So eager is the Obama Administration to reach out to the Mohammedan world that they have charged NASA — the space exploration agency — with the task. Seriously:

NASA Administrator Charles Bolden said in a recent interview that his “foremost” mission as the head of America’s space exploration agency is to improve relations with the Muslim world.

Though international diplomacy would seem well outside NASA’s orbit, Bolden said in an interview with Al Jazeera that strengthening those ties was among the top tasks President Obama assigned him. He said better interaction with the Muslim world would ultimately advance space travel.

This should be interesting. Much of the Mohammedan world is stuck in the 14th century at best. How will improved relations with, say, Libya assist in our exploration of the final frontier?

“When I became the NASA administrator — or before I became the NASA administrator — he charged me with three things. One was he wanted me to help re-inspire children to want to get into science and math, he wanted me to expand our international relationships, and third, and perhaps foremost, he wanted me to find a way to reach out to the Muslim world and engage much more with dominantly Muslim nations to help them feel good about their historic contribution to science … and math and engineering,” Bolden said in the interview.

Two of those charges have absolutely nothing to do with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.

Let’s accept the premise for a moment that improving relations with the Muslim world is vital. There’s no better department or agency to charge with that responsibility than…NASA? Maybe I’m crazy, but it would seem like NASA should stick to space and aeronautics. Crazy, I know.

The NASA administrator was in the Middle East last month marking the one-year anniversary since Obama delivered an address to Muslim nations in Cairo. Bolden spoke in June at the American University in Cairo — in his interview with Al Jazeera, he described space travel as an international collaboration of which Muslim nations must be a part.

“It is a matter of trying to reach out and get the best of all worlds, if you will, and there is much to be gained by drawing in the contributions that are possible from the Muslim (nations),” he said. He held up the International Space Station as a model, praising the contributions there from the Russians and the Chinese.

Neither the Russians nor the Chinese are part of the Mohammedan world. Both are, generally speaking, living in the 21st century. I completely disagree with their political systems, of course, but both nations are advanced in the areas of mathematics and science. In fact, Russia beat us to space.

Libya? Sudan? Afghanistan? Somalia? Indonesia? Not so much.

He said the United States is not going to travel beyond low-Earth orbit on its own and that no country is going to make it to Mars without international help.

Boy, we’ve come a long way since the age of the moon landing. We’ve gone from throwing the nation behind an effort to plant our flag on the lunar surface first, to proclaiming that we can’t do anything impressive without the help of Somalia. Welcome to the Age of Obama.