NASA's foremost mission? Improve relations with Muslims.

"NASA Administrator Charles Bolden said in a recent interview that his "foremost" mission as the head of America's space exploration agency is to improve relations with the Muslim world."

Given his position, that's got to be one of stupidist things I've ever heard.
 
Stellafane said:
Does he think Muslims come from another planet?
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No he was in an Islamic country being interviewed by an Islamic TV station during a joint US Islamic celebration

Given NASA is just about down to test flying box kites, what else has he got to do with his time

Or maybe he was simply inspired by this

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pale_Blue_Dot#Reflections_by_Sagan

It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known.
 
If this means they will try and find a livable extrasolar planet on which they can establish their Caliphate, and leave Earth alone, I'm all for it.
 
MG1962 said:
No he was in an Islamic country being interviewed by an Islamic TV station during a joint US Islamic celebration
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You seem to be implying that Muslims are, on average, complete and utter idiots who wouldn't find Bolden's statement to be just as much a non-sequitur (if not an outright lie) as anybody else.

Alternatively, you seem to be implying that Bolden thinks this.

Alternatively, you seem to be implying that NASA's mission is like the Bible: many things to many people, a vague cloud of fairy tales, easily interpreted however best suits the subjective perceptions of one's audience du jour.
 
It's the legacy of the space shuttle and the space station, which ceased being mainly about science and became a mostly diplomatic excerise years ago.

The space station gave the shuttle a place to go, preferably with people from different countries. Isn't it great how we can all get along in space, just like Star Trek!
 
skullerello said:
"NASA Administrator Charles Bolden said in a recent interview that his "foremost" mission as the head of America's space exploration agency is to improve relations with the Muslim world."

Given his position, that's got to be one of stupidist things I've ever heard.
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Unless you listen to the next couple minutes of the interview, where he explains what he meant:

http://english.aljazeera.net/programmes/talktojazeera/2010/07/201071122234471970.html

When he says "improve relations with the Muslim world", he means encouraging Muslim nations to contribute to international efforts in space exploration. Not at all unreasonable given his position.
 
Ohmer said:
Unless you listen to the next couple minutes of the interview, where he explains what he meant:

http://english.aljazeera.net/programmes/talktojazeera/2010/07/201071122234471970.html

When he says "improve relations with the Muslim world", he means encouraging Muslim nations to contribute to international efforts in space exploration. Not at all unreasonable given his position.
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In other words, in the subsequent interview he basically contradicts what he said at the beginning, which didn't involve getting them to do anything, but only to feel good about having done something good hundreds of years ago. What he says subsequent to that opening is fairly reasonable (though still open to considerable criticism, since the ISS is a money pit), but the opening was not. And just as troubling, even if you choose to substitute what he said later as what he meant (but didn't say) at the beginning, we're still left with the fact that actually accomplishing space exploration wasn't on the list of priorities given to him by Obama.
 
The idea of helping the Muslim world enter the 21st century is a good one. The problem is, it seems to have made it to the top three list, which does not appear to include space exploration. The inspirational qualities of the space program should be a by-product (or "spin off" if you will) of the main mission of exploring space. It should not be the main focus.
 
If this is the kind of garbage we are going to have NASA do then I'm ready to shut the whole thing down. Let's take the $10-15B a year and use it to incentive private investment in space. Or better yet not spend it at all and encourage private investment in space through other means.
 
What Bolden originally said:

http://www.darkskiesblog.com/2010/0...-feel-good-about-its-scientific-achievements/

Here’s the exact statement by NASA administrator Charles Bolden in his interview with Al Jazeera in Cairo (and here’s the entire youtube video–the “foremost” comment occurs at the 1 min 20 sec mark):

“One, he [Obama] 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 and engineering — science, math and engineering.”
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Yeah ... that sounds like something Barack Hussein Obama would want. :rolleyes:

After all, he is Stuck On Stupid. :D
 
Ohmer said:
When he says "improve relations with the Muslim world", he means encouraging Muslim nations to contribute to international efforts in space exploration. Not at all unreasonable given his position.
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What? How is this at all reasonable? Why should this be one of NASA's missions? Why encourage Muslim nations more than non-muslim nations? In fact ICBM's are a close relative to space technology and pushing nations full of morons to do more work in space seems counter-intuitive to me. Perhaps you could explain the logic?
 
