Core77

Alex Steffen on Obama, Science, and NASA

By Allan Chochinov - February 6, 2009

in Design Business

WAY late on this, but last week Alex posted a great piece on the necessity of NASA's role "to understand and protect our home planet." Here's the sweet spot:

Here's one of the best small, free ways I can think of for America to signal that change: restore NASA's mission statement of service. See, back in the dark ages of 2006, Bush hacks in NASA censored the space agency's mission statement. It had been "To understand and protect our home planet; to explore the universe and search for life; to inspire the next generation of explorers â€¦ as only NASA can." The next thing we knew, the "understand and protect our home planet" part was cut, implying that NASA has no legitimate role in applying science to the planet's problems. That should change. Indeed, we should go farther, explicitly adding two key ideas which have always been part of its scientific mission: duty to the future and to the benefit of all humanity. I think the mission statement should read, "To understand and protect our home planet for the benefit of all humanity; to explore the universe and search for life; to prepare for the future and to inspire the next generation of explorers."

And now that a few days have passed, you get the benefit of the comments. Our favorite? "One small sentence from a man. A giant step for mankind!" Too easy! Hey: Don't forget to check out Designing for Space: Core77 visits NASA's Industrial Design Team, by Glen Jackson Taylor.

o

Favorite This
Q
1

Comment

Comments

Shalin

15 years ago

Z

Z

Reply

If what A. Steffen is suggesting comes to pass, then NASA should be rebranded/repurposed. It would no longer be NASA.

I'd love to know more about the Earth such that humanity can live in genuine harmony with it, but I honestly don't see how this makes a lot of sense. It may be practical to use NASA as a partner to study the Earth - and I think that should happen. However, NASA (formerly NACA) as I see it has a far and away primary mission to develop aeronautical, astronautical, and as well as their associated technologies/sciences/techniques for the purpose of achieving scientific discovery objective. It's an aerospace research & development firm that spend sums of money only government can or is willing to.

Politicians and voters will determine what NASA is used/oriented towards, but if it becomes something other than primarily an aerospace r&d firm it should no longer be called NASA. So...if it is to be an "Earth Science Research Agency" - how would that transition/branding/re-branding go?

If we want to find life, discovery more of Earth's climate dynamics from a higher vantage point, begin to colonize the Moon, etc. - fine, tell NASA to make something to do that and file periodic reports on how things are going. Other options include contracting that out or having a X-Prize like competition.

Also, to change the mission statement to serve all of humanity - that would be placing a societal and political driver to NASA of which doesn't make sense. If an administration is all about sharing the data and working with folks around the world, that's fine, but I hope they scratch our back for all the work that U.S. taxpayers had to do to in their jobs to fund the work...

Best,
Shalin

!Report as spam