Obama to NASA Chief: Make Muslims ‘Feel Good’
As always (or at least recently), I must preface my commentary by noting that I think that the Obama administration is a national catastrophe on almost every possible level. I greatly fear the damage that it will continue to do to the country if it maintains its present foreign and domestic policy courses. Having said that, I have been profoundly annoyed for the past few months by the need to defend its manned spaceflight policy, which is one of the few things that it’s gotten at least partly right. Because I have done so, from a dispassionate and informed analysis of the policy itself (as opposed to a knee-jerk reaction to anything emanating from this White House), I have been accused by the ignorant of being an Obamaphile and worse (if there is such a thing).
This is what I wrote in April, in my ongoing quixotic campaign to persuade conservatives and Republicans that Obama’s space policy actually is a huge improvement over the Bush policy:
Many don’t trust President Obama to execute this policy along these lines. Neither do I, necessarily. But I’d rather have good policy poorly executed than poor policy well executed. The execution can always be improved later. Do I believe that Obama really cares as much about human spaceflight as he said in his speech at the Cape? No, and I think that’s a good thing. I think he sees NASA as a problem he inherited from George W. Bush, and in that, he is right for once. He assigned to the problem people who do care about getting humans into space and, like Bush, he now wants to move on to other matters. Really, we should fear the day he gets interested in spaceflight; that will be the day that private enterprise is no longer trusted to conduct it. Let’s hope that day never comes. In the meantime, remember that when government does the right thing, it doesn’t matter whether it’s done for the wrong reason. Whatever the motivations behind it, this is a much more visionary space policy than we’ve ever had before.
The administration hasn’t made it easy for me; I feel as though I and a few other brave souls have had to do the heavy lifting. NASA’s public-relations efforts aren’t good in the best of times, and these are a long way from that. The rollout of the new policy in February was a self-admitted disaster (well, OK, he may not have used that word, but they clearly recognize that it was deficient). And almost half a year later, they still can’t get it right.
Moreover, in the latest news, the president seems to be doing everything possible to prove me correct. As NASA Administrator Charles Bolden says:
[Obama] 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.
The last coherent policy statement made by NASA was made in 1969. Since then their policy prescriptions have been intellectually bankrupt. Actual advancements in the science and the technology of space exploration require boldness, a quality that has been lacking in American leadership since Reagan, and in space policy since JFK.
Mr. Simberg must have worn a diaper in order to write this tower of NASA bashing non-stop. The true character give away comes when he says, “I have been accused by the ignorant.” This is the tongue of an angry, vengeance is mine person pretending to be an American entrepreneurial spirit.
Be that as it may, it doesn’t matter because our goals for American human spaceflight must take into account protecting the United States from the military goals and objectives of the Chinese and the Russians first, not lining the pockets of private profit takers.
What civilian company or organization has the capability to do that?
I don’t buy Obama’s story, Charles Bolden’s story or yours Mr. Simberg.
Be that as it may, it doesn’t matter because our goals for American human spaceflight must take into account protecting the United States from the military goals and objectives of the Chinese and the Russians first, not lining the pockets of private profit takers.
If that’s truly the case, then it’s a problem for the Pentagon, not NASA, which was explicitly chartered as a civilian agency over half a century ago.
Fifty years ago I doubt they could have foresee the importance of NASA in protecting the country. In fact it’s obvious that they didn’t or they would not have made such a designation.
To now say that it’s up to the Pentagon to protect the country, like it’s some insignificant battle over turf, because of a decision made fifty years ago seems petty and short-sighted. IMHO!!!
Fifty years ago, NASA was much more of an issue for national security, in that Apollo was a propaganda battle in the Cold War (and had little to do with exploring space per se). Those days are long over. If Russia and China sending people into space is really a national security threat (it’s not), then it’s something for the Pentagon to deal with, not NASA.
I’ve slowly come around to Rand’s viewpoint on this, but I hope that even before my objections were better than the quality of the comments on this post– some of the worst I’ve seen on PJM.
The main moral argument for public funding of space exploration is that it’s a national security priority. The main practical argument is that space is simply too expensive and the gains too speculative to be privately funded.
Both those arguments are being undermined. The national-security types usually object to these clumsy international projects, but given that we’re doing it this way, you can hardly use an infrastructure you share with Russia or Europe to guard against a Russian or European challenge. The practical argument is being refuted by the private space companies, who are on the verge of LEO at a fraction of the cost of what NASA pays.
These days, NASA’s primary mission has been as a grants engine for academia, a monopoly on American orbital lift capability, and a source of an endless parade of concept drawings. Also a jobs program for some congressional districts.
No one doubts that Obama wants to cut off NASA. Even during the campaign he was clear that he only valued space because it influences kids to study math and science (Tip: if that’s your goal, why not reward entrepreneurism and innovation instead of stifling it? When engineers make more than lawyers, you won’t need to persuade kids to study science.) He’s also found this “global PR” mission. The policy is textbook Obama: his priorities today, centrally planned and managed and at ruinous cost; everything else gets visionary rhetoric fresh off the teleprompter of all the things we’ll do “some day”.
That’s fine by me in the case of space. NASA utterly neglecting space opens the door to private enterprise. Space has been floundering since Apollo, and if you look at how Apollo was set up (spam in a can, a one-shot race to the Moon) I’m not sure if we were ever on the right track. We’ve been “about to go back to the moon” for decades. If NASA belongs anywhere, it’s doing science missions in the fringes: HEO, asteroids, the Moon and the solar system.
What does worry me is that, whether Obama is interested in an issue or not, he always seems to find an excuse to smother it in central management and regulation. That’s the nightmare scenario: NASA castrated, and the private sector tied down by safety rules, environmental impact statements, and mandatory organized labor contracts. A case where no one gets to space.
Dateline: Soon
Priority: Urgent
This morning 19 extremist Islamic terrorists hijacked 5 inter-galaxy capable civilian spacecraft and destroyed the International Space Station with nuclear bombs given to them by Iran.
The Whitehouse issued a statement saying that the government has no intention of doing anything that jeopardizes continuing to improve our relations with Muslims worldwide.
Any questions..?
I agree with the author – Obama is an abyssmal failure on every level:
- the economy: F
- the deficit: F
- Afghanistan: F
- the Gulf oil crisis: F
- tax policy: F
- illegal immigration: F
- border security: F
- Justice Department: F
- ‘War on Terror’: F
This NASA embarrassment is further incontrovertible proof of Obama’s contempt for our great nation, his gross incompetence and his continued waste, fraud and abuse of taxpayer resources
But it is also, when piled atop his other Islamic outreach programs, tantamount to state endorsement of a particular religion. Where was Obama’s small business outreach to the Hindu world? Where is Obama’s NASA outreach to the Buddhist world?
Why does only Islam garner Obama’s special privileges??
Obama needs to be impeached. Pray for November!!
~ The Infidel Alliance
P.S. – Perhaps Obama thinks we could have a technical exchange on Islam’s greatest contribution to aerospace, the buraq (Muhammed’s winged horse with a human head that he supposedly flew to Jerusalem, then up to the 7 heavens).
I guess we can finally blame 911 on Bush. Hey, it happened on his watch, right? Well I rather take a more balanced view that would rest responsibility on countless administrations. I guess the same can be said about your long involved list
Policy dictates come from the top. Executing them is left to administrators, though not getting rid of exposed bad managers again goes to the top. I do approve of free market, competitive space exploration. Problem is, Dear Liar wants heavy handed government control over areas He is interested in, such that to consign space exploration to the private sector simply means that 1) He is uninterested in it and 2) He is not above using that as a talking point to show He’s a “free market capitalist” rather than the fascist/socialist He really is.
And shouldn’t relations between us and the Muslim world be best left to the State Department, not the National Aeronautics and Space Administration — which, given its name, should be charged with dealing with American (National) air and space travel?
Relations are also promoted though international cooperation in space exploration and in other arenas such as culture and economics. that’s why we have an Interntational Space Station.