"What it is is expanding our outreach so that we get more people to contribute to what we do. The International Space Station is as great as it is because we have a conglomerate of about 15-plus nations who have contributed something to that partnership that makes it what it is today. If it not for the presence of the Russian's for example we would have the ISS in this form. If it were not for the Japanese and their incredible module Kebo, which is perhaps the best laboratory module on the ISS, it wouldn't be what it is. It is a matter of trying to reach out and get the best out of all worlds, if you will, and there is much to be gained by drawing in the contributions that are possible from the Muslim nations."

How is that controversial?
 
bit_pattern said:
"What it is is expanding our outreach so that we get more people to contribute to what we do. The International Space Station is as great as it is because we have a conglomerate of about 15-plus nations who have contributed something to that partnership that makes it what it is today. If it not for the presence of the Russian's for example we would have the ISS in this form. If it were not for the Japanese and their incredible module Kebo, which is perhaps the best laboratory module on the ISS, it wouldn't be what it is. It is a matter of trying to reach out and get the best out of all worlds, if you will, and there is much to be gained by drawing in the contributions that are possible from the Muslim nations."

How is that controversial?
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The other contributors to the ISS have significant technical expertise in space. There are no Muslim nations which do. Seriously, what do we have to gain from them? Working with them doesn't help NASA's mission of space exploration. Which gets back to the point that actual space exploration is apparently not a priority.
 
Ziggurat said:
The other contributors to the ISS have significant technical expertise in space. There are no Muslim nations which do. Seriously, what do we have to gain from them? Working with them doesn't help NASA's mission of space exploration. Which gets back to the point that actual space exploration is apparently not a priority.
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You're right. A much better approach would be to never engage the Muslim world ever and to entrench the us-against-them mentality as an immutable natural law, after all they are mere barbarians who have never contributed to the total sum of scientific understanding and whose scientists could never, ever bring anything of any benefit to the table.
 
bit_pattern said:
You're right. A much better approach would be to never engage the Muslim world ever
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A much better approach would be for NASA to focus on its primary job, space exploration, and let the state department take the lead on the diplomatic front.

and to entrench the us-against-them mentality as an immutable natural law,
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Want some alfalfa to go with your straw?

after all they are mere barbarians who have never contributed to the total sum of scientific understanding and whose scientists could never, ever bring anything of any benefit to the table.
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It doesn't matter what they did hundreds of years ago. And it's not even primarily about scientists, it's primarily about engineers. And no, they don't have any significant number with the required skills. Which is related to the fact that they don't have space programs worth mentioning. If they want to invest in such programs, we should be willing to help out, but it should not be a top priority for NASA. It's not a productive use of our resources. Even if our priority is outreach, NASA isn't an efficient venue to do it.
 
I've always felt that the FCC's foremost mission should be the improvement of relations with French Canadians.
 
Ziggurat said:
it should not be a top priority for NASA. It's not a productive use of our resources. Even if our priority is outreach, NASA isn't an efficient venue to do it.
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Good thing it isn't NASA's top priority then :p

Bolden was merely saying (when speaking to a Muslim audience I might add, hardly a policy announcement) that reaching out to Muslim nations is a priority for the outreach programme. What's so bad about that? Oh, that's right, it's the perfect lede for a right-wing broadcaster to push their bigoted and xenophobic agenda!

White House spokesman Nick Shapiro told FoxNews.com that Bolden's statements were consistent with the Obama administration's call for greater international cooperation in space.

