NASA's New Mission

[Joe Durnavich]

NASA's new administrator Charles Bolden:

When I became the NASA Administrator -- before I became the NASA Administrator -- [Obama] charged me with three things: One was he wanted me to help re-inspire children to want to get into science and math, he wanted me to expand our international relationships, and third, and perhaps foremost, he wanted me to find a way to reach out to the Muslim world and engage much more with dominantly Muslim nations to help them feel good about their historic contribution to science, math, and engineering.

Read more at the Washington Examiner

Huh? What about flying into space? I understand that we don't have the money to spend and may have to scale back NASA's mission, but our priorities should be maintaining our access to space and reducing the cost of access to it. Success on the latter would benefit all.

[BertL]

These all sound like noble causes, but it seems Barack Obama has completely missed out on what NASA is supposed to be doing.

[blackstar]

Well given that the interviews and speech were given during a trip to the Middle East I'm guessing that Bolden was trying to persuade the people he was talking to about the befits of international co-operation.
This version of the quote from the speech puts a different spin on it:

Beyond education, Earth science and the other opportunities under consideration, there are no boundaries to where our cooperation can take us in the long run. Our long-term space exploration objectives include leaving low-Earth orbit for as yet unknown destinations, most certainly to include Mars. It is inconceivable that any one nation will be able to achieve such space exploration goals alone.
To summarize, NASA is not only a space exploration agency, but also an Earth improvement agency. What NASA does every day – in space and on the ground – is an effort to improve the lives of people on Earth and our understanding of the world and ourselves.

But it would be better to read the whole speech and remember the audience to put it in context. Transcript is here:

www.nasa.gov/pdf/463980main_Bolden_Cairo_0615.pdf

[Joe Durnavich]

Jul 5, 2010 12:11:51 GMT -4 blackstar said:

Well given that the interviews and speech were given during a trip to the Middle East I'm guessing that Bolden was trying to persuade the people he was talking to about the befits of international co-operation.

Yes, the speech highlights the international cooperation involved in our space program. The quote I posted suggested that inspiring children, expanding international relationships, and making Muslims feel better were to be primary objectives of the agency. As stated, none of those are pursuable objectives. Bolden would never really know how well he was doing.

Do you know how NASA inspired me as a child? The Apollo landings on the moon. Actual space exploration. Inspiration and expanding cooperation are consequences of exploration and discovery.

If the quote does not accurately reflect NASA's new concerns, then they are merely pandering to the Middle East and Middle Easterners should feel insulted. Do Muslims really need to look to the US for validation so that they can feel better about their historic scientific accomplishments? How arrogant to think that.

[Jason]

Unintentionally insulting people through condescendingly pandering to them would be par for the course in the Obama administration.

[Joe Durnavich]

Jul 6, 2010 11:34:16 GMT -4 Jason said:

Unintentionally insulting people through condescendingly pandering to them would be par for the course in the Obama administration.

The modern left sure does seem to treat everybody in tribal terms. They don't see individuals; they see groups. Reading Bolden's speech where he tries to, well, make the Egyptians feel good about their scientific and engineering accomplishments, I cannot help but get the impression that these folks are amazed that people who are not of their own gender or race could build such great structures as the pyramids or produce talent like Farouk El-Baz.

Regarding my opening post and the stated priorities of the current administration, it may be worthwhile to look at the focus and clarity the left of a generation or two ago brought to the matter:

First, I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to the earth. No single space project in this period will be more impressive to mankind, or more important for the long-range exploration of space; and none will be so difficult or expensive to accomplish. We propose to accelerate the development of the appropriate lunar space craft. We propose to develop alternate liquid and solid fuel boosters, much larger than any now being developed, until certain which is superior.

There is no strife, no prejudice, no national conflict in outer space as yet. Its hazards are hostile to us all. Its conquest deserves the best of all mankind, and its opportunity for peaceful cooperation may never come again. But why, some say, the moon? Why choose this as our goal? And they may well ask why climb the highest mountain. Why, 35 years ago, fly the Atlantic? Why does Rice play Texas? We choose to go to the moon. We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win, and the others, too. It is for these reasons that I regard the decision last year to shift our efforts in space from low to high gear as among the most important decisions that will be made during my incumbency in the Office of the Presidency.

This was not just a pipe dream. We were getting concrete results:

In the last 24 hours we have seen facilities now being created for the greatest and most complex exploration in man's history. We have felt the ground shake and the air shattered by the testing of a Saturn C-1 booster rocket, many times as powerful as the Atlas which launched John Glenn, generating power equivalent to 10,000 automobiles with their accelerators on the floor. We have seen the site where five F-1 rocket engines, each one as powerful as all eight engines of the Saturn combined, will be clustered together to make the advanced Saturn missile, assembled in a new building to be built at Cape Canaveral as tall as a 48-story structure, as wide as a city block, and as long as two lengths of this field. Within these last 19 months at least 45 satellites have circled the earth. Some 40 of them were "made in the United States of America" and they were far more sophisticated and supplied far more knowledge to the people of the world than those of the Soviet Union.

And finally, Kennedy recognizes that leadership is a virtue:

Yet the vows of this Nation can only be fulfilled if we in this Nation are first, and, therefore, we intend to be first. In short, our leadership in science and in industry, our hopes for peace and security, our obligations to ourselves as well as others, all require us to make this effort, to solve these mysteries, to solve them for the good of all men, and to become the world's leading space-faring nation.

We set sail on this new sea because there is new knowledge to be gained, and new rights to be won, and they must be won and used for the progress of all people. For space science, like nuclear science and all technology, has no conscience of its own. Whether it will become a force for good or ill depends on man, and only if the United States occupies a position of pre-eminence can we help decide whether this new ocean will be a sea of peace or a new terrifying theater of war.

The current and all future presidents would do well to follow this example even though the opportunities available may be for adventures not so grand.

[inconceivable]

I would guess that since gathering data with the NASA shuttle and satellites they probably found interesting geological aspects of the ancient regions. Using the Ground Penetrating Radar and other instruments under section 334, they probably need to establish a presence in these regions to secure resources and ancient history.

[Jason]

NASA is going to try to secure regions in the Middle East by "establishing a presence" because they are interested in oil and ancient history?

[PhantomWolf]

Maybe they located the million Chinese troops under Bagdad rather then NYC....