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Jim Bridenstine is departing NASA. How should we evaluate his 30-month tenure?

NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine testifies before a US Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation committee on September 30, 2020.

(charge: Nicholas Kamm-Pool/Getty Pictures )

The very first point to understand about James Frederick Bridenstine, that has served as NASA’s administrator to get a bit more than 30 weeks, would be that he wasn’t staying {} the area agency’s chief irrespective of the presidential election outcomes.

Not that he needs from this job. Bridenstine has relished the challenge of top NASA through troubling times and beating initial concerns regarding his partisanship to direct NASA–all of of all NASA–during the tumultuous years of their Trump government. Nor can it be because he’s failed. Bridenstine has succeeded in pushing the bureau forward and will make it much better than he found it.

However, the truth is that a president was not likely to maintain Bridenstine, with a political as opposed to a technical heritage, on as secretary. And he understood that. He explained just as much this week, even telling Aviation Week a president would likely need someone else, a person entirely trusted. In the end, he’d introduced laws to eliminate Earth science in NASA’s mission statement, which he chased same-sex unions . Bridenstine will resign his new place on January 20.

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