I hope this is an April Fool’s Day joke. This cannot be serious. But let us look on the Web of Lies to see the truth of things. Perhaps I should check Snopes first. GO GO GADGET INTERWEB!
President Obama told NASA administrator Charles Bolden that his highest priority should be “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.” (http://article.nationalreview.com/437675/nasa-does-muslim-outreach/mona-charen)
Charles Bolden, a retired United States Marines Corps major-general and former astronaut, said in an interview with al-Jazeera that Nasa was not only a space exploration agency but also an “Earth improvement agency”.
Mr Bolden said: “When I became the Nasa administrator, he [Mr Obama] charged me with three things.
“One, he wanted me to help reinspire 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.”
(http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/space/7875584/Barack-Obama-Nasa-must-try-to-make-Muslims-feel-good.html)
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.
(http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2010/07/05/nasa-chief-frontier-better-relations-muslims/)
The original video is here: (http://english.aljazeera.net/programmes/talktojazeera/2010/07/201071122234471970.html)
My comment: I am old enough to remember the Space Age. There was a time when we sent men to the moon. I am old enough (just barely) to remember the time when it was held to be a serious and sober opinion that men could never reach the moon, that it was not technically feasible, and would not happen in our lifetimes.
President Kennedy and the rocket scientists at NASA proved those naysayers wrong.
In the vanguard, partly as cheerleaders and partly as revival-tent preachers, were science fiction writers: they consistently said it was possible. The visionary stories of men like Robert Heinlein and Arthur C. Clarke and the essays of men like John W. Campbell, Jr., not only showed that the possibility was within our grasp, but they opened our minds to the wonder and adventure of it, such wonder as has not been felt in the world since the great Age of Discovery, when bold adventurers were finding new continents, reaching the poles or the peak of Everest. For their efforts at upholding their starry dream, these writers were mocked and dismissed.
Then something happened. We landed on the Moon. There was nothing in history like it. No previous peoples had ever climbed into the heavens and walked in the mansions of the zodiac.
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