Examiner.com

NASA chief Charles Bolden created quite a stir recently when, in an interview with Arab news agency/terrorist propaganda machine Al Jazeera, he stated that improving relations with Muslim nations was the "foremost" objective assigned to him by President Obama upon taking charge of America's space agency.

Now, in a press conference yesterday, White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said that Bolden "misspoke" during the interview. Continuing on the diplomacy-NASA topic, Gibbs went on to state that "that's not the task of NASA."

However, the statements yesterday by Gibbs go contrary to an earlier White House reaction, which seemed to back up Bolden's statements that NASA should work on improving relations with Muslim nations. However, NASA did backtrack from the assertion that NASA's top job under President Obama was diplomacy, but did admit that developing good working relationships with foreign nations for future endeavors was important to the agency in its continuing goal of exploring space.

Another potentially charged comment by Bolden was that America could never go beyond low Earth orbit without the assistance of other nations. Just try and tell that to any of the astronauts who walked on the Moon four decades ago.

Whatever the true meanings of Bolden's statements, the story is anything but rosy for NASA. Between budget cuts, axed programs, and soon-coming reliance on Russia, the space agency will need a major shot in the arm to reassert America's long-held position of space exploration dominance.

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