Casey Dreier opines whether space exploration can be used to build trust between the U.S. political parties? The Planetary Society CEO Bill Nye accepted an invitation by NASA Administrator nominee Rep. Jim Bridenstine (R-OK) to join him as his guest at the State of the Union (SOTU) address. We anticipated this would be a controversial decision, and we were right. This post incorporates some of the discussion I've had with Planetary Society members (and many non-members) who wrote to express their concern or support about this decision. I've greatly appreciated the feedback we've had from our members, they hold us accountable to our decisions and challenge us to think through and consider our actions. This is the sign of a healthy, active membership, and it is one of the great benefits of being here at The Planetary Society.
So right up front, I want to restate the fact that attending the SOTU as Bridenstine's guest does not mean that either Bill Nye or The Planetary Society is endorsing his nomination. The Society does not make endorsements for NASA Administrator nominees—we are committed to working with whomever serves in that position.
Bill will also spend the day before the SOTU meeting with Senators and Representatives from both sides of the aisle to talk about important space, science, and exploration issues. Our Washington, D.C.-based policy team will join him at these meetings as well. Our relationship with Bridenstine and his office goes back years due to his involvement in the House Space Subcommittee, which has oversight over NASA. The Society makes an effort to engage with every legislator directly involved on NASA issues regardless of their party or ideology, and I firmly believe we most effectively represent the members of The Planetary Society by doing so. Just in my personal experience with him and his office, we've found them to be thoughtful and open to taking advice and ideas from people willing to engage with them.
Space exploration is one of the few areas of politics that still offers significant opportunities for bipartisan rapprochement. A shared passion for space can lay the groundwork for a relationship between individuals of very different political beliefs. This can help build trust and mutual respect between them, and potentially allow them to engage on more contentious issues that would otherwise be immediately dismissed or ignored. The current lack of mutual trust between the parties has been identified as one of the threats to a functioning democracy, and space provides a rare opportunity to try and reverse that trend.
The scientific process, in many ways, is radically optimistic: it assumes a chaotic-seeming world is actually governed by patterns, and that humans, with all of our fallibility and deficits, are capable of deciphering these patterns if enough of us work carefully to figure them out. It turns out this radical assumption is true, and it has led to the greatest improvement of the human condition in our species' 200,000 year history. It is in that optimistic spirit of science that we support Bill's presence at the State of the Union address: to engage where possible, to disagree when necessary, and to attempt to change the world for the better.
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