Woke politics interferes with science

Atheistic scientists who thought the woke movement would benefit them now have reason to regret their facile assumption. Beginning with Charles Lyell and especially Charles Darwin, scientists embraced atheism. Even today they will not “allow a Divine foot in the door,” especially in the disciplines of paleontology and paleobiology. But the woke movement went off the rails somewhere. Woke was never explicitly about modernism; it was about anti-Christianity, anti-Caucasian-ism, and otherwise countering Western civilization. Now comes evidence that woke politics – and perhaps something worse – interfered with, even scuttled, a scientific mission to the Moon. That should cause everyone to reevaluate fanatical compassion that demands literally suicidal devotion.

The latest incident involving woke sentiment

Toward the end of last year, a company called Astrobotics built a lunar lander, which it called Peregrine, which was the first private mission to the surface of the Moon. Astrobotics contracted with a large number of payload-specialty companies. Two – Celestis and Elysium Space – offered to carry human remains and DNA to the Moon as a literal out-of-this-world burial.

The Navajo Tribal Council wrote an angry letter to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, demanding they scrub the mission. Their quarrel: the Moon is sacred to Navajo beliefs. Any deposition of human remains on it would be “profoundly” sacrilegious.

The White House actually gave them a hearing on January 5. In the end, cooler heads prevailed – somewhat. Scrubbing the mission to remove the Celestis and Elysium Space payloads was out of the question. Loading a spacecraft is orders-of-magnitude more complex than loading a cargo ship or air freighter. But the Navajo won this concession: that NASA would in future consult them about any future mission to the Moon.

On January 8, Peregrine took off, aboard a Vulcan Centaur rocket from the United Launch Alliance. By all accounts, the Vulcan Centaur performed flawlessly. Peregrine, however, was not so fortunate. A malfunctioning valve assembly caused its hypergolic fuel system to leak. Peregrine ultimately would not be able to land, In fact, it couldn’t even point its solar panels at the Sun for power.

Relief, alarm, and more relief

Navajo President Buu Nygren expressed relief. After all, if Peregrine was lost, the “sacrilegious” cargo was lost with it.

Except that Astrobotics were able to gain control of their stricken lander, to orient it and give it power. Now they talked hopefully of placing Peregrine into orbit around the Moon. A soft landing on the Moon was now impossible, given the fuel leak. But they talked of crash-landing it on the moon. In fact, a YouTube influencer posted a livestream anticipating a lunar crash.

But that, too, was not to be. Instead, Peregrine returned to Earth – and executed a controlled re-entry that destroyed it completely. But so complete was that control that it entered the atmosphere along a precise course (or “trajectory”) to avoid hitting Australia, New Zealand, or New Guinea.

“Whew!” said the Navajo Tribal Council. “Our sacred Moon is safe!” But Celestis has vowed to try again.

But the story did not end there. This morning, Jordan “The Angry Astronaut” Wright posted an “Angry Bulletin” containing the kind of scoop one typically got with Watergate.

Peregrine crashed on orders?

Wright released this video at 11:00 a.m. EST, as a “YouTube Premiere.”

According to him, a source close to, or within, Astrobotics informed him that NASA had let Astrobotics know that they would take it very kindly if Peregrine were to burn up in the atmosphere. When Astrobotics succeeded in regaining control of their probe, NASA said, in effect, “Crash it – NOT on the Moon – or risk losing funding.” They crashed it, or rather burned it up, on re-entry, in obedience to that order.

Wright is apoplectic, for two reasons:

1. Peregrine was a private mission. Technically NASA had no legal authority to tell Peregrine’s controllers what to do.
2. The Moon does not belong to the Navajo, nor to any other nation-state or ethnic group. Yet now they have a veto over every mission to the Moon.

What we see here – though Wright didn’t see fit to mention it – is a woke administration at work. Recall: woke is not about respecting modernity. It is about destroying any modern achievement – but respecting only non-Western ancient traditions. It is the most hypocritical position one can take.

Leave it to Jordan Wright, stone-cold atheist, to raise this objection first. He believes in extraterrestrial civilizations, and even suggests we are in the spot of the Polynesians when British Captains like James Cook and William Bligh came to call. But he, unlike the woke denizens of our government, is consistent.

Did woke go even further?

Worth asking is whether that hypergolic valve malfunction was really an accident.

Once is happenstance, twice is coincidence, and the third time it’s enemy action. Ian Fleming

Recall: the Navajo raised their objections, but to little avail – or so they thought. And at first, so shocking was the malfunction that no outside observer expected Astrobotics to regain any measure of control.

Early in the Industrial Revolution, textile workers, in one of the first recorded job actions, literally threw their wooden shoes into the looms. Because this happened in France, the French gave us a new word. The word in French for a wooden shoe is sabot. To wreck something, deliberately or carelessly, by this or any other means, goes by the verb saboter (SAAH-boh-tay). And, following another French language convention, the noun describing this action is: sabotage.

Did a Navajo workman, or a sympathetic woke technician not necessarily of that tribe, throw a moccasin into the rocket? The world will likely never know. The United Launch Alliance probably never thought of security. NASA will never investigate that possibility. (But Elon Musk, who intends lofting another private lunar lander, ought to establish his own security force, and fast!)

Clearly this “anomaly” needs a forensic and law-enforcement-oriented investigation, not merely the sort of investigation appropriate to, say, an airliner crash. If some fanatical warrior-wannabe did throw a proverbial moccasin into that rocket, we need to know about it. If a Navajo wouldn’t, a “paleface” woke warrior might – and could very well have.

For the future

Jordan Wright spoke correctly today: the United States government set a very bad precedent. In the name of woke, they granted a Beringian tribe the same rights that a nation-state would have. And that – let the world confront this reality head-on – over an idolatrous belief system.

No doubt the woke apologists will assert that the Navajo are entitled to this concession in the name of “freedom of religion.” Lay aside what the atheists will likely say. The Judeo-Christian tradition does not idolize the Earth itself, or anything on Earth or in the sky. Christian and Jew alike worship a Creator, not the Creation. But that doesn’t matter to the present government. They want votes – if not those of the Navajo, then those of their white liberal constituents, which are their only political reality today. Now we see that their politics has directly scuttled a mission of scientific importance. (Those payloads don’t matter. Plenty of woke groups actually call for human extinction.)

Bill O’Reilly is correct: those who value human liberty and material progress must vote out all Democrats his fall. We simply cannot trust them.

Equally importantly, this country needs to come to grips with truth or falsehood of belief. For we have just seen a real-world consequence of idolatry. Perhaps now one can understand why God forbade it. This is not to call for any form of punishment or discrimination for holding such belief. But it is to say that such beliefs should not dictate public policy.