First woman appointed director Goddard Space Flight Center

April 15, 2023 12:18 AM

NASA's first female Goddard Space Flight Center director swears oath on Pale Blue Dot by Carl Sagan. NASA's newly appointed director of the Goddard Space Flight Center has claimed two firsts before even starting her official duties. On Thursday, Makenzie Lystrup became the first woman in NASA's history to be appointed the director of the Goddard Space Flight Center. She also became the first person to take their oath of office on a copy of Carl Sagan's 1994 book Pale Blue Dot.

In the US, office holders of a certain level are required to take an oath, otherwise known as being 'sworn in', before starting their roles. Religious texts such as the Bible are most often associated with US official swearing in ceremonies. But officials can use whatever text holds the most meaning to them and have sworn oaths on everything from the US Constitution to a Dr Seuss book.

posted by chariot pulled by cassowaries (20 comments total)

I say this with love, and I think I can speak for most non-Americans when I say this, Americans are so goddamn weird. That thing when you put your hand on a book to make your oath magic is lovely, but weird.

Ah, I hear you say, but the English do that too, how weird can it be?

To which I say, my brother in Christ, do not get us started on the English.
posted by Kattullus at 12:39 AM on April 15, 2023 [32 favorites]

"Members of a new Australian parliament make a pledge to serve in their new position. They choose to either swear an oath OR make an affirmation of allegiance.

Prime ministers, ministers and parliamentary secretaries make an additional oath OR affirmation of office.

Australian parliament has given politicians and ministers the option of either since federation in 1901.

Members of the constitutional conventions of the 1890s took their lead from the US constitution which contained provisions for oaths and affirmations, and the 1689 English Act of Toleration which gave allowances to 17th-century Quakers (they updated it to include atheists in 1888).

The oath of allegiance can be made on a Bible, other Christian text, or a holy book for another faith.

“The essential requirement is that every member taking an oath should take it in a manner which affects his or her conscience regardless of whether a holy book is used or not,” said the Attorney General’s Department in 1962."
posted by chariot pulled by cassowaries at 12:47 AM on April 15, 2023 [2 favorites]

The optimist in me sees signs of progress everywhere. Happy this sort of stuff is reported.
posted by schmudde at 3:44 AM on April 15, 2023 [5 favorites]

🌎
posted by kliuless at 4:32 AM on April 15, 2023 [6 favorites]

Getting my Goddard badge was one of the highlights of my career. I am very glad to see our director is a woman, and I have a copy of Pale Blue Dot on my shelf, from when it came out.
"Former Vice President of Ball" worries me more. It's a sign of the loss of a large NASA government workforce long ago (I assume started by Reagan). I'm one of so many contractors who work for the center, rather than a Government employee. That is, in my opinion, and professional experience, not a good thing.
Still, I am proud that they chose a woman, and I'm looking forward to working under her.
posted by Flight Hardware, do not touch at 6:59 AM on April 15, 2023 [8 favorites]

Good for Dr. Lystrup!
posted by doctornemo at 7:01 AM on April 15, 2023 [1 favorite]

How long until Saganism is recognized as a religion? And wouldn't that be the most ironic religion ever?
posted by vibrotronica at 7:46 AM on April 15, 2023 [3 favorites]

Never trust a person who swears on the bible, because the bible said to not swear on it (or anything under heaven). So ya know. "Christian nation".

At least Pale Blue Dot has no such restrictions and this is a perfectly valid oath. Unlike all the others who swear on the Bible.
posted by symbioid at 8:20 AM on April 15, 2023 [4 favorites]

They say that Carl Sagan but slumbers in a forgotten lab deep beneath the ruins of Aricebo, guarded by a few wizened, faithful grad students, to awaken only when extraterrestrial contact is nigh.
posted by phooky at 8:22 AM on April 15, 2023 [14 favorites]

If, by some nearly unimaginable twist of fate, I ever have to take the oath of office, it will be on the Starfleet Technical Manual.
posted by Halloween Jack at 9:58 AM on April 15, 2023 [10 favorites]

An excerpt from Carl Sagan’s Pale Blue Dot:

Look again at that dot [the Earth]. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there - on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.

The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds.

Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.

The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand.

It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known.

posted by New Frontier at 10:36 AM on April 15, 2023 [25 favorites]

Getting my Goddard badge was one of the highlights of my career.

Growing up, my father always had one (he was with the Vanguard group which moved there, from the Naval Research Lab) so I knew one day, I would also. Ended up working on NASA contracts for 25 years, mostly at Ames in Mountain View; but for me, getting a JPL badge was a high-light, when I transferred there in 1987. (When I found out actually working at JPL had unpleasant issues; I was gone six months later and wouldn't return to NASA for ten years.)
posted by Rash at 11:41 AM on April 15, 2023 [7 favorites]

I swear upon this faithful copy to fulfiil the duties of this office, thus
I do not like them in a box.
I do not like them with a fox.
I do not like them in a house.
I do not like them with a mouse.
I do not like them here or there.
I do not like them anywhere.
I do not like green eggs and ham.
I do not like them, Sam-I-am.

so help me, God.
posted by clavdivs at 5:05 PM on April 15, 2023 [4 favorites]

Metafilter: I do solemnly swear . . .
posted by dannyboybell at 5:59 PM on April 15, 2023 [1 favorite]

If, by some nearly unimaginable twist of fate, I ever have to take the oath of office, it will be on the Starfleet Technical Manual.
I have a copy of that in the same bookcase as Pale Blue Dot!
posted by Flight Hardware, do not touch at 6:14 PM on April 15, 2023 [4 favorites]

I'd go for the tech manual or 'Cosmos' (DVD) interesting, VP Harris used two Bibles.
"John Quincy Adams used a volume of law; Theodore Roosevelt took his oath without any books or religious texts -- he became president after his predecessor WIlliam McKinley died; and Lyndon B. Johnson used a Catholic missal belonging to President John F. Kennedy after Kennedy's assassination."
posted by clavdivs at 7:02 PM on April 15, 2023 [3 favorites]

The oath of office for all federal employees has "so help me god" in it. I always just cross it out and don't say it.
posted by haptic_avenger at 9:08 PM on April 15, 2023 [1 favorite]

I would take an oath on PiHKAL!
posted by The genius who rejected Anno's budget proposal. at 5:19 AM on April 16, 2023

January 2023, Robert Garcia was sworn-in to Congress on the U.S. Constitution, along with a photo of his parents, his citizenship certificate & an original Superman #1 borrowed from the Library of Congress for the occasion.

Smithsonian Magazine has further details of unusual or special objects used for swearing-in ceremonies.
posted by cheshyre at 10:51 AM on April 16, 2023 [7 favorites]

*swears oath on Dinotopia*
posted by brundlefly at 2:56 AM on April 18, 2023 [1 favorite]