No…we blame 9/11 on Islamists following the teachings, mandates and personal examples of their barbarian prophet, Muhammed, not George Bush.
You know – Muhammed, the murdering, decapitating, amputating, raping, looting, warlord, the moral and spiritual beacon for 1.2 billion of his supplicants, ‘Soldiers of Allah’. No wonder they feel so down….if I had to deign fealty to a monster like Muhammed, I’d need cheering up too.
Just…NOT FROM NASA!
You are very pleased with yourself, thinking that you formulated something clever. Your logic is tragically flawed though, sorry. You can not keep saying that Obama inherited all of the issues that he is incapable of managing. The post you reply to grades Barry’s performance in regards to these issues – every presidency will have to deal with issues, you can not just cry and complain that Barry was not handed everything.
My above post was directed towards the “anonymous” poster
If current policies have to be chanegd or revised, does’t that suggest a failure of the previous administration
Agreed, Obama is a miserable failure!
You forgot 1) Foreign policy: F 2) Relations with our best allies: F
But he has a gift, Harry. And he’s good at golf.
Borat Obumble and his administration would be a funny / pathetic joke, if only the outcome of his decisions weren’t so serious.
Once again, Barack Obama fails to uphold the oath he took when he started this job. Actually, he didn’t even get THAT right.
A Muslim on the Moon? Just imagine? That Moon and Star flag proclaiming that it is forever Islamic.
Make muslims feels good about their historic contribution to science, math, and engineering?
How? By enslaving a population of dhimmis and stealing their knowledge?
Contributions? The ones they stole and ramsacked from other civs that they did not happen to burn or destroy? More proof we need his records opened. Who can doubt his loyalties now?
You have got to be kidding me! Just another embarrassment. 1984 anyone?
Space the void between your ears.
Here are the Obama goals for American Space Flight.
…
Oh, and the loss of thousands and thousands of jobs both directly and indirectly.
That of course will make Muslims feel good about themselves. Nothing like bringing someone down to your level…and below.
Why aren’t the libruls in full riot mode? Isn’t Obama favoring one religion over all others with this nonsense about NASA conducting foreign policy? What about the libruls favorite motto, Separation of Church and State? And what about giving NASA a foreign policy mission? Doesn’t that show Obama doesn’t trust Hillary? Well, I won’t fault him for that. I don’t trust her either.
Reported in the WSJ on June 27, in an article entitled,
” New Space Policy Calls for Global Cooperation ”
” The Obama administration as early as Monday is expected to call for significantly greater international cooperation than ever before in outer space, covering a wide range of civilian and national-security programs.
The new policy, according to industry and government officials familiar with the details, also endorses the pursuit of verifiable arms-control proposals for space. And it envisions stepped-up U.S. government efforts to bolster domestic rocket and satellite manufacturers, making them more economically viable and competitive overseas.
The principles, according to these officials, reflect President Barack Obama’s desire to have Washington and various foreign governments increasingly share funding and expertise on major projects, while negotiating conflicts if possible and exchanging more data about orbiting debris and other hazards in space.
The policy paper’s call for more international cooperation was reported by Space News, an industry publication.
The policy paper doesn’t specifically spell out which countries would be invited to take part, but the intent is to open participation to allies and other established space powers, such as China and Russia, and emerging powers including India and Brazil, according to the officials.
Breaking sharply from earlier White House policies that relied largely on all-U.S. solutions, the latest document foresees international ventures spanning everything from environmental and other types of earth-observation satellites to critical space-based navigation systems that were previously considered off-limits to foreign partnerships. ”
Notice what is going on. The administrations new policy endorses the pursuit of this, and the desire to do that, and shares Americas proprietary information with ” world community “.
Opening the books on Americas most profound technologies for what? A kumbaya moment?
And that list of countries missing from public scrutiny? Guesses anyone?
These technologies are the fruit of taxpayer monies and efforts by American industrial companies that are vital to our global strength and security. The stage has been set for squandering our greatest secrets in propulsion, metallurgy, avionics, communications, laser technology, encryption, high resolution photography, etc. The technological edge that America has gained through massive financial investment, decades of research and the cost of hundreds of human lives will now be shared with a world that is hostile to our country.
The knowledge gained from Americas space program has made us stronger in every field of human endeavor. For America to give up this edge in a world rife with economic and military challenges make no sense, unless the goal is to weaken America not to strengthen her.
Word is out that there is an INTERNATIONAL space station. BTW, had the space shuttle program not been extended for a few more years, there would be no US manned flights at present
An international space station? Wow. Never heard of that. Duh.
” Breaking sharply from earlier White House policies that relied largely on all-U.S. solutions….”
Now what part of that didn’t you get?
The Russians and Chinese have also put men into space and undoubtedly there is some similar technology involved however the USA has had technological superiority for decades in this area and has reaped the rewards. BHO is planning to give away the store. Since you seem to have an internationalist bent and obviously support BHO perhaps you will shed some light on his reluctance to accept help from international sources in fighting The Gulf Oil Spill disaster?
1. You canot place it aall of NASA’s problems on Obama. Each space shuttle crash revealed deep flaws in NASA’s proceedures.
2. Since most of you are in favor of smaller govt. wouldn’t privatizing the space program fit in to your way of thinking?
3. The real cleanup for the Gulf oil spill cannot begin until the flow of oil has stopped. And I beleive that other oil companies are pitching in on helping the MULTI_NATIONAL oil company known as BP
4. What’s an internationalist? Is the opposite of a 1930′s style isolationist?
Obama blocked proposed INTERNATIONAL help for the spill, then ‘agreed to obtain a 20 billion contribution’ from BP to the US government. The process of merging gov’t with business, of the Admin intimidating all sorts of business to force compliance or seize control of their policies is clear enough. The other piece being enforcing the Greens’ demands for an end or severe permanent curtailing of US energy exploration, a process which immeasurably strengthens OPEC and the Islamic world in general.
It didn’t get extended for a couple years, it was extended a few months.
Misunderstood hajis flying our spacecraft? Uh-huh.. it all makes sense now.
Obama’s stupidity is truly breathtaking as it is limitless.
Careful George, lest you be called a “racist”. That’s probably on someone’s fingertips right now. To give an honest appraisal of the Anointed One’s ability and capacity will certainly open yourself to severe criticism. At least you’re in good company with millions of American’s who feel the same way.
Not stupidity. Malice.
Actually, Islamic scholars did make some contributions to math and science…in the early days of Islam. But what they were able to do several hundred to one thousand years ago is lost in the collective wickedness in which they engage in our time. To quote Senate Democrats on Clinton’s escapades: SO WHAT?
Besides, the missing hands and fingers of their bombmakers tells me that their math and science ain’t what it used to be. (put smart-ass smiley here)
I think islamic contributions to mathematics and science have been greatly exaggerated. Probably much was stolen from the Jews who were living under their thumb. If we look at their contributions, over say, the last 800 years, it has been pretty well nil.
IIRC, quite a few of the advances in the ‘golden age’ of Islam many centuries ago, merely propagated thru them from India.
Others were truly theirs, but all the way back then, the fundamentalists squelched their own civilization, same way they would like to do to the whole world now.
Funny how the multicultis love to brag on the [long ago] technological achievements of the Muslims and the Chinese, but never proceed to the next obvious question — just what was screwed up about their cultures that they ignored them or threw them away, and it was only the West who took science and technology and ran with it?
What is with this American president’s advocacy for all things Muslim? How about trying to make Americans feel good? Local then global.
Who is advising this guy? Is he getting sound advice or is he not willing to take it? Jimmy Carter has to be smiling about this story, he is looking sooo good by comparison.
How about trying to make Americans feel good?
Inside Barry’s long cultivated brain and his carefully crafted “value system” with all its relentless influences like Frank Marshall Davis, JWright et al., ‘mericans is guilty, first, last, foremost and always.
Plundered the world, imposed its values, used more than its share, is the root cause of all those crazy, self-serving African dictators, is responsible for the emerging poverty and chaos under Oogoe in Venezuela and just about any other hellish thing you can conjure up.
