Swearing An Oath To The Pale Blue Dot At NASA
Keith’s note: You might want to take a closer look of this photo of Dr. Makenzie Lystrup as she is sworn in as the new director of Goddard Space Flight Center. Normally I just pass on these staged pics. But people have noticed something unusual about this photo. Look closely at where Dr. Lystrup’s left hand is. It is on a book. The book is not the Bible. That book is Carl Sagan’s 1994 bestseller “Pale Blue Dot“. Oh my. Why do I suddenly get the urge to apply for a job over in Maryland At Goddard? Anyone who does this has to be cool to work for. Wow. Astrobiologists: take note. Yet NASA PAO does not seem to think that such a symbolic statement – a really cool one at that – is worthy of mention – especially when we worry about the ability of our Pale Blue Dot to survive our tenancy. Just sayin’ Update: @NASAGoddard just tweeted “Imagination will often carry us to worlds that never were, but without it we go nowhere.” — Carl Sagan Goddard has a new center director! Last week Dr. Makenzie Lystrup was sworn in on Carl Sagan’s “Pale Blue Dot” and we’re feeling the #MondayMotivation. https://go.nasa.gov/41fo3y1“ It took them nearly a week – but at least they “get” how cool this is. Now if only @NASA and @NASAastrobio etc could retweet this then the impact could spread. Globally – all across the Pale Blue Dot.🔵
5 responses to “Swearing An Oath To The Pale Blue Dot At NASA”
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I’m having difficulty finding a video of the swearing-in ceremony. Did she say “So help me, Carl?”
The official oath for most federal employees is: “I, {my name}, do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter. So help me God.” Personally, I twice proudly swore this oath first for the Navy and then later for NASA with no problem about the final four words. I suppose there is a legal exception on that final wording for non-religious folks? In this present age after the Jan. 6th Insurrection at the end of four years of Trump I would particularly emphasize “support and defend the Constitution of the United States.” Instead saying “so help me, Carl” at the end would indeed be cool but technically improper and impolitic for NASA on the optics if not illegal and invalidating for the oath. Don’t know what she actually said, hopefully the legally required thing. No requirement to swear on any sort of book, so Contact is ok, I guess. I wish her and my former Goddard colleagues every success in their future endeavors. Fare forward and ad astra. The truth is out there. We shall not cease from exploration …
What Earther said, “The way to find out about our place in the universe is by examining the universe and by examining ourselves – without preconceptions, with as unbiased a mind as we can muster.”?
Carl, of course. I met him several times. An extraordinary person and science communicator, a prophet but not a god.
At its foundations, this statement sounds remarkably Thomistic. Aquinas was always remarkably common-sensical and very big on the realities of the natural world. In fact, G.K. Chesterton in his lauded biography neatly summed up Aquinas’s emphatic starting premise of all his philosophy and theology: “There is an Is.”
https://www.chesterton.org/st-thomas-aquinas/
https://www.ccel.org/ccel/chesterton/aquinas.ix.html (The chapter containing the phrase.)
Regarding the oath, if you zoom in on the larger photo of the swearing in you can read much of the actual printed oath in the Administrator’s hand. It does not list ‘Carl’. That, of course, doesn’t necessarily correspond with whatever was actually said. Will the video ever be available?