Space friends: maybe it's time we had a talk about the fact that one of NASA's main campuses is named after a person who has been called "the heart, soul, and brains of the white supremacist caucus in the 1948 Congress.”

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Let’s back up a little bit. NASA has 9 centers, not including headquarters or JPL (which is awesome, and which is sometimes counted as a NASA center), as well as ~9 other major facilities. You can find the full list here: https://www.nasa.gov/about/sites/index.html

Of the 9 main centers... all 9 are named for white men. 2 Presidents (Kennedy, Johnson); 2 heads of agencies (Ames/NACA, Langley/Smithsonian); 2 astronauts (Glenn, Armstrong); 1 pioneer of rocketry (Goddard); 1 cabinet member (Marshall); and 1 segregationist US senator (Stennis)

If you look at the other major facilities, most of them are named after their function or their location (two of those locations in turn being named after white men—Wallops and Michoud). Then there’s another one named after Goddard, who already has a center named after him.

The remaining one got a new name in 2019: Katherine Johnson Independent Verification & Validation Facility. If you don’t already know her name, Katherine Johnson is one of the “Hidden Figures” who played a critical but overlooked role in the early days of human space exploration

So, let’s do the math. Among NASA’s 20 major locations, you’ve got ~12 named after white men, ~7 named after their function, and 1 named after a (fantastic, legendary) human who wasn’t a white man. This seems… not ideal for an agency that represents a nation / planet.

Looks like I accidentally broke the thread here. Pick up the rest of the thread, including LOTS more detail and recommendations, here: https://twitter.com/Pomerantz/status/1275793394262962182