It blew me away a year ago when Barry’s obeisance to Izz-lam went so far that he actually stated and I quote…
It is important to note that “if you actually took the number of Muslim Americans, we’d be one of the largest Muslim countries in the world”.
The entrenched media didn’t even blink.
Quite a planet we’re living on.
The left goes bonkers when Christian symbols are publicly displayed. Crosses have to be removed. But NASA, a taxpayer funded agency, must promote Islam to make the muslims feel good? Say WHAT?
Hope and change alright. Zero is merely doing his da’wah (if you don’t know what that means, look it up).
To all those who voted for this fraud – is it sinking in yet or are you just naturally slow in everything?
Your premise is faulty. Cutting edge technology and migrations have only gone anywhere, or “happened” in reality, because of “state” involvement. What individualistic “free enterprise” concerns involved in the exploration of space are there because of the state’s deep pockets. I suppose at some point–as with the Spanish state’s funding of the Columbus expeditions to the New World–we will have “free booty” pirate capitalism in the interstices of space–once we can actually exploit it for gold, God, and Glory, or the functional equivelents. Until then I suspect we will be screwing around in low earth orbit, because doing space and NASA was such a “white physics” thing, and it’s so expensive when you want to nation build a new health care system in Chicago. Gee, wasn’t the Constellation one of those “shovel ready” state programs? What’s a dead end? Returning to the moon as a stepping stone to mars, or pissing money away putting up commemorative signs to congressmen on the interstates to nowhere (utopia)?
It is right in what Obama says. When USA is a democratic country it values should also point to this.
The INSANE optics of Obama’s decision to “foremost … expand our international relationships… [and] find a way to reach out to the Muslim world … to help them feel good about their historic contributions to science and engineering” render any other matters surrounding Obama’s NASA policies moot.
This policy is insane. This policy is insane. Repeat: this policy is insane. Does it make any sense to winnow through such insane wreckage to atomically weigh the merits and demerits of policy any further??? It does not make sense.
Words almost fail me.
So, Barack Hussein Obama, our crypto-Muslim President–who is becoming less “crypto” with each passing day–wants NASA, not to direct the United State’s exploration of Space, not to put men back on the Moon or to put men on Mars, not to work to make it possible to use near Earth space to create a whole new space-based industrial revolution, not to investigate nearby star systems, or to work on propulsion systems and rocket technology, but to “reach out” to the Muslim world, to pat them on the back, and to tell them how just how momentous their past contributions to “science’ have been.
A little history here might help.
The almost entirely illiterate Muslim armies that poured out of the Saudi Arabian peninsula after Muhammad’s death in 632 A.D. were intent on conquering all of the nations of the unbeliever’s “House of War” and on destroying all of their civilizations and the accumulated knowledge of the Classical civilization that supported those nations, knowledge that—since it was not based on the Qur’an–Muslims claimed was Jahiliyya i.e “ignorance”; it was their goal to wipe the slate clean of these civilizations, that heritage, and that knowledge, so that future generations of the Muslim’s conquered subjects in these formerly Christian and Zoroastrian (i.e.Iran) nations would have no knowledge of their pre-Muslim heritage, a task that Muslims have been largely successful in accomplishing over the course of almost 1,400 years.
The fact that any of the knowledge accumulated by the ancient Greeks and Romans survived is a tribute, not to Muslim respect for knowledge, or to Muslim forbearance, or to Muslim’s intellectual curiosity, but, rather, to chance, since Muslims took great delight in destroying all of the books of the “unbelievers” that they could find, but they, quite simply, missed a few and failed to destroy them all. When Muslims conquered Egypt in 639 A.D. Caliph Umar is said to have declared that any book that was not the Qur’an was superfluous, and should be destroyed, and thus it was the Muslims who were the ones who succeeded in finally and definitively destroying the greatest accumulation of knowledge in the ancient world, the Great Library of Alexandria ( http://www.americanthinker.com/2010/05/the_fate_of_the_library_of_ale.html ).
It must be noted, too, that since the Muslim conquerors were mostly illiterate, it was likely the literate and highly educated unbelievers that they conquered and enslaved who actually preserved and translated the texts that did somehow manage to survive, and who did the few bits of experimentation that these books later inspired; Muslims just took the credit as they had taken the slaves. Even the fabled “Arab invention of Arabic numerals,” and the use of the “zero” in mathematics were most likely mathematical concepts expropriated from Hindu thinkers in the course of the Muslim’s attempted conquest and occupation of India that resulted in the slaughter of, by one estimate—and not the highest estimate by any means-an estimated 80 million Hindus (http://www.politicalislam.com/blog/the-study-of-political-islam-2/); Muslim terrorism against Hindus that still continues today.
Quit simply put, Islam has been and is actively hostile to any knowledge that does not derive from the Qur’an, which is why it is so technologically backward to this day.
Dude, you just skipped over 700 years of the Islamic Golden Age, the cultures that produced the Taj Mahal, the Alhambra, and the Hagia Sophia, Rumi, Hafiz, and Khayyam, al Kwarizmi and (again) Khayyam — it’s like ignoring Rome because of the Dark Ages.
The Hagia Sophia was built by Muslims? Really? Don’t tell Justinian, he’ll be very hurt.
Yeah, right. Muslims built the Hagia Sophia.
Unfortunately, the Hagia Sophia, what is now a big Muslim museum with a butchered and plastered over interior, in what used to be called Constantinople when it was the capitol of the Byzantine Empire i.e. the Eastern Roman Empire, and a profoundly Christian state, was a thousand years old and the largest church in Christendom until–after numerous Muslim attempts to conquer Constantinople and the Byzantine Empire, attacks spread out over 800 some years–Turkish Muslim armies finally conquered the city and the Empire in the 15th century A.D., and by their own boastful accounts raped and/or massacred the city’s inhabitants–including every priest they could find, and blood did literally run in the streets and out into the Bosporus and the Sea of Marmara–and the Muslims very deliberately desecrated the altar and the Hagia Sophia.
As for the Taj Mahal, “that Muslim’s built,” Muslim ruler Shah Jahan employed a force of 20,000 Hindu slaves (I wonder how many times that work force turned over?)—architects, artisans and laborers–who worked for a reported 22 years to build the Taj Mahal, and as their reward, after they had finished building the Taj Mahal, many historical accounts say that these Hindu slaves had their hands cut off or were killed, to guarantee that no one else could build a building to rival or surpass the Taj Mahal.
The Alhambra? I suspect that here too, it was not the Muslim conquerors–predominantly illiterate warriors who were more used to being in the saddle and to warfare–but, rather, their slaves, the talented and cultured unbelievers that they conquered, who actually designed, built and maintained the Alhambra.
A final thought here:
When Muslim armies conquered the Christian, Hindu, Animist, Buddhist and Zoroastrian nations of the “unbelievers,” except for the very small Muslim elite who were at the top of the food chain and who had the leisure to enjoy all the bounty of their conquests, the vast majority of Muslims did not then settle down to devote themselves to agriculture, to self-cultivation, to the Arts or to intellectual pursuits, or to found great cultural or educational institutions; they destroyed, not created.
Theirs were purely parasitic, extractive rather than productive regimes, regimes for which the loot they captured, the proceeds from the slaves they sold, what was made and produced by the educated and skilled unbelievers they ruled, and whatever the slaves that remained in those conquered nations produced, were the major, main sources of the income that kept their various empires afloat. As that limited amount of intellectual capital dried up–a shattered infrastructure, vastly reduced trade and commerce, and no new unbeliever artisans or scholars being trained or functioning unbeliever institutions to keep these regimes afloat, as there was eventually less and less that could be stolen or extracted–their empires foundered. Like the shark they were predators, and they had to constantly move on to the next victim to stay alive, and they simply ran out of victims.
And today they are trying to get back into the shark business.
The Taj Mahal was NEVER built by Shah Jahan, it was a myth, ever wondered why the so called Mosque outside the Taj Mahal points in the opposite direction of Mecca???
Shah Jahans grandad wrote him a letter instructing him to conquer the Tej-Mehalya as it would be a great symbol of Islamic conquest.
