Do we like Andy Thomas?
Our score: 7 out of 10. Nothing harmful or dodgy turned up and he's spent years pushing space for Australians, but the public record on his wider values is thin.
Andy Thomas was born in Adelaide in 1951 and grew up playing with rockets and wanting to be an astronaut. He studied mechanical engineering at the University of Adelaide, then went to the US to work in aerodynamics research at Lockheed, running its Flight Sciences Division by 35.
NASA picked him at 40. He flew four missions over 12 years, including 1996 on Endeavour as the first Australian to fly in space as a NASA astronaut, plus 141 days on the Mir station. He retired in 2014 after 22 years with the agency.
The nearest thing to a stoush is from 2011. Critic Keith Cowing of NASA Watch reported that a Thomas presentation included a slide of a Chinese astronaut planting a flag on the Moon while trampling an American one. Cowing called it troubling, and Thomas reused it with a softer caption. That's geopolitics, not a swipe at any group of people, but it's the sort of imagery plenty of readers will wince at.
On the harm check, nothing turned up: no remarks about LGBTQ+ people, women, migrants or the climate, no conspiracy talk and no dodgy company. That's a thin record rather than a glowing one, so it's a pass on what we found. Gaps are gaps.
What he is known for is straight talk about space. In 2019 he warned that a rushed Moon deadline risked more astronaut deaths, saying “You can't change engineering to suit politics.” In 2016 he said he found Mars One's one-way trips morally indefensible, and in 2017 he pushed for a national space agency.
He turned up no court cases, lawsuits or allegations in our searches. We found no clear evidence of what he does off the clock, so the good-person pass rests on a clean record and a long run of public advocacy for Australian space.