In New York Times' July 22 paper, I read an article about NASA changing its mission statement that it used from 2002 until this year. It 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.” The phrase, “to understand and protect our home planet” has been deleted. Now the agency’s mission is “to pioneer the future in space exploration, scientific discovery and aeronautics research.”
Since NASA was founded in 1958, the mission statement has reflected our need to understand the Earth. The first mission statement read, “The expansion of human knowledge of the earth and of phenomena in the atmosphere and space.”
What happened to “understand and protect our home planet?” According to the article, George Bush wanted it removed because he wants NASA to focus their attention on human spaceflight to the Moon and Mars.
Without the part in the mission about protecting Planet Earth, scientists say, “ there will be far less incentive to pursue projects to improve understanding of terrestrial problems like climate change caused by greenhouse gas emissions.”
The Landsat satellite launched by NASA in 1972 has been used to track the Earth’s atmospheric climate changes. These findings have caused much political debate over “environmental policy and spending” according to W. Henry Lambright, who teaches public administration and political science at Syracuse University.
In the New York Times article by Andrew C. Revkin, he writes, “The shift in language echoes a shift in the agency’s budgets toward space projects and away from earth missions, a shift that began in 2004, the year Mr. Bush announced his vision of human missions to the Moon and beyond.”
The foolery of George Bush is astounding! We need NASA monitoring and spotlighting what is happening to our atmosphere. What does W. think we are going to find on the Moon or Mars, an atmosphere that can sustain life so that we can forget about the atmosphere on the home planet? I’m fasting to retype into the mission statement of NASA, “to understand and protect our home planet.”
If you love this planet, then join us on the Troops Home Fast Now! There are a number of different kinds of fasts. You can choose the one which is best for you. A good book to read about this is: Juice Fasting & Detoxification by Steve Meyerowitz. Don’t let George Bush get away with planetary murder. Fast for the planet! For Gaia!
3 comments:
I've been looking at your site a lot lately. In particlar, today, I have read a bit about Gaia and Arcology and both are fascinating and I hope to learn more about them soon. Thanks for opening up a way for me to find out these things.
-K
Thanks K for writing. It means a lot to me for people to understand the Gaia theory of science and spirituality. I hope the text was formatted altright on your machine. It looks OK on my PC, but when I looked at it the other day in a Mac it looked terrible. I have more work to do to make it right!
It looked fine on my end. I also did a Google search for the words Gaia and Arcology and found information that supports what you have written. I wish I had more time to read. I'm hoping to get a chance to learn much more about all this. I spent a great part of my day yesterday pondering the Gaia theory as well as arcology.
Interestingly, you probably already know this, but you have a Wikipedia entry! Again, I truly appreaciate your site and even more, your willingness to go so far out on limbs when others are afraid of it.
-K
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