"Bob Jacobs, NASA's assistant administrator for public affairs, echoed that point. However, he said that Bolden was speaking of priorities when it came to 'outreach' and not about NASA's primary missions of 'science, aeronautics and space exploration.' He said the 'core mission' is exploration and that it was unfortunate Bolden's comments are now being viewed through a 'partisan prism.'"

http://www.spacenews.com/commentaries/100706-fromwires-better-relations-muslim-world.html
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bit_pattern said:
Good thing it isn't NASA's top priority then :p

Bolden was merely saying (when speaking to a Muslim audience I might add, hardly a policy announcement) that reaching out to Muslim nations is a priority for the outreach programme. What's so bad about that? Oh, that's right, it's the perfect lede for a right-wing broadcaster to push their bigoted and xenophobic agenda!
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Made funnier by the fact that Muslims have flown with NASA before

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sultan_bin_Salman_bin_Abdulaziz_Al_Saud

First Muslim, first Arab, and first member of a Royal family to fly
 
WildCat said:
The space station gave the shuttle a place to go, preferably with people from different countries. Isn't it great how we can all get along in space, just like Star Trek!
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:D Too bad we can only do this on a space station orbiting earth and not on earth itself.
 
bit_pattern said:
Good thing it isn't NASA's top priority then :p

Bolden was merely saying (when speaking to a Muslim audience I might add, hardly a policy announcement) that reaching out to Muslim nations is a priority for the outreach programme.
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No, he wasn't. He said it was a top priority for him, as the head of NASA. Not a top priority for the outreach program, a top priority period.

What's so bad about that? Oh, that's right, it's the perfect lede for a right-wing broadcaster to push their bigoted and xenophobic agenda!
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Your defense is to basically lie about what he said, and then smear anyone who criticizes him. Maybe that will play well to the choir, but that's all it's good for.
 
I wonder when NASA finds evidence of life on other planets (and it will, within our lifetimes), how will this improve relations with Islam?
 
MG1962 said:
Made funnier by the fact that Muslims have flown with NASA before

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sultan_bin_Salman_bin_Abdulaziz_Al_Saud

First Muslim, first Arab, and first member of a Royal family to fly
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I wonder... was it a coincidence that he's a member of the royal family? Or are the royals in SA really just smarter than everyone else?

Or did he essentially pay his way onto the shuttle, since he was "payload specialist", and the payload was ARABSAT-1B? Which was only Arab in the sense that they paid for it (the French built it)?

As far as I can tell, the only significant contribution Saudi Arabia actually made was money. I'm not one for turning down money, but NASA's primary goals are not fund-raising.
 
Pardalis said:
I wonder when NASA finds evidence of life on other planets (and it will, within our lifetimes), how will this improve relations with Islam?
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It will give us someone else to be ignorant xenophobes about
 
well its not too far off...

moon-plaque.jpg
 
And we left the Moon with a similar message

Here Man completed his first explorations of the Moon. December 1972 AD. May the spirit of peace in which we came be reflected in the lives of all mankind
 
MG1962 said:
It will give us someone else to be ignorant xenophobes about
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You missed the point. Wouldn't finding other life on other worlds get in direct conflict with Islam's dogmas? The same goes for Christianity, but NASA's administrator didn't talk about Christianity.
 
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Pardalis said:
You missed the point. Wouldn't finding other life on other worlds get in direct conflict with Islam's dogmas? The same goes for Christianity, but NASA's administrator didn't talk about Christianity.
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i can see the headlines on al jazeera now

"Great Satan fakes life on other planets to draw Muslims away from Allah"
 
bit_pattern said:
after all they are mere barbarians who have never contributed to the total sum of scientific understanding and whose scientists could never, ever bring anything of any benefit to the table.
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That may have been true centuries ago, but have they contributed recently?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islam_and_science#Decline
In the early twentieth century ulema forbade the learning of foreign languages and dissection of human bodies in the medical school in Iran.[47] The ulama at the Islamic university of Al-Azhar in Cairo taught the Ptolemaic astronomical system (in which the sun circles the earth) until compelled to adopt the Copernican system by the Egyptian government in 1961.[48]
In recent years, the lagging of the Muslim world in science is manifest in the disproportionately small amount of scientific output as measured by citations of articles published in internationally circulating science journals, annual expenditures on research and development, and numbers of research scientists and engineers.[49] Skepticism of science among some Muslims is reflected in issues such as resistance in Muslim northern Nigeria to polio inoculation, which some believe is "an imaginary thing created in the West or it is a ploy to get us to submit to this evil agenda."[50]
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Alot of Islamic scholars and Imams view science, progress and technology as a sin, and a Jewish conspiracy.

Here's a very interesting article about the problems between science and Islam

http://discovermagazine.com/2007/jul/science-and-islam/
 
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