Goddard Space Flight Center's new boss swears in on holy Pale Blue Dot

Dr Makenzie Lystrup is the new director at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland – the biggest employer of space exploration techies and scientists in the US – and swore in using the consecrated tome beloved by many a Reg reader, Carl Sagan's Pale Blue Dot. NASA Administrator Bill Nelson, left, swears in Dr. Makenzie …

[Anonymous Coward]

Not a twitter blue dot then ... ?

Not a twitter blue dot then ... ?

[Dev_Fit]

Nice to see someone toss the "good book" for something worth reading.

[Sorry that handle is already taken.]

Sadly I think this is going to have some people foaming at the mouth...

And I'm all for it!

[Bill Gray]

This does have me scanning my bookshelves and thinking about what "holy book" I'd use in such a situation. Perhaps _Table of Logarithmic & Trigonometric Functions_. If the situation involved my profession more directly (I write software for the asteroid detection/planetary defense community), I'd probably go with _Fundamentals of Celestial Mechanics_. Plenty of good options.

[heyrick]

As a nerd, mine must surely be "The C Programming Language". Failing that, "A Brief History Of Time". Failing that, my old school science textbook. Any of those are much closer to reality than.... that other book.

Well done her for choosing something real to swear upon.

[jmch]

Thumbs up for "A Brief History Of Time"...

... and if I were to go for something fictional, might as well go for "The Colour Of Magic".

[jfw25]

The most obvious choice from my collection would have to be the Chemical Rubber Company Handbook of Chemistry and Physics. Or, as we referred to it back when I was a physics student, The Rubber Bible.

(Ah, shows how old I am -- they now just call themselves CRC...)

[H in The Hague]

"The most obvious choice from my collection would have to be the Chemical Rubber Company Handbook of Chemistry and Physics."

Mine's the 72nd edition. And yours?

[Fruit and Nutcase]

That's a blast from the past!

[A. Coatsworth]

No worthy books in my bookshelf, like the ones already mentioned.

I'd probably go with either The Simarillion or The Popol-Vuh or perhaps IBM PC Assembly Language and Programming as I guess a creation myth should be as good as the next for the task

[Paul Kinsler]

Plenty of good options.

Perhaps "An inquiry into meaning and truth", by Bertrand Russell?

[Martin]

If we're swearing in, then surely this is the one?

[Ivan001]

Comments here are boring...

Can someone please direct me to the same story on some fundamentalist websites? That's where the fun comments must be...

[Winkypop]

Swearing in book?

Apollo 11 Flight Manual for me

[Roger Kynaston]

my book

Fundamentals of Physics by Brady and Humiston. Though I abandoned that science degree for something else. Now, in later life I am returning to science with the OU.