NASA Chief: Next Frontier Better Relations With Muslim World 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. 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. Though international diplomacy would seem well outside NASA's orbit, Bolden said in an interview with Al Jazeera that strengthening those ties was among the top tasks President Obama assigned him. He said better interaction with the Muslim world would ultimately advance space travel. "When I became the NASA administrator -- or before I became the NASA administrator -- he charged me with three things. One was he 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 math and engineering," Bolden said in the interview. The NASA administrator was in the Middle East last month marking the one-year anniversary since Obama delivered an address to Muslim nations in Cairo. Bolden spoke in June at the American University in Cairo -- in his interview with Al Jazeera, he described space travel as an international collaboration of which Muslim nations must be a part. "It is a matter of trying to reach out and get the best 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)," he said. He held up the International Space Station as a model, praising the contributions there from the Russians and the Chinese. However, Bolden denied the suggestion that he was on a diplomatic mission -- in a distinctly non-diplomatic role. "Not at all. It's not a diplomatic anything," he said. He said the United States is not going to travel beyond low-Earth orbit on its own and that no country is going to make it to Mars without international help. Bolden has faced criticism this year for overseeing the cancellation of the agency's Constellation program, which was building new rockets and spaceships capable of returning astronauts to the moon. Stressing the importance of international cooperation in future missions, Bolden told Al Jazeera that the moon, Mars and asteroids are still planned destinations for NASA. http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2010/07/05/nasa-chief-frontier-better-relations-muslims/
This might actually be a good thing. Think about it, space travel is enormously expensive. If the muslims are spending their money on mars. Will they have any left for I.E.D's suicide bomb belts and RPG's?
Man, it doesn't get any more telling than that. You'll notice that nobody runs around trying to make the white guys "feel good" about all the cool stuff we've done. Nobody gives speeches trying to make US citizens "feel good" about all the great stuff the USA has done. That's cuz nobody needs to. Nobody needs to because white guys kick ass. Nobody needs to tell the asians how smart they are, either. Nobody needs to tell the taiwans how good they are at making stuff other folks have designed, nobody needs to tell the italians how good their food is, nobody needs to tell the germans how good their engineering is, nobody needs to tell the french how rude they are or the australians how good their wine is. Nobody needs to say these things because this stuff is obvious. If it had to be pointed out, that would be because it was not true. And by pointing it out, you are reminding all that it isn't true. It's a lot like black history month. Blacks have contributed so little to the advance of civilization that we have to make a special time to include them. We make the same list of the same dozen inventions like a gas mask and parade that around, then turn to the blacks and say "There now, don't you feel better? We've worked hard to find something, anything that your people have done. Lord knows it wasn't easy." If the establishment was that condescending about my ancestors, I'd be seriously POed. Guess how my "culture" is celebrated? I'm more Irish than anything else, and it's party time, parades and music. Everybody gets in on the act and pretends they are Irish. And not just for a day any more but all week long. But for blacks, we get all solemn and put on a big act about how important they are. "Don't worry, we all think you are important." When somebody has to tell you that you are important. . . well then you know you are not. Geez, what an insult. But it's not my idea, so don't blame me. Still, you gotta feel sorry for a culture lost in the 6th century, especially in this modern, connected world where the failures of islamic culture are glaringly obvious. The muslims should get their own awards, the islamic version of the nobel prizes. It'd be like a special olympics for towelheads. You could have specialized prizes - most unique IED ever made, improved safety practices for bomb factories, best method of loading pipes with explosives, etc. They could even reach into the world of art with prizes for best video denouncing the USA and Israel, best torture video, most spittle generated during a "speech", etc.
I will have to re-red the mission of NASA to figure out how they took up this role. Do Muslims need $600 toilet seats?
It just is more proof that we have a president and a cabinet that has no idea what the f*ck they are doing. I wonder who ties these people's shoes in the mornining because there is no way you could convince me they are smart enough to tie their own.
You first need to learn how to spell (for instance red=read) I believe the NASA and the President are getting it right. There are more than 1.5billion muslims in the world, they sit on mineral wealth. There are muslims american who are large in number. I read somewhere that American's current beauty queen is a muslim from Michigan.
You need to read books, and history. Do you know how Oxford, the western intellect, and the renaissance were born? The source is Toledo in Muslim-ruled Spain. The problem of muslims was that they listened to their poets and military commanders, while Europe listened to the muslim scientists and philosophers. Read Averroes' book. He is the man who introduced secular states, and secular thinking and proved scientifically that a secular state and religion are not in contradiction. His thinking liberated the whole of Europe from the church and middle age thinking. Read Avicena. He is the guy who invented anesthesia, surgery, and he is the inventor of a number surgery and hospital equipment used to this day in hospitals (such as the tool that was used to help get you out of your mother's body during your birth if you are born in a hospital). Read others such as Ibn Khaldoun (he wrote ideas you find revisited in Adam Smith and in Marx), and the guy who wrote the Virtuous City. Maimonides (who is Jewish) makes a thankful introduction to muslim thinkers who helped him formulate his thinking and the 13 principles in his treatises. Maimonides is a towering figure in the Talmud, and his face is on the Israel currency today. NASA director is a scholar. Obama wrote books. So you should respect their thinking rather than just regurgitating what you may have heard from a talker on a radio show or on a useless television verbal fight. One should respect other civilizations. I say thanks to: 1. Greeks for their philosophy and math 2. Egypt for their architecture and history. 3. Romans for their Republic 4. Italians for their arts in the renaissance 5. British for their intellect and industrial revolution. 6. Chinese for the fireworks, and paper. 7. Americans for their business ingenuity. 8. etc Every civilization, race and religion is an asset to humanity. America is a great and special place in part because of the mixture of peoples from all over the world.