The National Administration of Self-Esteem and Assimilation

E3 was boring.

Well, that's a bit harsh, but it was pretty forgetful, in any case. The main show was the Nintendo 3DS, the 3D portable console. It was really funny to see both Sony and Microsoft so obviously upstaged by Nintendo, when both of them are pretty much trying to emulate the Wii in the next year.

But enough about that.

I read an article about NASA last week. It would appear that Obama is trying to change NASA's goals. Instead of "going where no man has gone before", NASA now has goals that are a bit closer to Earth: To inspire children and young adults to pursue scientific careers, and to reach out to the Muslim community.

Now, like many people, I scoffed. I scoffed hard. I scoffed like Steve Jobs at a Microsoft convention. 40 years ago, NASA was the only agency to land on the Moon. Today, NASA is still the only agency to land on the Moon. The difference between this is that now, nobody is landing on the moon. Nobody has gone beyond low earth orbit since 1972, when Gene Cernan stepped on the moon for the last time (and yes, I do believe the Moon landings were real. I might do a post later on why I think that). Now Obama's trying to get them out of even going into LEO. It's a bit crazy.

But then I thought on it. Last summer, I was big on space. Of course, last summer was the 40th anniversary of Apollo 11. I really wanted to go into space. In fact, I'm sure everyone has really wanted to go into space at some time. So, NASA actually can inspire people to pursue scientific careers. But it was able to do that before. It was able to inspire by undertaking grand projects, like the moon landings and the ISS. So why take the US out of orbit?

I took a good look at the second of NASA's new goals. Obama wants the American scientific community to partner with the Muslim scientific community, to get space programs in the Middle East. This is instead of partnering with Russia, the EU, and Japan, with whom the US could achieve more great projects. This has more of a political goal. One of the main reasons that the Middle East is so violent, no matter what anyone tells you, is jealousy. One way to get the Middle East to co-exist peacefully is to get them on an even footing with the rest of the world, and with each other. One way to do that is to get them their own space program. Or so Obama hopes. It's still up in the air if the Middle East will accept this help. It certainly would be nice to see more independent space programs out there, and it is also nice to see Obama trying to win back the American reputation of multilateral leadership. It could turn out that

In conclusion, this could turn out to be an important part of Obama's presidency. But only time will tell if this would make him one of the "great negotiators", or if his presidency was a waste of time.

---------------------------------------------------------------

Twitter