Esa, here’s Aschbacher’s space shot on Battiston
Facts, names, rumors and scenarios after the last ESA (European Space Agency) advice. Francis Walsingham's comment
In these days we have kept the ESA Council largely focused on the problem, finally resolved, relations between the European Commission and the Agency for some time not particularly good.
On the sidelines of the main argument, an operation by the general manager Joseph Aschbacher also took place, which on the one hand brought Italy out of embarrassment and on the other hand solved its potential problems towards the various countries that supported its victory initially given rather as not very probable given the political caliber of the other two candidates in the running.
Let's go in order: a few days ago the deadline for the presentation of applications for the assignment of the directorate of the Esrin Center for Earth Observations in Frascati has passed.
Despite the historical and logical ESA practice for which a candidate from the country hosting the Center is not normally chosen, as implacable as an expiring bill, the candidacy of an Italian notoriously "candidate for everything", Roberto Battiston, already president of the ASI . The same person who in the last three years had twice participated, losing, in the selection as president of the CNR and, moreover, had also presented himself for the selection for the ESA director general not being evaluated by the Evaluation Committee international not even to get to the final short list from which the current Austrian exponent Joseph Aschbacher came out as a winner.
The situation was immediately presented rather embarrassing because both the specific technical skills regarding Earth Observations and the managerial skills that emerged clearly in the years of the presidency of the ASI indicated that the candidate had no concrete possibility of being considered among the potential candidates. . Yet another risky bad figure for Italy as has already occurred in this last period due to the lack of competence and naivety shown by those who should have been careful in the choices of international candidates in the sector.
To complete the picture, we must also take into account the great agitation, in recent months, of the under-secretary delegated to Space, Bruno Tabacci, towards the director Aschbacher, met on several occasions, invited to various events without great real content but much publicized in the media. and concluded with the presidential nomination, and plaque connected by contract, of Grand Officer of Merit of the Republic.
All a bit obscured by a first fool with immediate withdrawal of the plate with the wrong name, a theme that has recently apparently been very fashionable even in the Municipality of Rome.
A similar agitation was highlighted by the president of ASI Giorgio Saccoccia, a polite cavalier servant of the general manager of ESA, his actual employer, with the evident hope that he will remember him when he returns to the Netherlands given that his renewal in Asi does not seem to be a topic of discussion in the circles that matter.
And here is Aschbacher's stroke of genius: as already happened in the past (think of the "ESA 2020" Working Group, for example) for the spring of 2022 the Agency wants to define a wide-ranging space policy linked to potential developments in the sector . A group of 10 essays was therefore formed, including the former French multi-director general Jean Jacques Dordain, who will meet for no more than three or four sessions to draft a document to be presented to the Council which will evaluate it.
For Italy, the general manager proposed the "candidate for everything" Battiston. This choice has an evident series of advantages: automatically the chosen one can no longer be considered among the candidates for the directorate of Esrin (in this way he is avoided yet another certain rejection by offering a position of sure media interest even without any real power) ; Italy is saved from yet another embarrassing bad figure given that it continues to demonstrate that it does not know how to choose candidates for top positions and, above all, that it has no control over the ambitions of individuals in regard to positions of this delicacy contrary to the great attention of our European competitors.
Even Undersecretary Tabacci comes out well, who had spent so much for the candidacy even if, to tell the truth, it is not clear whether he did so naively because he was too new to the sector, lacking the necessary specific skills and historical knowledge of the games in place. or because it is conditioned by political pressures regularly manifested in every competition of the candidate for everything.
All is well that ends well and, perhaps, finally it will be possible to set up a candidacy policy that is truly shared among the various actors and takes into account the competence and the true merit and not those told by some characters.
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/innovazione/esa-ecco-il-colpo-spaziale-di-aschbacher-su-battiston/ on Thu, 17 Jun 2021 13:29:23 +0000.