"This necessitated aiming New Horizons at a "keyhole" in space just 100km by 150km (60miles by 90 miles), and arriving at that location within a set margin of 100 seconds."
That's pretty damned impressive by any standard you care to mention so go ahead, "U-S-A" yourselves a few more times. I think it was earned.
You do not seem to have understood his / her remark. He / she was not trying to diminish the remarkable achievement nor questioning the celebration of this success. But the jingoistic way it was celebrated.
EDIT: Why do I get downvoted? I was merely explaining OP's point of view.
Can someone express pride in their country without being jingoistic? I think so. Jingoism usually connotes aggressive foreign policy, militarism, and extreme bias on top of pride in nation.
I don't see the bias here--New Horizons is legitimately a project to be proud of.
On the other hand, it's arguably pretty aggressive to accelerate a machine to over 13 km/s and send it inside the orbit of a planet's closest satellite.
On the gripping hand, Pluto's government hasn't complained, so why should you?
Assuming you're being sarcastic; those are actual competitions between nations, by design. His entire point was that this is not a competition. Obviously, if it were, America would be winning. That's not being contested; the problem is not that the US won, the problem is that by continuing to beat the rest of the world over the head with it they are alienating a large chunk of the world.
patriotism in such things as space exploration is laughable, however reasonable commercial reasons behind it are (well described in another post). seeing logic "usa reached pluto" instead of "mankind reached pluto" is a bit sad, and i don't care if it's US, China, India or Monaco spacecraft. it just feels as wrong and antiquated view of the world... but maybe typical to generic US person? (no clue really)
well if they care, you shouldn't be then surprised that this approach would go against the fur of quite a few people (safe to say more than 1000% of US population?). and since even people with different mindset, like me, find it a bit distasteful and unnecessary, not-so-positive reactions are to be expected. btw welcome to the internet, where people complain about stupid things, all the time :)
Because every other country on earth isn't known to take deep pride in their culture and national accomplishments.
What's the disagreement exactly? That they cheered for their country? It's ok at a FIFA match, but not for something drastically more important? Subjective bias at its worse. When I see that attitude about something like this from non-Americans, it reeks of other countries feeling intimidated and jealous because they're not even on the same playing field with the US when it comes to space. It's nothing more than ugly envy.
That's pretty damned impressive by any standard you care to mention so go ahead, "U-S-A" yourselves a few more times. I think it was earned.