Skip to main content

Who is James Webb NASA?

James Webb, in full James Edwin Webb, (born October 7, 1906, Tally Ho, North Carolina, U.S.—died March 27, 1992, Washington, D.C.), American public servant and administrator of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) during the Apollo program (1961–68).


After graduating from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1928, Webb became a marine pilot. He began his government career in 1932 as a congressional aide in Washington, D.C., and from 1934 to 1936 he studied law at George Washington University. He worked for Sperry Gyroscope from 1936 to 1944, when he reentered the Marine Corps for the remainder of World War II. During the administration of Pres. Harry Truman (1945–53), Webb was director of the Bureau of the Budget and undersecretary of state. When Truman left office, he went to work for the Kerr-McGee Oil Company in Oklahoma.

Webb became the administrator of NASA in 1961, just months before Pres. John F. Kennedy announced the U.S. commitment to sending a man to the Moon by 1970. Webb gave overriding priority to the success of Apollo and used his considerable political skills to rally and maintain support for the program, even after three astronauts died in an accident in 1967. Webb was also a keen student of public administration and used NASA as a laboratory for his ideas about how to organize large-scale public undertakings in ways that both increased the chances of a program’s success and provided maximum benefits to the country.

Webb retired from NASA in 1968. He remained in Washington, serving on various advisory boards and as a regent of the Smithsonian Institution. NASA named a large space telescope that launched in 2021 the James Webb Space Telescope. It was designed as the successor to the Hubble Space Telescope.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Was Katy Perry’s Spaceflight Faked? Conspiracy Theorists Say CGI — But Here’s the Truth

Conspiracy theories are once again swirling across social media after pop icon Katy Perry appeared in a video from a Blue Origin space mission, prompting accusations that the footage was nothing more than a CGI Hollywood production. While the visuals from the flight show Perry in zero gravity aboard a suborbital capsule, critics in the Flat Earth and space-denial communities have claimed the entire mission was fabricated — with many insisting the star-studded mission was filmed in a studio, backed by green screens and special effects. These claims mirror the usual talking points of space-denying conspiracy theorists who routinely dismiss real science as staged entertainment, ignoring decades of documented spaceflight, international collaborations, and verifiable physics. In the case of Blue Origin’s mission, the flight was broadcast live, tracked in real time, and independently confirmed by multiple observers and agencies. CLICK TO WATCH LAUNCH VIDEO   The New Shepard rock...

If Satellites Aren’t Real, How Does the Internet, GPS, and Weather Forecasting Even Work?

If Flat Earthers are right and satellites are just a hoax or a CGI fantasy, then how do billions of people get GPS directions on their phones, how do we receive real-time weather updates, and how do global communication networks function? Satellites are not a theory—they’re the backbone of the modern world. GPS systems rely on over 30 satellites orbiting Earth, constantly sending signals that help determine your exact location. These signals arrive at your device from different altitudes and angles, and your phone calculates its position based on how long it takes those signals to reach it. That’s not magic, and it’s not bouncing off towers. It’s satellite-based triangulation—proven, measured, and repeatable. If satellites weren’t real, you wouldn’t be reading this article. The internet, weather predictions, global communication, live sports broadcasts, satellite TV, and international phone calls all use satellite relays. How would a flat Earth explain satellite imagery of hurricanes...

Sky Shadows Flat Earthers Can’t Explain: The Science Behind Contrail Shadows

What appears to be a mysterious X-shaped mark in the sky is actually a simple and beautiful result of light, altitude, and atmospheric physics. When airplanes fly at high altitudes, they release water vapor that quickly freezes and forms contrails — white trails that stretch behind the aircraft. When the sun is low on the horizon, typically near sunrise or sunset, it casts long shadows of these contrails across layers of clouds below or above them. This creates a stunning optical illusion — large dark lines that appear to slice through the sky. These are not “chemtrails” or glitches in a sky dome — they are shadows, and their existence depends on three things: the position of the sun, the altitude of the contrails, and the reflective surface of nearby clouds. CLICK TO WATCH FOOTAGE HERE   The Flat Earth model cannot account for this phenomenon. Without a curved atmosphere, a layered sky, and a distant sun casting angular shadows, there would be no way to explain the geometry w...