The Flame Trench space news and analysis: Why you should be mad about Charlie's Bolden's Al-Jazeera interview

Sunday, July 11, 2010

This morning's space column wades into the debate about what NASA Administrator Charles told Al-Jazeera in a highly-criticized television interview in late June. It's dominated the blogosphere and talking-head circuit for a week now, detracting from the discussion of real, time-critical issues about space exploration. Here's what I wrote in the Sunday edition of FLORIDA TODAY.

Anonymous said...: Bolden was just trying to be conversational. He was speaking loosely, as he has before. But he said clearly that outreach to the Muslim world was something that Obama asked him to do personally. He did not say it was a NASA mission.

The vast majority of the interview was actually quite reasonable. For example, Bolden asked what industry expects from NASA. He indicated that NASA has turned away from R&D that supports aeronautics and other productive US industries, away from useful technological development. He also pointed out that the ISS program has helped to build international trust and cooperation, which is true. I've personally worked with Russians. Bolden's talk about the difference between competition and hostility in international relationships, and on NASA motivation and objectives, was actually quite insightful.

Contrast this with Mike Griffin, who intentionally insulted China when he was there as a guest, and who simply didn't understand that the Space Shuttle was an important and irreplaceable asset.; 12:41 AM
Conor said...: What was Bolden doing in the Middle East in the first place? Global cooperation, fine, but with countries with a proven track record in space technology.
You don't need to be racist to know that there are no such countries in the Middle East.; 9:28 AM

Sunday, July 11, 2010