Obama’s new mission for NASA: Reach out to Muslim world | Hacker News Reader

Obama’s new mission for NASA: Reach out to Muslim world

washingtonexaminer.com

16 pointsjamesbritt11 comments

Bolden on al-Jazeera:

"In his message in Cairo, [Obama] talked about expanding our international outreach, expanding our international involvement. We’re not going to go anywhere beyond low earth orbit as a single entity. The United States can’t do it, China can’t do it — no single nation is going to go to a place like Mars alone."

I dunno about you all, but reading this one day after July 4th (or any day for that matter) makes me sick to my stomach. According to this article, and excerpts from a Bolden interview on al-Jazeera, we are to believe that Obama has tasked NASA with reaching out to the Muslim world and make the Muslim world "feel good" about their contributions to science and math. Perhaps historically... but recently? I counter with: what have you done for me lately.

Is it April fools? Seriously?

To abdicate and simply say that NASA can not get to the moon or mars by itself is just the height of insanity. If you believe we landed on the moon why would you agree with that statement. The only thing that means to me is that the current white house administration and by extension NASA administration do not view it as a priority.

Promoting science (and not incidentally, the USA) in Middle Eastern societies is a good long-term diplomatic strategy. Islamic countries have some of the lowest ratios of patents to population and wealth; a good many scholars of international relations theorize that abundant oil wealth has benefited religious leaders to the detriment of science, and so the latter could do with a shot in the arm.

I'm down with it. People complained about Eisenhower inviting Kruschev to the USA and Nixon going to China as well - both turned out to be extremely shrewd decisions which paid off for the US over the long term.

Space exploration is a human endeavor. Why not reach out and try to accomplish something big, together with other countries.

Having competition got us into space to begin with.

Maybe they are thinking of training people from Muslim countries to be astronauts on NASA missions.

While I'll grant that all these speeches were made on a trip to the Middle East, it doesn't seem reasonable to me that the Muslim world needs to be a particular focus of NASA. In terms of important world partners, I would think that India and China would be two of the major players that NASA collaborations could target, but neither of those are majority Muslim.

Yes let's make people feel good rather than actually doing something. FAIL

This is clever. What better way than to use space exploration to inspire people and get them on your side?

A little context: the day after the last State of the Union address, The Washington Examiner front page featured Governor Robert McDonnell of Virginia, who gave the Republican response.

The speech itself looks like innocuous fluff.

If reaching out to other countries to make them feel good about their science is the main goal of NASA, the people leading NASA are either liars or fools.

Washington Examiner? SMH.

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