Space Policy Subverted. Or Not. Maybe.
July 12, 2010 By: Alan CameronTwelve days after National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) administrator Charles Bolden told Mideast satellite news audiences that President Barack Obama personally instructed him that one of NASA’s “foremost" charges is to engage in diplomacy with Muslim countries, the White House began backing away from the statement.
"When I became the NASA administrator, [Obama] charged me with three things," Bolden stated in a videorecorded interview with the al-Jazeera network, widely available on the Internet. "One, 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, math, and engineering."
On at least the second occasion that White House representatives were asked about Bolden's remarks, press secretary Robert Gibbs said on Monday, July 12, "That was not his task, and that's not the task of NASA." The previous week, spokesperson Nick Shapiro affirmed that Bolden's comments were in keeping with NASA's mission, and that Obama, like presidents in the past, invites international cooperation with the U.S. in the exploration of space.
"Meeting that mandate requires NASA to partner with countries around the world like Russia and Japan, as well as collaboration with Israel and with many Muslim-majority countries," Shapiro reportedly said. "The space race began as a global competition, but, today, it is a global collaboration."
The remarks, and the controversy, have no direct effect on the GPS program, which has no formal direct links to NASA. However, the situation does not augur well for space-based positioning, navigation, and timing, which faces budget challenges in Congress with, at best, lukewarm support from the Administration.
Track Record. Bolden made similar remarks earlier this year. In February, he told a group of engineering students about initiatives to connect with countries that do not have established space programs and help them conduct science missions. "We really like Indonesia because the State Department, the Department of Education [and] other agencies in the U.S. are reaching out to Indonesia as the largest Muslim nation in the world. We would love to establish partners there," Bolden reportedly said.
On the same June Mideast trip, Bolden told another audience, “"NASA is not only a space exploration agency, but also an Earth improvement agency."
He told Al Jazeera that the United States can no longer reach beyond Earth's orbit without assistance from abroad. "We're not going to go anywhere beyond low-Earth orbit as a single entity," Bolden said. "The United States can't do it."
Bolden recorded the interview with Al Jazeera's Imran Garda on June 17, during a stop in Doha, Qatar. The interview aired over the Arab network on June 30.
Many media outlets, including the New York Times, the Washington Post, and the nightly newscasts of ABC, CBS, and NBC, did not carry the story during the first 10 days of July. Indeed, this publication (GPS World) did not do so either, believing or wishing to believe that it was all a hoax. Sadly, it has proved true.
NASA's original charter, from the National Aeronautics and Space Act of 1958, was “to develop the arts and sciences of flight in the atmosphere and in space and to go where those technologies will allow us to go," according to Mike Griffin, who headed the space agency from 2005 until 2009.
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