[X] My Assistant

[JRehling]

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/22/science/22nasa.html


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.
[...]

[Phil Stooke]

Not such a problem for me. I'd pass that responsibility on to NOAA and/or USGS anyway.

Phil

[dvandorn]

Yes, Phil, but you need to understand the context, here. NASA's "mission statement" has been changed to exclude studying the Earth just at the time when certain political movements (which happen to be in power in Washington at the moment) are trying to silence NASA in re global warming.

Sounds to me like the powers-that-be-for-now want to simply remove Earth observations from NASA's charter so they can avoid the embarassment of NASA telling them that they're wrong about global warming...

-the other Doug

[centsworth_II]

... trying to silence NASA in re global warming.

Excellent point.

[Phil Stooke]

No, I do get the context, but I would hope that a responsible administration would move EO to another agency. I know this one isn't interested. I'm second to nobody in my distrust of - oh, ixnay on the oliticspay...

On the other hand I am very sceptical - cynical, in fact - about the value of mission statements anyway. If the bigwigs wanted to do something they don't need a mission statement to hang it on. If they don't want to do it they won't even if they have the statement in place. But I do have some sympathy for the complaint of the scientist who wanted to be able to refer to it.

Phil

[centsworth_II]

...a responsible administration would move EO to another agency.

Right...so don't expect to see it done. This is right in line with the government's recent censoring of scientists. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/conte...0502150_pf.html

I do have some sympathy for the complaint of the scientist who wanted to be able to refer to it.

Or the journalist, or the teacher, or the activist....

[dvandorn]

Oh, I agree, Phil -- the mission statement don't mean squat to the real operations of an agency. But in politics (which is what drives these kinds of things, whether we like it or not), appearance means more than substance.

This just smells to me like politicians trying to avoid embarassment in the public forum. This change (however official or unofficial, and however meaningless to the ongoing NASA EO programs) lets any number of scientifically ignorant, self-serving politicians point to the "adjusted" mission statement and say "What the heck do they have to say about it, it isn't even what they're supposed to be doing!"

Also remember, those same politicians don't give a tinker's damn whether or not what they say is truthful, as long as they can use it to sway similarly ignorant voters to vote for them.

It has nothing to do with science, or truth. It has to do with manipulating people to vote against their actual best interests. That's what I find distressing about this kind of thing happening.

Perhaps, as rational and concerned citizens, those of us who live in the U.S. should contact NASA and ask just why this has been removed from their publically-stated mission statement. Ask them if they have had their EO programs removed from their charter, who is now going to manage them, etc. Make them aware that we see through the political charade, and want NASA as an agency to respond to this kind of petty word-mincing with more than a shrug and a denial...?

My anticipation is that NASA would respond to such questions by saying that they have the same EO portfolio they always had, and that the mission statement means nothing. Which is something that can be brought up whenever a politician tries to use the statement I mentioned above...

-the other Doug

[Phil Stooke]

OK, you talked me round. It was useful, I was wrong.

Phil

[Phillip]

It was the right result, but for the wrong reasons.

I would rather have our space agency have a clear focus of space, but there is no reason for that to be at the expense of terrestrial science.

Phillip

[mcaplinger]

On the other hand I am very sceptical - cynical, in fact - about the value of mission statements anyway.

I'm completely with Phil on this one; the NASA mission statements are usually embarrassing pieces of PR hackwork (remember "to improve life here, extend life to there"?) What matters is what the NASA budget request asks for. The FY07 summary says "NASA will also continue to play a major role in the interagency Climate Change Science Program". See http://www.climatescience.gov/ for what that is. And I wonder about the cost effectiveness of the big EOS satellites anyway, especially for studying climate change.

[djellison]

Mission statements are written by middle and senior management with nothing better to do. They are worse than useless, they're actually damaging to company moral because they are such a joke. Some of the genuine MS's I've seen mentioned by Scott Adams in some of his books just defy belief.

Doug

[Phil Stooke]

OK, OK, you've talked me round. It was crap, I was right.

As Tom Good said, this is the principle of shifting principles.

Phil

[centsworth_II]

Whether mission statements mean something or not, whether the tactic is useful or not, the alteration does look like a continuation of the government's attempts to stymie any science that might strengthen the global warming argument.

[djellison]

It depends - are there any EO missions being cancelled?

Are Aqua, Aura, Terra, and A-Train members being pulled out of service?

We are speaking just a few months after two valuable new members of the family were launched.

There's a lot of EO hardware up at the moment - changing a worthless mission statement doesn't change that.

Doug

[Guest_Richard Trigaux_*]

As a non-US, I would say that this kind of manoeuvers is a pain for the entire world, as, like it or not, NASA of the US is the most present agency in space, our ambassador in a way. A large part of beautiful results, scientific results, and results useful here on Earth, were earned by NASA.

This shift in speech would be anecdotic, if it was the only thing. But there already was many other manoeuvers to try to hide evidences of climate change, or to manipulate public opinion about this, up to saying that climate change evidences are "junk science". So there is a real concern about valuable Earth Observation missions being canceled or "postponed".

And this is not for scientific reasons, even not for the interest of the US, it is just to defend the petty interests of a small number of politicians and businessmen.

In a way, those people are beginning to think and behave with science facts as the dogmatic religious are doing with spiritual/ethical facts: they decree the "truth" and fight other opinions. This is alas also possible in a science domain, and it already happened: the Lyssenkism, under Stalin, which was "teaching" things such as "carrots must be sowed thick, because carrots, like proletarians, will help each other". They did this and the result was a large famina. With the climate change problem, it is the same thing, in worse.