SIVACRACY.NET: NASA's Goals Delete Mention of Home Planet

As a rhetorician, I have to say that this story in today's New York Times about the decision from the Executive Branch to delete mentions of the "home planet" from NASA's mission statement is definitely bad news.

From 2002 until this year, NASA’s mission statement, prominently featured in its budget and planning documents, read: “To understand and protect our home planet; to explore the universe and search for life; to inspire the next generation of explorers ... as only NASA can.”

In early February, the statement was quietly altered, with the phrase “to understand and protect our home planet” deleted. In this year’s budget and planning documents, the agency’s mission is “to pioneer the future in space exploration, scientific discovery and aeronautics research.”

Perhaps, as the administration improves the filtering software to be available in schools and libraries, they could include the words "earth," "world," and "terra firma" in the objectionable content category along with "home planet."

I went to the NASA website and noticed that the current mission statement wasn't obviously in evidence, although the original 1958 legislation authorizing the new federal agency put the earth first, well before "the atmosphere" and "space." Ironically, when I looked for the mission statement on the NASA website, I discovered that it's easier to find evidence of the old mission statement than the new one.

Comments

I live in the Clear Lake Area of Houston where the Johnson Space Center is located. Many of my clients work there and I hear much of the scuttlebutt. I am also a major space enthusiast and follow NASA issues closely. The short story is that NASA is reorganizing itself to meet the President's goals in the Vision for Space Exploration(VSE). The new mission statement correctly describes that reorganization. For a daily briefing on whose ox is being gored during the turnaround I recommend: http://www.nasawatch.com/.
Nasawatch is the daily gossip rag of the space community.

I don't like the phrase "protect the earth" because it's both too ambiguous and too overreaching. What are you protecting? The people, the oceans, the atmosphere, the plants, the animals , the molten core, some, all, or none of the above? Does NASA prosecute those who endanger the earth? Do we send in the marines or maybe the Tracy Brothers of International Rescue? I would prefer to leave protecting the earth to the EPA, NOAA, and the Depts. of the Interior and Agriculture. Those agencies and departments are better suited to "protecting the earth", however you chose to define it, and they can and do work with NASA in every budget cycle.

NASA has a tiny budget; only 15 billion out of more than 1.5 trillion government dollars spent annually. The new statement better reflects NASA's current priorities as mandated by the Executive Branch. The new statement also may make its budget less likely to get carved out with an earmark for some pork that a Congressman in Utah or Maine desires, ostensibly because it "protects the earth".

Posted by: Jardinero1 | July 22, 2006 04:14 PM

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