstine also received two rugs, one valued at $2,500 and another at $3,500. He ultimately returned the rugs. On top of that as a Tea Party congressman he holds many extreme rightwing positions including anti-LGBT views, and until recently climate change denial. “I heard a lot of experts, and I read a lot,” he is quoted as saying after joining NASA.
But here’s the best part of his biography as far as NASA is concerned and it may even hold the key to his vision of the future for NASA. In 2007 while working for defense contractor Wylie Laboratories on aircraft instrumentation systems, [h]e also became involved in a speculative Rocket Racing League. The idea was to race rocket planes in a setup patterned after the NASCAR stock car racing circuit. One demonstration run was made in 2010, but nothing else came of the league.
Sadly, Bridenstine is just one of Trump’s “best” people, the horrible multitudes supposedly working away in the federal government to MAGA: Make America Greedy — er, “Great” — Again. And nothing says greatness to the entire world more than commercializing our space program for “a little cash.”