Obama directs NASA to Improve Relations with the Muslim World

I just see a bunch of arrows. J/K

From wiki:
The olive branch and arrows denote the powers of peace and war. The eagle faces towards the right to show a preference to peace over war.

However peace/war, middle east bombs, etc. isn't the point. The point is this type of outreach and diplomacy isn't and should never be NASA's primary function. Nothing wrong with attempting to work with friendly nations when possible, but Bolden stated this was a primary focus given to him directly by the POTUS. Even the WH backed off Bolden's statement because they know it looks bad under scrutiny.

That being said, what would the outrage have been on CNN, ABC, NBC, MSNBC etc. if the NASA Administrator under Bush had come out and said as one of his primary directives was "(Bush) wanted me to find a way to reach out to the (Christian/Jewish) world and engage much more with dominantly (Christian/Jewish) nations to help them feel good about their historic contribution to science ... and math and engineering."


I'm sure it won't be their primary focus, he's on Al-Jazeera and is pitching a sale. The White House backed off? I was under the impression that White House spokesman Nick Shapiro recently said:

“The President has always said that he wants NASA to engage with the world’s best scientists and engineers as we work together to push the boundaries of exploration. Meeting that mandate requires NASA to partner with countries around the world like Russia and Japan, as well as collaboration with Israel and with many Muslim-majority countries. The space race began as a global competition, but, today, it is a global collaboration.”


As for your Bush bit I think we're already doing that aren't we? So if he did it would be stating the obvious. And that's fine, collaboration is fine.

BTW, the AJ interview is fantastic (http://english.aljazeera.net/programmes/talktojazeera/2010/07/201071122234471970.html).

I don't know. All I see is an olive branch


You mean that green thing on the left isn't camouflaging sharp edged knife? :doh:

You mean that green thing on the left isn't camouflaging sharp edged knife? :doh:Actually it is, it represents our special ops forces.

Ok, that's an argument I can respect. I mean, look I've got relatives that work for NASA who have been told they will be let go in a couple of months because of the changes in NASA's overall philosophy. For their sake, I'm not thrilled about all this.

However, I think the first step to finding breakthroughs in order to achieve greater use of space is to engage the international community.

Do you not find that kind of intercontinental, Utopian sharing of idea's and concepts a bit.......naive?

I'm sure it won't be their primary focus, he's on Al-Jazeera and is pitching a sale. The White House backed off? I was under the impression that White House spokesman Nick Shapiro recently said:It was NASA that issued the pull-back statement not the WH directly, my mistake:

A NASA spokesman on Tuesday claimed Bolden was referring to his outreach priorities, not his priorities overall, and that space exploration is still the No. 1 mission. It's unclear whether the White House or NASA will face pressure to say any more.

As for your Bush bit I think we're already doing that aren't we? So if he did it would be stating the obvious. And that's fine, collaboration is fine.I thought we were working with the nations that would be helpful for space exploration regardless of primary religion. Last I checked Japan is not a Christian or Jewish nation and Russia/Canada are primarily secular. I also don't think membership in the European Space Agency has anything to do with a country's primary religion.

Do you not find that kind of intercontinental, Utopian sharing of idea's and concepts a bit.......naive?

Not really, I think you can take two paths at the same time. One that is a bit closely guarded, and one that is more open to collaboration

his job is to follow up on orders from his boss. and i guess you wouldn't take their money? space exploration is a very costly venture. that's what this is all about. that, and trying to improve the U.S. standing in the world. old W made a lot of enemies in 8 years
AND I could probably have my lawn guy re-paint my Ferrari (actually CRedskins Ferrari)....but perhaps his talents would be better spent in something more akin to his talents?
OR is logic no longer a part of the equation?

if your boss tells you to do something, do you do it? do you understand what happens if you don't? just ask the general what happens if you bad mouth your boss

It was NASA that issued the pull-back statement not the WH directly, my mistake:

A NASA spokesman on Tuesday claimed Bolden was referring to his outreach priorities, not his priorities overall, and that space exploration is still the No. 1 mission. It's unclear whether the White House or NASA will face pressure to say any more.

I thought we were working with the nations that would be helpful for space exploration regardless of primary religion. Last I checked Japan is not a Christian or Jewish nation and Russia/Canada are primarily secular. I also don't think membership in the European Space Agency has anything to do with a country's primary religion.

To be honest I thought as much, it would be retarded to think that NASA all of a sudden is going to repurpose all it engineers for outreach mission.

I assume when we're talking about the Muslim World (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muslim_world) we're talking about countries whom we have strained relationship with or a large portion of its population have a negative view of America. When we deal with Japan and Canada and the EU we call these countries First World (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_World)/Wester World (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_world) countries. That is to say its usage is for semantic grouping of countries. I am sure if there was more than one Jewish country we'd here the term the Jewish World instead of talking about just Israel.

I just see a bunch of arrows. J/K

From wiki:
The olive branch and arrows denote the powers of peace and war. The eagle faces towards the right to show a preference to peace over war.

However peace/war, middle east bombs, etc. isn't the point. The point is this type of outreach and diplomacy isn't and should never be NASA's primary function. Nothing wrong with attempting to work with friendly nations when possible, but Bolden stated this was a primary focus given to him directly by the POTUS. Even the WH backed off Bolden's statement because they know it looks bad under scrutiny.

That being said, what would the outrage have been on CNN, ABC, NBC, MSNBC etc. if the NASA Administrator under Bush had come out and said as one of his primary directives was "(Bush) wanted me to find a way to reach out to the (Christian/Jewish) world and engage much more with dominantly (Christian/Jewish) nations to help them feel good about their historic contribution to science ... and math and engineering."

Actually Reagan asked for NASA outreach to the Russians during the Cold War. The idea of mixing space exploration and diplomacy is not as weird as you make it sound.

In terms of a specific outreach to Muslims, Muslims invented the concept of zero in operative mathematics (that is, not just a placeholder). The Maya did too, independently, but Western mathematics got the concept of zero from Muslim mathematicians. Muslims also developed algebra. Given that a motivation for terrorism arises from a felt loss of heritage (read the books of Georgetown Univ.'s John Esposito if you don't believe me), helping Muslims feel good about their historical contributions to mathematics actually is a terror-fighting tool. Plus it helps us to recruit bright minds from places like Egypt, Jordan, etc., to contribute to space advancements.