NASA Chief Thrown Under the Transporter

You remember that big tractor thing that hauls the Space Shuttle and the old Saturn Vs to the launch pad in Florida?  That thing that turns rocks to dust because of the weight?  Somewhere under there you'll find NASA Chief Charles Bolden:

White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said Monday that NASA Administrator Charles Bolden must have misspoke when he told Al Jazeera last month that one of his top priorities is to reach out to Muslim countries.

"That was not his task and that's not the task of NASA," Gibbs said.

Bolden, though, said last month in the interview that it was President Obama who gave him that task. He made a similar claim in February.

The White House also backed up Bolden last week when his remarks first stirred controversy. A White House spokesman last Tuesday said Obama wants NASA to engage with the world's best scientists and that to meet that challenge, NASA must "partner with countries around the world like Russia and Japan, as well as collaboration with Israel and with many Muslim-majority countries."

NASA last week walked back Bolden's claim that Muslim outreach was the "perhaps foremost" plank of his mission, saying that Bolden was merely talking about his "outreach" responsibilities and that space exploration is still NASA's No. 1 job.

Space exploration may be NASA's #1 job, but we'll be doing it riding other people's rockets. After next February the U.S. will not have a manned spaceflight program capable of launching our own people. We'll have to rely on the Ruskies, or the Chinese, or somebody else to get our guys to the International Space Station.