What exactly is NASA’s mission?
Personally, I have never been a big fan of NASA. I’ve always questioned what are we are getting from our investment, billions and billions of dollars over the few short decades, in scientific and economic benefits? I’m sure I’ll have my critics on this but I believe our precious tax dollars could be used in better ways or maybe we shouldn’t have been taxed at all.
However, of all the wasteful, useless and unconstitutional government agencies, NASA is not necessarily on the top of my list of agencies to eliminate….until now.
NASA’s self-described mission statement is to “pioneer the future in space exploration, scientific discovery and aeronautics research.” Okay, sounds reasonable.
And then comes NASA Administrator Charles Bolden, a former astronaut and Marine Corp general, saying on Al Jazeera TV the following statement:
“When I became the NASA Administrator – before I became the NASA Administrator – he charged me with three things: One was that he wanted me to re-inspire children to want to get into science and math, that 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 predominantly Muslim nations to help them feel good about their historic contribution to science, math, and engineering.”
Huh?
It’s not sending space stations into the new frontiers? Exploring the planets? Galaxies? That is the NASA I always knew.
Now, General Bolden, though I’m unaware of his political philosophy, appears to have a very solid background especially for the position he currently holds. He sure doesn’t seem like the vast majority of Obama appointees who bring with them wacked-out far-left wing political agendas.
I’m not sure if this new direction of NASA is all Obama’s doing, or part Obama, part Bolden, but it is unquestionable that the above statement by the administrator should have absolutely nothing to do with NASA’s mission or where our tax dollars should be spent.
But as syndicated columnist, Mona Charen, quite eloquently points out, Mr. Obama believes “that his presidency can be a transformative moment not just for the nation, but for the world.” And this certainly proves true in this NASA statement by the General.
Now we must globalize and politicize NASA to the point where they are providing psychological therapy to a group of nations or people of a particular religion?
Should Mr. Bolden be canned for this statement? Maybe. Though it does sound like its coming from the top.
With the NASA budget at nearly $19 billion this year, I say if this is how they want to spend our resources, put them at the top of the agencies to be eliminated…now!
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You all sound very ignorant. One of the problems in the U.S. is that we have many older Americans whose thinking is basically anachronistic. In order to move the country forward, we need you to adopt some more modern views and not simply adopt a bunker mentality. . . Stop turning everything into an us/them dynamic. It appears that you are literally from another time, that by the way has gone. It’s like you are dinosaurs. . .
Klarissa, Klarissa, here you go again with your ridiculious untrue accusations about some “Cairo Intiative” did you actually read Boldens speech? No. Here it is: http://wwnasa.gov.pdf/463980main_Bolden_Cairo_0615...
Of course you’re not going to read anything that challenges you preconceived notions. There are Egyptian scienctist who made significant contributions to the space program, that was the point of the Cairo speech. Your whole Mulsim thing is just plain bigotry.
Klarissa maybe you could go to the NASA web site and see that Obama has INCREASED NASA budget by 6 billion. Obama has not ended the space program, but set new paramiters.
The Constellation Program was unrealitic and unsubstainable. The technology would not get us back to the moon even by 2030.
This is Obama’s mission for NASA:
NASA is no longer an Aeronautics and Space Administration.
It is spending taxpayer on the goals that Obama charged NASA head Charles Bolden with:
1. , he wanted me to help re-inspire children to want to get into science and math (Dept. of Education?)
2. Expand our international relationships (State Department?)
3. 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.”
[he Muslim World is not a country, it is a religion. So much for separation of church and state.
How about reaching out to the Catholics and protestants??]
“NASA is not getting out of the space business, at least not entirely. But Bolden’s words, together with the president’s decision to scrap much of NASA’s mission and include the agency in the “Cairo Initiative” — that is, the White House outreach program outlined in Obama’s June 4, 2009, Cairo speech to the Muslim world — show that the NASA of the future will be little like the past.”
“Obama’s proposal stunned U.S. space heroes Neil Armstrong and Eugene Cernan — the first and last men to walk on the moon — who, along with Apollo 13 commander Jim Lovell, made a rare public statement denouncing the plan as a “devastating” scheme that “destines our nation to become one of second- or even third-rate stature.”
Even John Glenn, the first American to orbit the Earth who later became a Democratic senator and Obama supporter, was dismayed by the president’s plan to rely on the Russians to ferry American astronauts to the international space station. “We’re putting ourselves in line for a single-point failure ending the whole manned space program,” Glenn said.”
I disagree with the author about the historical value of NASA, I believe that it WAS a shining example of America at it’s best. Obama has now turned it into a pathetic joke!
To boldly go… wait… wrong one.
That link is bulls**t. It’s just societal decay.
The government is not going to get us there. The government is unable to take the risks required to open up this precious frontier. The shuttle is costing a billion dollars a launch – that’s a pathetic number, that’s unreasonable!
…Risk is okay. As we’re going out there taking on a new frontier, we should be allowed to risk.
…The entrepreneurs in the space business are the “furry mammals” and clearly the industrial-military complex, with Boeing and Lockheed and NASA, are the dinosaurs.
-Peter Diamandis, Entrepreneur/Founder of the X-PRIZE Foundation
Sounds more like pandering to an audience than anything else.
Going to the moon didn’t really matter, it turned out