Nope. NASA’s about building confidence in the Muslim world. (Although, as Mark Steyn has written at length, they’re not the ones with the deficiency of confidence.)

In a recent interview with al-Jazeera, NASA head Charles Bolden had this to say about the priorities set by Obama:

“When I became the NASA administrator, [Obama] charged me with three things. One, 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, math, and engineering.”

I guess the administration’s important ”feel good” work has kept NASA too busy to update its own website– which continues to offer the following outmoded (and surely imperialistic) mission statement:

NASA’s mission is to pioneer the future in space exploration, scientific discovery and aeronautics research.

SEE ALSO: Not satire, evidently: Obama turning NASA into tool for “Muslim outreach”

UPDATE: Jim Treacher writes,

Thanks for inventing algebra, you guys. Great job!

There, I was able to do that without needing a huge federal bureaucracy that was created for an entirely different purpose.

And an incredulous Krauthammer reacts to this “new height in fatuousness”: