The bon mot about aircraft carriers is that they are "90,000 tons of diplomacy." It seems like the Obama administration is taking such a view about the space station, which weighs in at 759,222 pounds.
The news item of the early week was that NASA boss Charles Bolden had outreach to Muslim nations as one of three main bullet points tasked him by the president. That's not a bad thing in and of itself, since there is some cash to be had in that corner of the world and a few Muslim astronauts would be good PR in our ongoing scuffle against Islamic hard-cases.
That's the good news. The bad news is that PR is about all NASA seems to be good for. Here's the money 'graf from Bolden's al Jazeera interview-
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.
NASA is supposed to sell science to kids and suck up to the rest of the world, especially when they're bowing towards Mecca five times a day. Exploring space, finding out about the universe and our solar system and looking at ways that space-based science can help mankind aren't on that list.
Getting kids juiced about space and getting them into math and science is part of NASA's mission; that PR is important. However, it's not enough in itself. If all the Obama administration see NASA as is a big photo-op, we can find cheaper props that can deliver a bigger bang for the buck.
Space might best be left to the private sector, since the public sector seems clueless. Republicans, don't want to spend the money and Democrats would prefer spending it on terrestrial pet projects, save a few visionaries on both sides of the aisle.
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