Biden’s Final Frontier for NASA Is Identity Politics

T he National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) wants to hear from you about its newest initiative — which is not to explore space, land on Mars, or advance human understanding of the cosmos, but to promote woke identity politics.

NASA says the “Mission Equity” effort will assess every aspect of its programs and policies to identify “potential barriers and challenges” for various minority groups, and modify the space agency accordingly, even at the risk of diverting resources from its primary purpose.

The space agency intends to assess and ultimately eliminate any supposed hurdles “that underserved and underrepresented communities and individuals may face in agency procurement, contract, and grant opportunities” as well as create new regulations “necessary to advance equity and opportunities in agency actions and programs” and determine “how agency resources and tools can assist in enhancing equity, including advancing environmental justice.”

“NASA is a 21st century agency with 22nd century goals. To be successful, it’s critical that NASA takes a comprehensive approach to address the challenges to equity we see today,” said NASA administrator (and former Democratic senator) Bill Nelson in the press release announcing the new effort. “The agency’s new Mission Equity is a bold and necessary challenge for NASA to ensure our programs are accessible to all Americans and, especially, those living in historically underserved communities across the country. Because when NASA opens doors to talent previously left untapped, the universe is the limit.”

One might counter that focusing on talent and qualifications, rather than obsessing over the precise demographic profiles of NASA recruits, is how NASA can best ensure its team has the right stuff.

NASA helpfully specifies that by “underrepresented communities” it means, “Black, Latino, and Indigenous and Native American persons, Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders and other persons of color; members of religious minorities; lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ+) persons; persons with disabilities; persons who live in rural areas; and persons otherwise adversely affected by persistent poverty or inequality.”

In a business such as human spaceflight, abandoning meritocracy in favor of identity politics is bound to reduce safety and the ability to accomplish missions, risking the wellbeing of the entire crew. This is already happening to space programs in Europe, where individuals with serious physical disabilities can apply to be astronauts to promote inclusiveness. “Diversity” is fine, but clearly this approach to it directly compromises the essential mission of space agencies and the safety of astronauts.

According to Pew Research, 72 percent of Americans believe that it is essential for the U.S. to remain a world leader in space exploration. Yet identity politics reigning supreme at NASA infringes upon that important national priority.

Those working toward the goal of space exploration have traditionally sought to emphasize our common humanity. The presence of people in space fulfills the universal and primordial captivation of our species with the stars, our thirst for knowledge and drive to seek out new frontiers. But Mission Equity would stress recruiting disabled queer people of color as astronauts, rather than simply putting together the best possible team to make the next giant leap for all mankind.

NASA will accept comments from members of the public until July 12 and will host a virtual public meeting on the policy on June 29.

This isn’t the first time Biden has played a part in watering down NASA’s mission with far-left policies that distract from the mission of space exploration. Biden’s NASA team has indicated that they would rather focus on “landing the first woman and first person of color on the Moon,” than on landing the first human being — regardless of sex or race — on Mars or even just going back to the Moon.

Woke bureaucrats inside of NASA are using President Biden’s election as an excuse to abandon plans to explore new frontiers and send astronauts to Mars, prioritizing complying with woke dogma to please anticolonial theorists and ethnic-studies activists over launching spacecraft. Renaming astronomical objects and space centers and broadcasting landings in Spanish seem to be taking priority at NASA over scientific research and space travel.

The Obama administration, where Biden served as vice president, repeatedly tried to slash funding for NASA’s space-exploration missions. Charles Bolden, NASA administrator during the Obama administration, had an initial understanding of his job that his “perhaps foremost” priority was to reach out to the Muslim world (press flacks claimed he misspoke, even though Bolden said that Obama himself had issued this directive). The top scientific question the ostensible space agency wanted to answer became, “How are Earth’s climate and the environment changing?” More obviously space-related questions, such as, “Are we alone?” and, “How does the universe work?,” were at the very bottom of the list.

For eight long years, the agency mostly focused on global warming and hosted racial– and gender-equity summits while critical scientific programs, such as a probe to explore Jupiter’s moon Europa, were raided for funding, and the planetary-science program held car washes and bake sales to raise money. In 2011, NASA spent $500,000 just on a series of “power and privilege” workshops — exploring, not the final frontier, but the topics of gender and sexual orientation. Even environmentalist extremists such as Bill Nye the “Science Guy,” who is also the CEO of the Planetary Society, criticized Obama’s policies.

The Trump administration refocused the agency on space exploration. NASA’s budget increased from $19.65 billion in 2017 to $23.3 billion in 2021 to prepare the space agency for a mission to return astronauts to the Moon by 2024 and to send humans to Mars. In his outgoing message, former NASA chief Jim Bridenstine urged his successors to avoid ideological distractions, saying that space exploration “should never be political. It should never be partisan. It should always be uniting. It should bring people together for science and discovery and exploration.”

“This is an agency that does not do well when we get cast to and fro between administrations,” Bridenstine noted.

However, Biden and his appointees seem intent on returning to the ideological agenda and identity-politics focus of the Obama years over actual space exploration, at least if Mission Equity is any indication.

Spaceflight holds the potential to inspire and uplift every human being, transcending major differences to stir something shared deep within each person’s soul. But the so-called Mission Equity effort loses sight of the big picture in favor of identity politics — and ultimately jeopardizes humanity’s potential to boldly go where no one has gone before.