I don’t often go off on tangents in my Blog. But there are exceptions. Here’s one of them.NASA's new mission: Building ties to Muslim world.
This was the headline I read on AOL as I ate my breakfast. It was one of those double take moments. I thought, ‘maybe it’s an acute case of dyslexia or my computer juxtaposed a story’.
Nope, as I read on I was horrified (and I don’t use that term lightly) to discover that the new NASA administrator, Charles Bolden, had been given three tasks by President Obama. He was quoted from an AL Jazeera interview no less. “He (Obama) 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, math, and engineering." You can’t make this stuff up. NASA’s foremost mission is to make Muslims feel good? I mean the President does realize that the “S” in NASA stands for “Space,” right???
I grew up with astronauts as my heroes. I love astronomy, and I’ve read every book I could find about the space program, and by the astronauts who flew the missions. I’ve seen “From the Earth to the Moon” six times. And now, I wake up to read that the new mission of NASA is to make the Muslim world feel good about their contributions to science, math and engineering? What are we talking about here, two or three guys, who like the Germans of WWlI, escaped fascism and were given an opportunity to build a space program in the confines of freedom and liberty here in the US?
They can’t seriously be trying to give the warm fuzzies to the guys in Iran - those same guys who are trying to come up with a guided missile delivery vehicle to blow up Israel are they? Maybe NASA can have a class on how to build a better IED. "Hi kids. Wanna see science? Today we are going to make an explosive device from common household items." It’s…well, lunacy.
The writer from the Washington Examiner goes on to say, “Obama's proposal stunned U.S. space heroes Neil Armstrong and Eugene Cernan -- the first and last men to walk on the moon -- who, along with Apollo 13 commander Jim Lovell, made a rare public statement denouncing the plan as a "devastating" scheme that "destines our nation to become one of second - or even third-rate stature."
Look, even John Glenn, the first American to orbit the Earth, who later became a Democratic senator and an Obama supporter, chimed in on the president's plan to rely on the Russians to ferry American astronauts to the international space station. "We're putting ourselves in line for a single-point failure ending the whole manned space program."
I was 6 years old when Glenn orbited the earth. I remember following every mission, from Mercury to Apollo. I was 13 when Armstrong walked on the moon, and I was 16 when Gene Cernan closed the hatch on the Lunar Module and flew home. I stood on the bridge of the USCGC Hammer anchored near Titusville, FL and watched as the last Apollo mission left Kennedy Space Center in Florida. It was the Apollo-Soyuz mission with Deke Slayton, one of the Original 7 Mercury Astronauts, and he was flying his first mission into space. Every launch and every mission I ever watched always left me with one word, WOW! It was a huge source of national pride, not just for me but for most of the nation.
In 1997, I retired from active ministry in the Episcopal Church and went to work at a national TV network in Washington DC as one of the Post Production Supervisors. I bought a small townhouse in Baltimore and commuted to Washington’s Union Station everyday. It was a late night and I was waiting to take the last MARC train - the 10:15 back to Baltimore. There were three of us in the terminal area, when two spry elderly people came and sat next to me. He looked at me smiled and said; “How are you tonight young man.” It was John Glenn, and his wife Annie. It was another one word moment - I was sitting next to Mercury Astronaut John Glenn!!!. WOW…
He was taking the train to NYC to do one of the national morning TV shows before heading back to Florida. He was training for his trip back to space and he had just spent the evening with President Clinton.
I worried about being intrusive especially with a living legend so I congratulated him on his upcoming flight and I thanked him for his service and I told him how I remembered his first flight even as a young child of 6 years old. I rambled on about how he and the others had inspired me to get a telescope and study astronomy and learn about rockets and space. He smiled, stood up and shook my hand and said, “Young man, I am glad to hear you say that. I get asked all the time why I am doing this, and that is the reason - that’s it right there, what you just said, the reason I’m going back up, to inspire young people to start looking up again.”
Now c’mon folks, NASA for the last 50 years has been about Space. When NASA put John Glenn into orbit and landed Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin on the Moon, the whole world went, WOW. They have done things in their fifty year history that made people; ordinary people like me from all over the world look up again and say WOW.
We have a president whose vision of America’s greatness lies in our humility, rather than the greatness we have achieved as a nation. Nothing embodied that greatness like the accomplishments of NASA. Making Muslims feel better??? Yes, I thought, WOW, when I read the article. It wasn’t the good kind of WOW factor. This is politics, the worst kind; NASA deserves better. America deserves better. All of mankind, who NASA has inspired for fifty years, deserve better.
Be Inspired,
Bishop Ian (boldly going where I haven't gone before)