Photographic evidence provided that had to be smuggled out of the Indian archaelogical department…
http://www.stephen-knapp.com/was_the_taj_mahal_a_vedic_temple.htm
“The fact that any of the knowledge accumulated by the ancient Greeks and Romans survived is a tribute, not to Muslim respect for knowledge, or to Muslim forbearance, or to Muslim’s intellectual curiosity, but, rather, to chance, since Muslims took great delight in destroying all of the books of the “unbelievers” that they could find …….”
===============
This is also a good argument opposing the concept that knowledge was stolen from the Muslims. You can steal and destroy books and works of art, but the people who made those things still retain the knowledge. Therefore, the clearly backward Muslim ‘Paradises’ never had the knowledge they claim had been theirs, because their people could have preserved the knowledge and recreated the books and art that the Muslims falsely claim had been taken from them by invaders.
This is more evidence, if any were needed, of Obama’s lack of interest in American achievement or, indeed, American greatness.
Despite NASA’s flaws and missteps, this community organizer President has no association with the grand designs of the human mind.
Listen to his language, over and over, it’s negative this, failed that, difficult to achieve this or that, on and on.
Talk about accentuating the negative.
[Obama] 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.
If NASA is reduced to being an adjunct of Barry’s agenda to make Muslims “feel good”, it bears noting that, after some momentary good will following Obama’s Apology Tours/Cairo speech, Muslims, themselves have a jaded and skeptical opinion of this guy who traveled around the world dissing his own tribe, America.
Wouldn’t (contrived) paeans to Islamic achievement in history strike the same chord of distrust ?
Like most preachy élitists, Obama doggedly clings to the notion that fixing things in the world is simply a function of his own, small vision coming to fruition. All of this attitude was on parade in a speech Obama gave one week after 911.
He will not, he cannot, abandon this point of view, ever, else his entire individual house of cards collapse.
Can terrorist ringleaders (including some heads of state) be launched into deep space for good? This might be cost-effective and just, but it would not sit well with a certain type of Muslim.
The only reason Obama “got it right” in cancelling the Constellation fiasco was that he’s executing a Russian policy goal of crippling American space flight for military purposes. Just as he’s eliminated (effectively) ABM. Just as his arms control negotiators (led by a Russian mole) are negotiating away our remaining strategic arsenal, as well as even our conventional arsenal. And then throw in Cap and Trade (which will cripple the Western economies. Etc, ad infinitum ad nauseum. Given his history (communist parents, grandparents, mentor, acquaintences, etc), let’s get real and start considering the very serious possibility that Obama is, in fact, a long-term deep cover SVR (KGB) mole who was promoted, financed and positioned to do the greatest possible damage to the U.S. military and economy.
The only reason Obama “got it right” in cancelling the Constellation fiasco was that he’s executing a Russian policy goal of crippling American space flight for military purposes.
This is nonsense. It was Constellation that was crippling human spaceflight, and the new policy will replace Soyuz much sooner than Ares/Orion would have, and much more cost effectively.
The new policy will replace Soyuz faster? If done correctly, if followed through. Perhaps.
What so far makes anyone confident that the correct path will be taken?
By the way, as a long-time (as in 41 years) service member and employee of DOD, I think it is in poor taste to insult our opponents du jour, let alone a whole religion. It’s not the fault of muslims that our President has a blindspot regarding American exceptionalism.
{spit} Never
Obama’s foreign policy is an apology tour, the US as the source of all problems in the world, the Russians and Chinese as counterbalance, with a full measure of Israel-bashing thrown in.
Has Obama apologized for supporting Rael Odinga and Sharia legislation in Kenya? No, he continues the AIG bailout and the rest while working to spread Sharia finance, a subset of Sharia, across the globe. He has his Muslim faith, the beauty of the call to prayer, Indonesia as a great country, Saul Alinsky as mentor, and the rest of the personal stuff. Oh, other Presidents had some of that, but not so many would be disqualified from even being sworn in by it.
The American public has accepted the concept and reality of an illegitimate President who hasn’t yet been to all 57 states of the OIC, representing it. Even if the Republicans win big in November, which is hardly a sure thing, he remains President. And that is a travesty.
The only thing we can really beleive concerning muslim inventions is their invention of Suicide Bombers.
Why is NASA assigned something the Secretary of State’s job? Obama also has a double of a Secretary of State as one of his 40+ czars as well. Obama is clueless, incompetent, & displays malice for America all at once.
WTFO?
Seems we here in America are going to be turned into an islamic paradise whether we want it, like it or not.
It seems the administration wants us all to be spanish speaking,islamic worshipping (or dhimmi’s) and Gay.
That’s Obama”s POTUS (PBUH) vision of America.
In truth the Manchurian candidate was elected.
I am now cancelling all the email updates from NASA it’s soon to be all muslim propaganda.
Come on Barack, you’re making it obvious. Even America’s morons, the left, will start to catch on. How much it bothers these degenerates is another thing.
Whoops, sorry for the Barack thing, I meant Hussien, the name that was alright to use AFTER the election.
There is nothing at all wrong with Bolden doing a little “public diplomacy” type PR when he talks to the Muslim world. It’s just talk.
People are getting mixed up because the President’s National Space Policy he revealed last week has a lot of international cooperation language in it.
Public diplomacy in general and international cooperation in space planning are two completely different topics.
Most of the Muslim world needs to hear Americans talking to them directly, not to governments. What they usually see is negative and serves the interests of extremists. If you don’t like extremists and don’t want them influencing what the Muslim world sees and hears, you should be glad that some people are smart enough to do a little harmless PR.
Put away the tinfoil hats.
How about Muslims and Muslim nation governments do the “little PR” to end the 800 year stretch of murder and destuction championed by the Prophet and His followers and let NASA do what its supposed to do instead of this POLITICALLY CORRECT BS.
I see that people are losing site of the forest for all the trees. In fact Obama’s reasoning for how he is implementing this new direction could just as well be an off shoot of some misguided overly specific reason. Regardless of whatever the reason is it is the results that matter most. Whether Barry did so knowingly or not he has set the stage for a new evolution in how we move people and material into space. People are getting way to hung up on superfluous details and not focusing on the big picture that it is possible for us to accomplish so much more in space for a lot less money. This means that NASA can stop wasting money and energy on building a redundant and out dated launch vehicle that merely replicates the capabilities of a number of other launch vehicles already in service. Instead NASA can direct its efforts at truly ground breaking technologies that will see to the expansion of human presence in Earth orbit and beyond. In fact, this is a policy realignment back to what NASA was truly created for as an institution; the investment and development of cutting edge aerospace technologies. We’ve been building rockets for several decades now and they can be pieced together using a number of off the shelf technologies. What we need NASA for now is to start looking into creating a fuel depot. In other words we already have the car, we already have the road, we just need someone to start building the first rest stop in space.
Josh, all you’re doing here is enumerating your own wish list, a list that I largely agree with.
The Obama plan is not going to accomplish these things. The only potentially bright spot is the expansion of COTS. Obama did not boost COTS because he loves entrepreneurship, but rather because “new space” had come along enough to provide Obama with an alternative to spending a lot of money on space. Obama and his ilk don’t care much for “space stuff,” as this idiotic “prime directive” illustrates.
Let us hope that COTS survives the cumulative blunders of this administration, and becomes an ironic footnote to the otherwise disastrous outcomes of this presidency.
Hmmm, didn’t post…
My one concern remains the unavoidable fact that the methodical Chinese program is intended to visit the Moon at some near date far sooner than the U.S. national program– let alone any private space “tourist” stuck beneath LEO.
I certainly understand the temptation to belittle the political considerations of the American space program, particularly given our obvious fiscal problems. Why spend so much money we don’t have on prestige projects?
That said, if in the next ten years the Chinese program is able to land taikonauts on the Moon when the United States is unable to leave Earth orbit– or worse, unable to go *anywhere* without relying on Russian vehicles– the political consequences of our choice will be devastating, both abroad and here at home. What better symbol of American decline than watching another nation plant a flag on the Moon when we are impotent– by choice!– to do so?
