Obama aims to ax the moon mission

[MGX]

Remember the concept is 'separation of church and state' not 'separation of mosque and state'.

 

[Road Guy]

November 2010

 

[Master slacker]

It all ends in 2012... so... I'm just looking forward to that.

 

[MGX]

Isn't it odd that there is a 'Muslim World' but no 'Atheist World' (sounds like a theme park) or 'Hindu World' (also sounds like a theme park) ? Much less that the other 'worlds' don't seem to need the States to 'make them feel better about themselves'?

 

[Capt Worley PE]

White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said Monday that NASA Administrator Charles Bolden must have misspoken when he told Al Jazeera last month that one of his top priorities is to reach out to Muslim countries.
"That was not his task and that's not the task of NASA," Gibbs said.

Bolden, though, said last month in the interview that it was President Obama who gave him that task. He made a similar claim in February.

The White House also backed up Bolden last week when his remarks first stirred controversy. A White House spokesman last Tuesday said Obama wants NASA to engage with the world's best scientists and that to meet that challenge, NASA must "partner with countries around the world like Russia and Japan, as well as collaboration with Israel and with many Muslim-majority countries."

NASA last week walked back Bolden's claim that Muslim outreach was the "perhaps foremost" plank of his mission, saying that Bolden was merely talking about his "outreach" responsibilities and that space exploration is still NASA's No. 1 job.

But Gibbs on Monday appeared to deny that Bolden was asked to focus on Muslim outreach at all.

Asked whether Bolden misspoke, Gibbs said: "I think so."

He said he wasn't aware of Obama speaking to Bolden about his comments.

The Muslim comments were met with a wall of criticism last week from conservatives and former NASA officials who said that while Muslim-nation outreach is laudable, it should not be a NASA priority.

Bolden said in the interview that Obama told him before he took the job that he wanted him to do three things: inspire children to learn math and science, expand international relationships 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 math and engineering."

So, is Gibbes lying, or does he have no idea what's going on? This is such a disaster. Really it is.

Still, no one but FOX is even bothering to report on this fiasco.

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2010/07/12...each-task-nasa/

 

[Dleg]

Huh? I just did a search on the Washington Post website and turned up 5 articles on the subject, using the keywords "NASA" and "Muslim".

Here's the most recent:

White House criticizes NASA chief for making remarks on Muslim outreach

(you have to sign up for an account to access the article, but it's free)

"95% of all statistics on the internet are made up" - Dleg Institute of Internet Statistics

 

[frazil]

fixed it

"95% of all statistics on the internet are made up by Fox News" - Dleg Institute of Internet Statistics

 

[Capt Worley PE]

Huh? I just did a search on the Washington Post website and turned up 5 articles on the subject, using the keywords "NASA" and "Muslim".

My bad. I meant none of the networks.

 

[Dexman PE]

[No message]

 

[Wolverine]

Wow. Good speaker. I opened it with skepticism and got inspired.

 

[Capt Worley PE]

Well, a freind at NASA sent me pictures, and another on the Cape confirmed it. Looks like Obama can't get rid of all vestiges of the space program fast enough. They are taking down a shuttle launch pad, cutting it up with torches.

 

[knight1fox3]

Well, a freind at NASA sent me pictures, and another on the Cape confirmed it. Looks like Obama can't get rid of all vestiges of the space program fast enough. They are taking down a shuttle launch pad, cutting it up with torches.

That is sad. There is still one more shuttle mission to the space station though right?

 

[Capt Worley PE]

Yup.

 

[Road Guy]

I assume they are going to bring everyone home from the space station on this trip?

when our scout troop went to space camp a few years ago the plan was long ago to abandon the shuttle and go back to the Titan style rockets and capsule method, is Obama cutting all that away as well?

 

[Capt Worley PE]

I assume they are going to bring everyone home from the space station on this trip?

Anyone going up or coming down after this last mission is hitching a ride with the rooskies.

when our scout troop went to space camp a few years ago the plan was long ago to abandon the shuttle and go back to the Titan style rockets and capsule method, is Obama cutting all that away as well?

Nope. Obama cancelled it, and the team has already been disbanded. The US has no space program. Yea.

 

[roadwreck]

They are still going to be launching things into space, they just aren't going to be launching the space shuttle into space.

I know they have plans to launch satellites into space later this summer (a family member works for NASA). I don't know when they plan to launch a manned spacecraft again though.

 

[Capt Worley PE]

You're right. The US no longer has a manned space program. Some private companies are working on it, but from what I'm hearing, they are further away from being manned flight certified than Constellation was.

 

[snickerd3]

A very sad situation!!! I love space and all that is related to it...I wanted to be an astronaut as a kid, but when you get down to it a manned space program in our current financial situation is not an appropriate use of tax money. Maybe this will allow private entities to move into its place.

 

[Capt Worley PE]

Oddly enough, the Air Force handles a lot of the satellite launches at the Cape.

 

[Exception Collection]

I'd like to see us reach Mars or the Belt sometime in my lifetime. I don't really care much about a mission to the moon, except as a possible launch point for a Mars mission - It might be easier to put people and things into orbit or to a base on the Moon before sending them to Mars, just because of the effort involved in each undertaking for a Mars trip - send 10 shuttles to the Moon, then assemble everything and send it to Mars.

There pretty much has to be usable material out there. Iron, Uranium... pretty much everything that can be dug from the ground except fossil fuels. And in the belt, not much digging would be required.

(Why yes, I did grow up reading Pohl, Pournelle, Heinlein, and Asimov why do you ask?)