During the Vice President’s visit to the NASA Kennedy Space Center Thursday, where he advocated for getting “American boots” on Mars, Vice President Mike Pence was photographed touching space equipment clearly labeled “Do Not Touch.”
The photo was captured while the vice president and Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) were touring the Operations and Checkout Building at the space center by Director Robert Cabana. The equipment was some type of “critical space flight hardware,” according to sign posted on the apparatus.
The internet responded accordingly.
Mike Pence, ladies and gentlemen. pic.twitter.com/Nd2xJD8nHL
— Jennifer Bendery (@jbendery) July 7, 2017
Pence looked left. Then right. Mother wasn't anywhere around. He smiled to himself. He would touch pic.twitter.com/3WHJ3sGkvh
— Jason Miller (@longwall26) July 7, 2017
Pence tours NASA
Sign:"Do not touch"
He can't stop, touches anyway
This is why Mother won't let him alone with girlspic.twitter.com/hoFwZkhgw6— Steve Marmel (@Marmel) July 7, 2017
How it feels when Pence touches you after you've clearly asked him not to. pic.twitter.com/JANvSksRBk
— Ashley Mayer (@ashleymayer) July 7, 2017
Taking to Twitter on Friday, the Vice President laughed it off, saying Rubio “dared me to do it!” and posting a photoshopped picture of himself petting a porcupine instead of the space equipment.
Sorry @NASA…@MarcoRubio dared me to do it! pic.twitter.com/qIYtKOPyFh
— Vice President Pence (@VP) July 7, 2017
Okay…so this isn't exactly the first time this has happened. pic.twitter.com/6Y7b3UlJXe
— Vice President Pence (@VP) July 7, 2017
Memes aside, a NASA spokesperson said the signs just function as a “reminder” and that it was “absolutely okay” for Pence to touch the surface of the equipment.
“The signs are there as a day-to-day reminder, including the one visible on the titanium Forward Bay Cover for the Orion spacecraft,” NASA spokesperson Jen Rae Wang said in an email to TPM. “Procedures require the hardware to be cleaned before tiles are bonded to the spacecraft, so touching the surface is absolutely okay. Otherwise, the hardware would have had a protective cover over it like the thermal heat shield, which was nearby.”
The vice president visited the space center to discuss President Donald Trump’s plans for space exploration, which he said would include a return to the moon and “American boots on the face of Mars.”
“Extending our nation’s leadership in space is one of the greatest challenges of our day. And just as we have risen to the challenges that came before, so too we will rise to meet the new challenges that lie ahead,” he said. “That’s why just last Friday, President Donald Trump signed an executive order to relaunch the National Space Council and guide a new era of space leadership by the United States of America.”
h/t Mashable.
Pence keeps on getting Cokes delivered to him when he sneaks into the Oval Office. He has yet to connect the Cokes with pressing the red button which he does reflexively, imagining dropping nukes on Trump Tower and Mar a Lago
Pence has “orb envy”
Human beings are now just “boots.”
It really is discomforting to find out both the Pr*sident and the Vice-President lack basic reading skills. It was bad enough when I thought it was just the one.
There goes the lamestream media assuming Mike Pence has the mental horsepower for reading.