It may be hyerbole in the extreme to suggest that the Chinese could simply land at Tranquility and kick the American flag down and there’d be nothing we could do about it… but it would also be *accurate* hyperbole. What consequences would result in such a dramatic surrender of our leadership in space?
I’m all for privately-funded spaceflight. But we are not there yet. And certainly not in the realm of interplanetary exploration. Richard Branson and Elon Musk *might* make some money– likely subsidized government money, paid to them instead of paid to Boeing & LockMart, what progress is that?– but sightseeing trips to LEO and trash hauling from the ISS is hardly the work of superpowers.
Let me get this straight. You want to waste billions of dollars so a human can plant an American flag on the moon. We already did that trick in 1969. We have not lots the ability to leave earths orbitr. We are sending robotic vehicles ot Mars that have provided an enormous amount of knowledge. We are sending vehilce to the far reaches of the galaxy, delviering valuabhle knowledge. What is the problem here.
David, what’s the difference between going to Florence and seeing the David, and mailing someone a camera so they can take a picture of it for you?
Nothing like holding the foot on the neckls of BP. we can be living in a country whwere the oposite is happening, like in Nigeria and Ecuador. Local popualtions have been poisoned by oil spill that continues to occur. Oil companies like most private businesses wiol try to walk away from their own mistakes with as little cost to them as possible.
now we can all see the dangers of having an affirmative action ‘education’ valued the same as a real one. actual intellectual study and increase of knowledge is not required, it seems.
NASA quit hauling DOD payloads way back (late 80′s?). the USAF has it’s own launch vehicles (mostly Delta rockets) these days, the most reliable of them all btw. they are mostly launched from Cape Canaveral, and NASA launches from Kennedy Space Center(pads 39A & B). There is the Banana River that runs between most of CC & KSC. NASA also owns Playalinda beach on the north end of KSC, a partially public nude beach, while the USAF owns the original launch pads all the way up the coast numbered south to north, from lowest to highest, w/ 39 A & B at the northern tip.
from what i have heard, having worked there in the 80′s & 90′s, the private sector tried for decades to get access to the old launch sites to refirb. and use. the problem has always been the gov.’s control of all space flight in the past.
the obvious future is a combination of private and government, w/ private driving some aspects, and gov. driving it’s concerns. the distant past was probably completely gov. controlled. in recent times business interests (mostly science & communication satellites) have helped fuel ($$$) the program. now is the time for a truly shared program. one probably can’t do it w/o the other; however, gov. should aid and assist private space flight. contractors have always been the ones to actually launch the vehicles anyway.
imho – for all this to happen we will need a prez. with a vision of America, not a new version of Amerika.
Oh dear oh dear. So the future of American space exploration is to be enmeshed with nations and cultures that cannot and do not manufacture anything as technologically complex as a toaster? We’re to partner with people who not only refuse to educate women, but beat, torture, mutilate and kill them for real or imagined slights to honor? We’re to work out complex scientific matters with people whose only education occurs in madrassas where the sole curriculum is how to more effectively hate and kill Jews and all other infidels? We’re to do rocket science with nations whose only interest in that technology is in using it to produce delivery vehicles for weapons of mass destruction against folks like us? And we’re supposed to make these people, millions upon millions of whom would gladly saw our heads off with dull, rusty knives, feel good about the basic scientific accomplishments of a few of their ancestors of centuries and millennia past? And NASA(?!) is the logical governmental agency to take the lead in this errand?
No doubt the complete emasculation of NASA is primarily–but not solely–motivated by greed. There are many billions in the NASA budget that Obama and his legions covet for their pet socialistic projects. And no doubt, some of this is a result of Obama’s reflexive hatred for American exceptionalism. In NASA that leadership, that exceptional vision and ability, that failure is not an option culture and magnificent record of accomplishment are surely on display. Can’t have that now, can we? No we can’t!
Once again, we have an obvious example of the consequences of elections. Was Mr. Bolden appointed because of his experience, education and demonstrated management ability? Is he a rocket scientist? Or is he merely possessed of the correct skin tone, and most importantly, of the correct political mindset? The currently available evidence seems to indicate that a rocket scientist he is not. Hope and change indeed.
Rand, I thought the same thing decades ago, privatize space travel. The last year and a half under the progressive rulers I’ve learned alot. Basically what will happen is billions in private money will go into private space travel. NASA will become another massive bureaucracy of byzantine rules and regulations. They can even keep thier name, it will fit thier “new mission”.
In a nut shell. Huge amounts of private capital, massive government control, another pay to play scheme. There will be royalties to be paid, fines, of course no government responsibilities. Think BP. Huge law suits if an accident happens.
It will not be another Wright brothers moment or Farmer Astronaut.
I wonder if this NASA initiative and our “closer relationship” means that we will be sending our scientists into the Umma to help them with things like implementing the recent fatwa telling women to suckle unrelated adult men, so as to establish a familial relationship that will allow the man and women to be in the same room together, thus preventing the woman from being flogged or jailed for her violation of Shari’a law (http://www.jihadwatch.org/2010/06/saudi-cleric-behind-adult-suckling-fatwa-is-adviser-to-the-royal-court-and-consultant-to-the-ministr.html)?
First of all isn’t butting into other nation’s internal affairs the thing the Obots whine most about? giving them self esteem to Muslim kids is not our job or mandate anymore than giving them democracy- isn’t it just proving our exceptionalism? to think OUR education is better?
Muslims have more than enough self esteem- they think they own the one and only way to live and intend to make sure YOU and yours live their way too- their superiority complex is self evident to everyone- Muslims already claim the Koran is the perfect science document- they claim that Koran has predicted future and SINCE THEY ARE SURE koraN IS PERFECT KNOWLEDGE from Allah- they will tell you Koran is the ONLY education they need (or will accept)And it is for that reason we see NO, ZERO, acheivements coming from Islamic nations- no Nobel prizes- no inventions- no industry- ISLAM is designed to squash any thought outside it’s narrow scope- And the ones they do claim and Obumummer repeated in a speech ALL happened before Arabia and PErsia became ISLAMIC- great math? before ISLAM. great architiecture? stolen from the people they conquered, the Taj Mahal was built and design by HINDUS under Muslim rule.
Muslims live in a LIE.
Obama does not see any irony in this push? he of all people KNOW that change in ISLAM, innovation, is considered BIDAH- SIN and as enabler of CHANGE if Obambi was in DAr el ISLAM he would be condemened or worse for trying
Why o why would USA or should USA share anything with people who wish to use it to destroy us? Why try to teach those who refuse to see?
Actually, the Taj was designed by a Persian architect.
Muslims have more than enough self esteem …” Unfortunately, they have no self-confidence about that so-called esteem. Muslims (and I mean Middle-East Muslims) are born offended. The “see” the face of Mohammed (pbuh (that’s a Bronx cheer)) in a pizza and they go bonkers. Fatwa on pizzas!!!
Uh, you might want to check your sources a bit. Omar Khayyam, for example, was Persian, a Muslim, and a great mathematician (and a pretty damn good poet, just by the by.)
What scientific accomplishments? This is really an awful attempt to placate genocidal sociopaths who want to destroy western civilization and murder those who oppose mohamad the pedophile. Mass murder is the only thing in 1400 years muslims have done well and they have had a lot of practice. muslims have killed 300 million non-muslims and enslaved or forcibly converted millions of others. They also know how to gloat after they slaughter large numbers of innocent people: this is why we are watching the “cordoba initiative” unfold close to ground zero.
Yes, Muslims have a monopoly on mass murder. I guess Hitler, mao Pol Pot, Stalin, Melosavic were Muslim as well. Europeans only became civilized in 1945, so i guss the Muslim world is a little behind. oh, and lets not forget the Catholic church and what they did upon their arrival in the Americas
Ya know, I haven’t seen lil Davie around here till recently. I am wondering if Davie is an old Troll in new clothing. Hmmm. I am beginning to see some similarities.
