Wednesday, July 07, 2010

Muslims . . .

. . . in space


In an interview with Al Jazeera, the new NASA Administrator, said that strengthening ties with the Muslim world was his "foremost" mission.

Barry O tasked Charles Bolden with:
- inspiring children to want to get into science and math,
- expanding our international relationships, and,
- foremost, to reach out and engage with Muslim nations to help them feel good about their contribution to science.

That may be the most inane example of bureaucratic babble I have heard since the Community-organizer-in-chief was elected. It is also a radical departure from what has been NASA's historical raison d'etre.

Mission Statement: To improve life here, to extend life to there, to find life beyond.

The Mission: to pioneer the future in space exploration, scientific discovery and aeronautics research.

The Vision: To explore the Universe and search for life, and to inspire the next generation of explorers... as only NASA can.

That sounds - not so coincidentally - like this more popular mission:

. . . to explore strange, new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilizations, to boldly go where no man has gone before."

As well it should.

That said, when is this ersatz professor going to realize that not every problem is solved by force of rhetoric, that he cannot make everyone like us, and that not every program is a mechanism of social engineering?

The good news is that his approval ratio (strongly approve to strongly disapprove) is now 43 to 26. Maybe he will be Carter redux, and we will be done with him in two years.

One can only hope.