Neither scientist nor engineer: who was James Webb, the man who names the most powerful space telescope to date

On December 25 space exploration experienced a historic moment, the James Webb Space Telescope successfully completed its launch and began a new era of space research. As we already explained in Xataka, its importance lies in the fact that it is a hundred times more powerful than its predecessor, so it will allow humanity to unravel new mysteries of space.

A device, therefore, of enormous importance for science that, however, bears the name of a man who was neither a scientist nor an engineer, James Edwin Webb. This North Carolina career bureaucrat developed no theories, built no rockets, made no great discoveries, but He was a key figure in early space exploration., since he was the administrator of NASA between 1961 and 1968.

Therefore, Under his administration, the US space agency began some of the most important projects in its history., missions that left an indelible mark on the collective memory and that ultimately led to the victory of the United States over the Soviet Union in the space race by putting the first man on the Moon: the Mercury and Gemini programs and, above all, everything, the Apollo Program.

His tenure at NASA, however, was clouded by the accident of Apollo 1, the first manned mission of the Apollo Program that aimed to land on the Moon, something he could not achieve because a fire in the cabin during a test destroyed the command module and killed its three crew members, Commander Virgil I. Grissom, Command Module Pilot Edward H. White II, and Lunar Module Pilot Roger B. Chaffee.

Webb took charge of the investigation to clarify the facts and was questioned about his findings by various committees of the United States Congress, a public exposure associated with the tragedy that damaged his image and made him increasingly unpopular. Finally, left NASA in October 1968, just days before Apollo 7 successfully completed liftoff and initiate the most famous space voyage in history, the culmination of the Apollo Program.

Due to that end in NASA darkened by the tragedy of Apollo 1, which overshadowed his figure despite being one of the key men in the beginning of space exploration from his position as administrator, his successors in office decided to name the new space telescope after him.

“By the time Webb retired, just before the first moon landing, NASA had launched more than 75 science missions to study stars and galaxies, our own Sun and our home planet. Missions like the Orbiting Solar Observatory and the Explorer series of astronomical satellites , that laid the foundation for the most successful period of scientific discovery in history, which continues today,” says the US space agency on his Flickr profile.

A career bureaucrat

James Webb received a BA in Education from the University of North Carolina and later, after a brief stint in the Army, in Law from George Washington University. He began his career in public service as secretary to a senator and continued as an assistant to the former Governor of North Carolina, later moving to work in the private sector in managerial positions.

With the entry of the United States into World War II, Webb returned to the Army, where was a captain and later a major in a Marine Corps aviation unit. After the war, he returned to the public sector as assistant to the undersecretary of the Treasury Department and then as director of the US President’s Office of the Budget.

From there he became undersecretary of the US Department of State, a position he would leave in 1952 to return to the private sector. Nine years after that, President John F. Kennedy offered him to run NASA.

Image 1 | George Tames