Miriam Rove, dressed up as a Jew. Very clever but not convincing.
Muslims everywhere should be highly offended by this Administration’s direction….Implying that Muslims need rocket scientists to improve their self esteem. What a mission…it would probably be easier to get the Mars rover moving again.
Only one poster here realized what Bolden is actually trying to accomplish. It’s too bad he used clumsy imperialist language to do it.
Rand, you’re a thoughtful guy, so I’d really appreciate your take on this as a non-tinfoil-hat exponent of the right:
Al-Qaeda is desperately trying to fool the Muslim world into believing that there is a vast clash of civilizations between Islam and Christianity. This idea is their fuel for recruiting and funding. It’s a national security imperative to blow a hole in this idiotic and dangerous fantasy. Sure, we have to go destroy the existing terrorist infrastructure by military means, but unless we deconstruct the Islamist world-view, we will never be free of terrorism because there will always be new recruits.
This is what Bolden is doing by talking to al-Jazeera. (It’s also why Obama bowed to the Saudi king, and why his first interview was to al-Jazeera. It’s not because he’s a closet Muslim.) If even one young hot-head thinks America isn’t so bad after hearing this interview, and then chooses not to enlist in al-Qaeda, then American lives will have been saved. ‘course, Bolden kinda defeated his own mission by using the “feel good about themselves” language.
I am disheartened by many of the comments here. It seems that the clash-of-civilizations fable is alive and well here in the U.S….
Couldn’t this also be mistaken for them winning and hence causing more martyrs to follow the strong horse? Just a thought, I may be wrong but so could you.
Of course it is. 9-11 told me everything I needed to know about moon god worshiping POS. I will not go into the 1983 Marine Corp barraks, USS Cole, Korbar Towers, the 1993 WTT bombing, Fort Hood SOA, etc…
You got it?
Al-Qaeda is desperately trying to fool the Muslim world into believing that there is a vast clash of civilizations between Islam and Christianity.
Ah, here’s your problem, your worldview is all cockeyed. See, Al-Qaeda KNOWS that there is a civilizational conflict between the Dar-al-Islam and the Dar-al-Harb. They know this because it’s a foundational position of their faith. All of Islam knows it–in much the same way all Christians know that Christ died for their sins.
And they act on that.
Hey, we get a lot of crap about the Crusades these days, as if the Church was doing something bad—but tell me, can you think of the Crusade in which Christians sacked and conquered Mecca? No? How about the instances where the Muslims took Persia, Egypt and Spain?
Oooh–when they did that, was Al-Qaeda ‘fooling the Muslim world into believing that there is a vast clash of civilizations between Islam and Christianity’?
No. They weren’t.
This is what Bolden is doing by talking to al-Jazeera. (It’s also why Obama bowed to the Saudi king, and why his first interview was to al-Jazeera. It’s not because he’s a closet Muslim.) If even one young hot-head thinks America isn’t so bad after hearing this interview, and then chooses not to enlist in al-Qaeda, then American lives will have been saved.
I get it. By kowtowing to Islam and destroying our space program, the president isn’t showing any slavish defernce to the enemy who wants us all dead, nah…he’s trying to sacrifice America to keep one Muslim from acting as his faith commands. Gotcha.
I am disheartened by many of the comments here. It seems that the clash-of-civilizations fable is alive and well here in the U.S….
Don’t worry, with rationed healthcare, a destroyed energy infrastructure, a state department and military bent on appeasement AND a space program that exists to thank Muslims for burning the Library at Alexandria, we should get over that clash of civilizations thing in time for the next call to prayer(but we won’t be Muslim or dhimmi-wink-)
If even one young hot-head thinks America isn’t so bad after hearing this interview, and then chooses not to enlist in al-Qaeda, then American lives will have been saved.
Not if for each one hot-head who thinks that, ten think that we’re displaying weakness and cultural flaccidity. Recall what bin Laden said about the weak horse and the strong horse. The administration may think that it’s pursuing smart diplomacy, but all it’s really doing is sowing contempt for us among many in that culture. They don’t lack self esteem. They lack esteem for non-Muslims. And with this kind of nonsense, we give them good reason to.
jeffno—ever read—not assumed that what Muslims and many so called “experts” told you was in them or what they meant, but have you ever actually read the Qur’an, the Hadiths, the Sira? Ever read any biography of Muhammad that wasn’t written by Karen Armstrong? Every picked up and read books like Andrew Bostom’s compilation of mostly Muslim sources titled, “The Legacy of Jihad,” looked at the steadily rising daily tally of Muslim terrorist attacks all over the world–at this hour standing at 15,590–that are compiled at http://www.thereligionofpeace.com/? Ever hear of 9/11, or Daniel Pearl, Major Hasan, or the Times Square car bomber, who just recently declared that he was a proud “soldier of Allah”?
Do those things, do some research, and then try to say what you have said above with a straight face.
The space program has done alot for the world. However, its way too expensive and we should be saving up for a trip to Mars. So lets just keep the space station and get the rest of the world to help fund it in return for getting a piece of the action…until its scrapped. We do not have the money to waste on it anymore.
You’re actually Randy Hickey, right? Earl Hickey’s younger brother? I swear you come across sounding just like him.
Simberg, if a straight forward article on how Nasa can serve Islamic interests then leads to a riff on bad old Constellation, you need help probably of a psychiatric nature. You also need an editor.
I’m glad to see someone write on the theory that Obama’s space policy shows that two wrongs can make a right. In this case, Obama is wrong in his trust in government over the private sector, and wrong to assign space flight to such a low priority (e.g. Bolton’s top three NASA missions). As a result, in the long run it may be the best achievement of his administration.
Remember that in the Robert Heinlein alternate universe, Earth developed manned interstellar flight precisely because it was a private sector operation from the beginning.
The fact remains that the Constellation program was a slow-motion fiscal train wreck that, even if successful by its own criteria, would have been a dead end for American manned space exploration, as Apollo was.
What a foolish comment. Apollo was a great success. Constellation would have allowed us to return to the moon and set the stage for future manned spaceflight missions beyond Earth orbit. Obama’s plan, in the end, will result in the death of manned space flight–by the U.S., at any rate.
if a straight forward article on how Nasa can serve Islamic interests
That wasn’t what the article was about. Apparently you don’t read for comprehension. The article was about how attempts to defend the administration’s sensible space policies are undermined by nonsensical pronouncements.
when leads to a riff on bad old Constellation, you need help probably of a psychiatric nature.
Cowardly anonymous physician, heal thyself.
You also need an editor.
Every article at this site is edited.
Every article at this site is edited.
Damn straight.
Amen, and thanks for that too.
Apollo was a great success.
It was such a great success that we haven’t been back to the moon in almost four decades.
Constellation would have allowed us to return to the moon and set the stage for future manned spaceflight missions beyond Earth orbit.
Not in any affordable way.
Obama’s plan, in the end, will result in the death of manned space flight–by the U.S., at any rate.
A plan that extends the ISS for at least half a decade, has crew flying to it on multiple American vehicles much sooner and at a far lower cost than Ares/Orion, and a technology development program to dramatically reduce the cost of sending people beyond earth orbit is the “death of manned space flight by the US.”
Right. Another dispatch from Bizarro world.
> It was such a great success that we haven’t been back to the moon in almost four decades.
It’s a bit unfair to pin the failure to go back to the moon on the Apollo program. I think it may have been caused by a generational change in attitudes, more than anything. We were busy loosing the Vietnam war and absorbing a lot of the hippie mentality into the mainstream, there just wasn’t much room to talk about squarenesses such as the space program. Many social problems, such as the creation of a permanent underclass involved with drugs and riddled with violence, grew from the same era, exacerbated by what were (nominally) attempts to fix them. Surely these problems weren’t also caused by the Apollo program?
Surely these problems weren’t also caused by the Apollo program?
The problem with the Apollo program was that it cost too much for too little. This was a problem that was supposed to be solved by the Shuttle, but because it was a government program that followed on from Apollo, it had the same flaws.
