By Bobby Eberle
From the time I was a child few things held my interest more than rockets and space flight. My family took me on tours of NASA and I collected all the brochures.
Even now I have a box of newspaper clippings from the first space shuttle launch in 1981 and on my office wall is the op-ed page from the Houston Chronicle in 2003 where Buzz Aldrin and I shared our thoughts on the Columbia accident.
Now after so many years of school and work it pains me to see what is happening to the agency that once took Americans to the moon. When Barack Obamas hand-picked head of NASA says that his foremost duty is for better relations with the Muslim world then something is seriously wrong. Build rockets. Explore the heavens. And leave the Obama politics where it belongs!
As reported on FoxNews.com NASA Administrator Charles Boldin told Al Jazeera news service that when Obama appointed him to the job Boldin was tasked with three tasks:
When I became the NASA administrator -- or before I became the NASA administrator -- he charged me with three things. One was he wanted me to help re-inspire children to want to get into science and math he wanted me to expand our international relationships and third and perhaps foremost he wanted me to find a way to reach out to the Muslim world and engage much more with dominantly Muslim nations to help them feel good about their historic contribution to science ... and math and engineering Bolden said in the interview.
Ok lets look at these points. First of all what is the point of inspiring children to want to get into science and math if the end result is working at an organization as messed up as NASA is. When I was a kid I was steered toward math and science and
I was excited about it because Americans had landed on the moon and now there was this cool new space shuttle heading into orbit.
My mind wandered at the possibilities... imaginiing all the places wed explore over the next 30 years. Ha! What a bad joke.
Next we have the comments about international relationships. Its all well and good to build partnerships but America could have a million partners and it wont matter at all if there is not a clear vision.
We cant accomplish anything unless we have targets to shoot for.
And of course we have Boldins comment that his foremost task is to reach out to the Muslim world. Whatever!
NASA is about aerodynamic research space exploration science and technology. It is about the people I went to school with who have devoted their entire careers to be part of the generation that does the next big thing after putting Americans on the moon.
And now the NASA administrators top job is building Muslim relations?
Simply put Boldin should be fired and Obama should appoint someone who knows whats going on. Of course that would mean Obama would need to know whats going on as well and clearly he doesnt.
The once mighty NASA is crippled and weak and has no vision. The only thing that has inspired engineers in the space program recently is the Constellation program which would ultimately return Americans to the 
moon and then to Mars. But under Boldins watch and Obamas direction that program has been cancelled.
Its so sad to see how the agency has fallen. Of course part of that is due to the fact that even though it is focused on math and science it is still a government bureaucracy.
I have seen engineers piddle for close to 20 years on the same hardware tests without achieving any real results except to piddle some more. Tasks move at a snails pace and there is no real motivation to get things done as there would be in a private corporation. However there are still good smart talented people there who want to move the space program ahead.
NASA is not about feeling good about past achievements.
NASA is about exploring the stars.
Thats how children become inspired... by results not rhetoric.
