The Unwanted Blog

I spent a whole lotta years and a whole lotta my parents money getting an aerospace engineering degree in the first half of the 1990’s, because for some reason I was just sure that we were going to go off into space and people like myself would be needed to design the numerous manned spacecraft that would be required. Little did I know that the American aerospace engineering industry had no interest in designing any such thing (much less building such things). And little could I have imagined that fifteen years after getting my degree, the American government would essentially abandon manned spaceflight. With the mind-boggling damage that the FedGov has done to the American economy, they’ve also done a most effective job at wiping out any real prospects for private spaceflight to take up the slack.

So, imagine my irritation upon reading that not only has NASA been neutered and gutted, it’s being turned into yet another arm of the government meant for little more than surrendering to our enemies:

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. … “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,” Bolden said in the interview.

First and foremost, Chuck, it’s not the role of the US Government, never mind NASA, to make people in other nations “feel good” about something their ancestors may or may not have done the better part of a millenium ago. Second, if you want to inspire the kiddies… wiping out manned spaceflight is not the way to do it.

He said the United States is not going to travel beyond low-Earth orbit on its own

Grrrrrrrrrraaaaaauuuuck.

I cannot express just how much this Royally Pisses Me Off.

The United States travelled beyond low Earth orbit on its own forty fricken’ years ago. it is perfectly capable of doing so again. But *not* when it’s being run by incompetant jackasses like Bolden and whatever MORON installed him in that position. Telling Americans that we are incapable of doing what our ancestors did, and begging for help from those who would see us destroyed, is not the job of the NASA administrator.

The NASA administrator should be out there beating the drums for American exceptionalism. Telling us not that our time is over, but that the future is limitless, and that we should be grabbing for it.