We need a new approach. The administration has proposed one, but because it was proposed by this economically and politically clueless administration, it is likely to fail as well, though for different reasons.
jeffno-Not to put too fine a point on it, but was it the “fable” of the “clash of civilizations” that resulted in the estimated 280,000,000 unbelievers killed by Muslims during the last 1,400 years, or the estimated 17,000,000 slaves, captured by Muslims, who survived to be sold in Muslim slave markets (slavery that still exists in some parts of the Umma today), was it the “fable” of the Muslim Barbary Pirates that forced our newly formed Congress to pay somewhere between 10% and 20% of our entire government’s budget each year between 1780 and 1800 to the Pirates as “protection money,” tribute, Jizya, until our newly formed Navy and Marines went to Tripoli and destroyed them? Was it a “fable” that blew a hole in the ship and killed our sailors on the USS Cole, killed hundreds of our Marines in their Marine encampment in Lebanon, dragged our dying soldiers through the streets of Mogadishu, bombed our Embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, and destroyed the Twin Towers and killed 3,000 people? Did the “fable” of the “clash of civilizations” have absolutely nothing to do with motivating Maj. Hasan to scream “Allahu Akbar” as he killed 13 fellow servicemen and wounded another 30 a few months ago? Was it not, in fact, this very “fable” of the “clash of civilizations” that the Times Square bomber thought he was acting as the agent of when he constructed and placed his car bomb?
NASA is the wrong agency. SAC would have been a better choice.
And if they don’t does that suggest a success of the previous administration? Iraq, Afghanistan, SecDef Gates, and Guantanamo all agree – Bush was right. Obama, in his campaign, was wrong.
.
On this one issue, they’re right. There is a clash of civilizations. One we must win.
.
And if we kill even one young hot-head, then it doesn’t matter what his intentions are/were vis a vis al-Qaeda because he’ll be worm food. Then American lives will have been saved.
FIFY.
.
Like most private businesses – and all governments on the face of the earth.
Yeah, God…er…Allah forbid that an American space agency serve American interests. /shudder
Since when have muslims made major contributions to science. Sure a lot of interesting stuff came out of the Middle East but that was before Mohammed forced them to stay in the 7th century. Scam.
Lester, Muslims invented the zero – so they could respond to questions about what they’d accomplished in the last millennium.
(Yeah, I know the zero came from India and the Muslims just promulgated it, but work with me here.)
oh yeah..good one!!
Rand, I think you’re absolutely right about killing Constellation and a refocusing of NASA on technology development and deep space (sort of like NACA/early NASA).
I also wish they’d take Jerry Pournelle’s advice about X-projects and prizes — at least this seems like a possible step in that direction.
However, I have zero confidence that Obama will actually follow thru, that of “cut now, spend smarter elsewhere later” the latter part won’t be followed thru on (‘unexpected’ budget problems, changing priorities, etc).
How is NASA going to promote Climate Change for Cap ‘n Trade if it goes into the Muslim massage business? I hear that Al Gore is available for an advisory position to show NASA how to do both. Hey, NASA, can I get a happy ending on Launch Pad #9? Bring your burka, honey.
In the Ayn Rand novel “The Fountainhead”, innovative architect Howard Roark builds a vacation resort of cottages in the hills. The developers let him do ANYTHING they want even though they all think he’s crazy, and his resort village turns out to be a nice commercial success – much to the dismay of the developers, who had oversubscribed the development several-fold. They had planned for a failure, hoping to cash in – and failed at failing! (Mel Brooks used a similar ploy as the basis for “The Producers”.)
Is that what you think is happening? The Obama Administration is trying mightily to fail at human spaceflight by doing all the wrong things, and is failing – at failing?
Inspiring kids to learn math and science is a worthy goal. Not all the kids who get interested in math and science will become astronauts, but many will become engineers and chemists and IT guys, etc. Being an astronaut is an inspiration, not an ambition, and the country will be richer for it if this motivates kids.
One child who was motivated to excel in math and science by the space program was Charles Bolden himself. I know this because I interviewed him for a book I was writing. He never dreamed he would be an astronaut–in his boyhood, no black person had ever been one–but it opened his eyes to the richness of the possibilities available to him. He did become an astronaut, as well as a marine general. That’s pretty good.
If you read the history of Islam, most of the Islamic scholars were recently converted Jews and Greeks in Syria and North Africa. After about 200 years of Islamic rule, Islam crushed all free thought, and the long Muslim night descended, at least in the heartland of the Islamic world.
The Islamic world really didn’t contribute much new (I do like their numbering system much better than the Roman), but it did preserve the knowledge of the civilization they helped to destroy. The Muslim rulers were great lovers and supporters of knowledge and poetry in the beginning, but, religious orthodoxy supervened, just like it did in the Christian world.
Islam just needs its own version of the Renaissance. Using the Christian experience, it will start in about 2300 A.D.
Joel, look up the Islamic Golden Age. You’re shorting them about 500 years, and some awfully damn nice architecture, literature, and mathematics. As I’ve pointed out elsewhere today, you just need to read a star map to see that the Arabs contributed a lot to science.
Some were Arabs, that is, Muslims born. But as he wrote, a great many of them were either non-Muslims living as dhimmis in Muslim societies, or minorities who converted for the benefits, and the 401K, and to keep their heads.
President Obama could declare his true religion and add one more name to the very short list of Muslim Nobel Award winners. That should raise some esteem from somebody. Yassir? Bueller?
Does anybody else get the notion that Maxine Waters and Cynthia McKinney are on President Obama’s appointee selection committee?
Obama ought to get aboard the last shuttle flight an jettison himself into the Sun.
Thank you for demonstrating your ignorance of (among other things) orbital mechanics.
In fairness, the origial poster did not stipulate how Obama was to “jetison himself into the sun.” Of course it is perfectly possible to do that from the shuttle’s orbit, given sufficient impulse, and while I haven’t taken time to do the engineering I suspect the shuttle could accomodate the stage necessary to get an ~85-kg package into the desired orbit (even if it takes a long time to get him there… )
I suspect the shuttle could accomodate the stage necessary to get an ~85-kg package into the desired orbit
Not on its last flight — the payload bay will be full of ISS stuff.
The sun is the most difficult place to get to in the solar system. It’s easier to go to another star (if you’re not in a hurry).
“… to help them feel good about their historic contribution to science, math, and engineering.”
That would be a lot easier to do if there actually were any such contributions.
Take a look at the record: the Alhambra (unquestionally great): built around 1350. While it’s trite to say, what have they done since?
Then theres that algebra thing (borrowed from Indian mathematicians by al-Khwārizmī, about 800 AD).
One of the great early astronomers was Ulugh Beg (1394 – 1449). He was assassinated by his son. Since then, Mulsims have left science to the scientists.
Since those days? Nothing.
“A Muslim on the Moon? Just imagine?” Impossible. They wouldn’t know which way to bow to Mecca. I suppose “down” would be OK.
I, for one, think this is an outstanding use of NASA’s resources. As a nation, we need to know if there is intelligent life on Mecca.
I Betcha Thought NASA Was Still NASA!
I betcha thought that the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, NASA, was dedicated to “pioneer the future in space exploration and aeronautics research.”
How naive of you! Just because that dedication is part of its mission statement doesn’t mean it’s true now.
We’re in the Age Of Obama when our sights are far less lofty than space exploration, aeronautics research, visiting the moon and the planets, understanding our own planet, exploring the limits of the universe, charting man’s next great adventure into the far reaches of space, going where no man has ever gone before.
What fools we all must be to believe in a mission statement when politics and Obama have radically altered that mission.
Forget all you remember and what you’ve heard about NASA, the promise of John Kennedy that we would go to the moon, the early failures and heartbreaks, July 20th, 1969, Apollo 13, the Space Shuttle, the Hubble telescope, dreams of voyages to Mars and beyond. . .
(Read more at http://www.genelalor.com/blog1/?p=1773)
Announced by the White House on June 22nd , the appointment of Samar Ali , a Muslim attorney who specializes in Shariah-compliant transactions, as a new White House Fellow . She is an associate with the law firm Hogan Lovells – a firm that claims to have advised on more than 200 Islamic finance transactions with an aggregate deal value in excess of $40 billion. White House fellows spend a year as full-time, paid assistants to senior White House staff, the Vice President , Cabinet secretaries and senior administration officials.
BHOs intention to make muslims ” feel good ” is only a distraction. The true intent is to allow foreign governments access to scrutinize american technology, decide what to buy, have the DOJ sign off on the transaction, structure the transaction, and scoop up companies that have had their share prices beaten down to dust. The oil producers are the ones who will reap huge profits due to the Gulf Oil spill. The longer it goes on the more reluctance to open up offshore drilling. Cash is king and the kIng ( Saudi ) has the the cash. Wake up America!
Obama is fulfilling his campaign promise to “restore science to its rightful place”.
Now NASA can begin their mission to help Muslims feel good about themselves.
NASA Mission
To help Muslims feel good about themselves.
To improve life here,
To extend life to there,
To find life beyond.
Vision
To understand and protect our home planet,
To explore the universe and search for life, and
To inspire the next generation of explorers . . . as only NASA can.
As long as it helps Muslims feel good about themselves.
Thousands of jobs lost in the United States both indirectly and directly and a ten year or longer gap void of manned space flight in the U.S. is a good start.
Bleck!
A link to this lucid and compelling explanation of the new NASA priorities does not appear to have been posted here. As it suggests, many good things may well come from it.
Um…what happens when one of the “feel good” nations tells the USA that they would feel even better if we would just share some NASA technology with them. You know, to help them “catch up” with the infidels’ domination of space. And what’s NASA’s primary expertise? HELLO…it’s ROCKETS! Everything NASA does in space starts with launching a rocket. You don’t think…naaah…the Obama administration wouldn’t hand rocket technology over to…OR WOULD THEY ???????
If you think Obama’s dumping of NASA’s focused program to fly to the moon (Constellation) for a generic “technology” development program is good national space policy, you’ve got your head in the clouds. Most of NASA is structured for space flight launch and operations. Only a small portion of NASA is able to conduct research into new technology. Obama’s science people are bleeping idiots to think that overnight they can restructure 15,000 people and steer them in a brand new direction. Especially without consulting with anyone first.
I think that Obama’s science people are just as advanced in their thinking as are the Mullahs.
Powerful cartoon on “Moon-Rock Stoning” combining NASA’s new mission to reach out to Muslims and the recent controversy over the stoning of Sakineh Mohammadie Ashtiani at http://drawfortruth.wordpress.com/2010/07/09/nasa-outreach-to-muslims/
Whether or not there is any irrepressible conflict between Islam and the West, I shouldn’t get too excited, as it must be one of the most indecisive stalemates in history.
Look at a map of Europe and the ME in c730AD, and then another of the same region today. You’ll find the boundary still pretty much where it’s always been – along the middle of the Med. The only major change has been the swapping of two peninsulas – Iberia one way, Asia Minor the other. That aside, it’s pretty much “As you were”, despite the passing of 1300 years.
In the Fifth and Sixth Centuries, most of the “European” provinces of the Roman Empire were divvied up among various Germanic Barbarians, some Christian already, some Heathens who became so later. In the Seventh and Eighth, Arab and Berber Barbarians, mostly converts to Islam, did ditto in Syria, the African provinces and Spain. After the inevitable clashes over how to split the loot, the boundary settled along the Med. Subsequently, it has wobbled from time to time in both directions, but has mostly ended up back about where it started. Border conflict continued, but didn’t consume half as much energy as both parties put into their own internal feuds.
In AD3300, there may have been all sorts of changes within the Christian and Moslem worlds, but it’s a good bet that the dividing line between them won’t be all that far from where it is today.
So, let me get this straight. Starting when Muhammad died in 632 A.D. Muslim armies pored out of the Saudi Arabian Peninsula, managed to rack up a slew of conquests in the first hundred years, and then it has basically been “status quo” since then. So, I guess then that the Muslim conquest and obliteration of what had been the ancient Christian Middle East—Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, Jerusalem, Palestine, then Turkey and North Africa was no biggie, nor was their conquest and 800 year occupation of Spain, their massive slaughters in India—an estimated 80,000,000 Hindus killed, or their conquest of the Byzantine Empire in the 15th century, nor Muslim’s thousand plus year slave trade that spanned the known world and “processed” an estimated 17,000,000 slaves (mostly Africans, but 1.5 million of them estimated to be Europeans), none of these things meant anything, they were insignificant.
Since it was just “status quo, baby,” the thousand years plus of constant Muslim raiding parties after the 8th century A. D., who brought occupation, terror and destruction,looted and captured slaves all over the Mediterranean—in Italy and Greece, in Sicily and Malta, for instance–and on the coasts of Europe—in England, Ireland and even Iceland, don’t count and, as for the larger raiding parties of Muslims who brought their special form of terror, destruction and slave taking to the lands of Eastern and Central Europe—in the Slavic countries, in Poland and Hungary, in Russia, in parts of Germany and up to the outskirts of Switzerland and Paris, well, they were not significant—they were minor affairs, insignificant, really.
Obviously, then, Muslim attempts to conquer Europe—defeated by Christian armies at Tours outside Paris in 732 A.D., at the Gates of Vienna in the 15th Century, at sea at the Battle of Lepanto in that same 15th century, and again at the Siege of Vienna in the 16th century, meant noting.
In view of this record of “status quo,” today’s version of the Muslim Jihad, and the rising number of terrorist attacks which Muslims commit in virtually every country of the world—by one count, almost 16,000 such terrorist attacks by Muslims just since 9/11(see http://www.thereligionofpeace.com/), and their parallel attempts by other “peaceful means” to subvert, intimidate, dominate and finally conquer what is left of the remaining unbeliever nations of what used to be called Christendom, the massive influx of unassimilable Muslim “immigrants”–this army of subversion, intimidation, occupation and conquest into Europe, Canada and the United States, their establishment of more and more “no-go areas” and of Shari’a law within their “host” countries, in which only Islamic Shari’a law and control runs, their building of massive numbers of Mosques–their bases for indoctrination, agitation, subversion and conquest and the symbol of their rolling Jihad means absolutely nothing for, after all, “its status quo baby,” and has been for almost 1,300 years.
Give or take the occasional incursion, it has indeed been pretty much “staus quo, baby”.
Once the Germanic Christian barbarians who had overrun the northern parts of the Roman Empire, and the Arab Moslem ones who overran the southern part, met up in Spain and Gaul, it was entirely predictable that there would be some fighting over how to divide the loot. But once they’d fought themselves to a standtill after Tours, things pretty much settled down along the line of the Mediterranean.
There has of course been the occasional incursion. The Crusaders conqered the Levant in the late Eleventh Century – and lost it again in the later 13th. The Turks did a mite better in the Balkans, conquering them in the late 14C and not losing them again until the late 19th and early 20th. Finally, between 1830 and 1920 various Europeans colonised large chunks of the Moslem world – and had lost the last of them by 1967.
As for the “subversion and conquest”, I’m not sure what you mean. How many Christian countries have been conquered by Moslems within the lifetime of anyone alive today – or one that has come even close to being?
Here is an article out today regarding members of the small Jewish community in Malmo, who are leaving because of rising antisemitic attacks by the Muslims there (http://www.haaretz.com/jewish-world/jews-reluctantly-abandon-swedish-city-amid-growing-anti-semitism-1.301276)
tHIS IS BECAUSE AFRICAN-AMERICANS HAVE NEVER ACCOMPLISHED ANYTHING OR SHOWN ANY ABILITY TO FOSTER A CIVILED ORGANIZATION LET ALONE A SOCIETY.
AND IT SHOULDN’T SURPRISE US THAT THE NEGROID REGIME CAN ONLY PLUNDER AND DESTROY THAT WHICH OTHERS HAVE BUILT. WE HAVE TERRORISTS IN THE WHITEHOUSE!