NASA is sad. (Via Orin Kerr.) They have a spiffy new mission to go to the Moon, which speaks directly to our innermost yearnings to leverage our capabilities and energize a coordinated effort. Really, the kind of stuff that makes us truly human.
If anyone should be excited by this, it’s the two groups NASA cares about the most: young adults, and members of Congress.
At an October workshop attended by 80 NASA message spinners, young adults were right up there with Congress as the top two priorities for NASA’s strategic communications efforts.
But the target audience is not going along!
Young Americans have high levels of apathy about NASA’s new vision of sending astronauts back to the moon by 2017 and eventually on to Mars, recent surveys show.
Concerned about this lack of interest, NASA’s image-makers are taking a hard look at how to win over the young generation — media-saturated teens and 20-somethings growing up on YouTube and Google and largely indifferent to manned space flight.
So apparently, we blame the internets. The leap from media-saturation to Moon-apathy seems a bit of a stretch to me, but I understand that one must blame somebody. I blame the fact that the Moon/Mars initiative is eviscerating honest science at NASA, and also that “we must get there before the Chinese do” doesn’t currently evoke the “we must get there before the Soviets do” xenophobia that was so effective in the Sixties.
But we shouldn’t fear, as there is a solution for the frustrating indifference shown by those lazy kids today: celebrity endorsements.
Tactics encouraged by the workshop included new forms of communication, such as podcasts and YouTube; enlisting support from celebrities, like actors David Duchovny (“X-Files”) and Patrick Stewart (“Star Trek: The Next Generation”); forming partnerships with youth-oriented media such as MTV or sports events such as the Olympics and NASCAR; and developing brand placement in the movie industry.
Outside groups have offered ideas too, such as making it a priority to shape the right message about the next-generation Orion missions.
And NASA should take a hint from Hollywood, some suggested.
“The American public engages with issues through people, personalities, celebrities, whatever,” said George Whitesides, executive director of the National Space Society, a space advocacy group. “When you don’t have that kind of personality, or face, or faces associated with your issue, it’s a little bit harder for the public to connect.”
I understand that the X-Files and ST:TNG are the hot media properties on the streets these days. Never let it be said that NASA’s instinctive feel for the cutting edge of coolness is anything other than maximally supa-fresh.
If I may humbly offer a suggestion. It’s possible that youthful apathy towards the promise of a Moon base is not due to a short-circuit of wonder caused by too-easy access to YouTube videos. It might be, instead, that this apathy is due to the complete absence of any compelling rationale for spending hundreds of billions of dollars on this project. Perhaps we could return to a management philosophy in which we first hit upon a really good reason for doing something, and then we figure out how to do it and work on spreading the excitement, rather than the reverse order. Maybe — just maybe — those kids today are sophisticated enough not to get excited by boondoggles, but they might actually be enthusiastic about learning surprising new things about the universe.
I want to believe.
Young Chinese are googlized, too.
I have another explanation to offer. Man has already been to the moon and the idea of returning in 11 years, nearly fifty years after the first mission is not very inspiring.
The idea that we once had the capability to reach beyond our planet and have since lost it is depressing. Announcing an attempt to recover that capabiility is obviously not going to be treated with the same enthusiasm as the first few missions. Mars may attract more attention, but its a long way off, which means that its unlikely that people will get excited about it any time soon.
Frankly I think the public isn’t concerned about the science as we would all like, so I think the harm to NASAs science programs is the main concern. Also, I doubt the expense is the main concern either, as it is basically small change compared to the cost of the war in Iraq, etc.
So I’m lead to the conclusion that going back to the moon simply isn’t an ambitious enough project. It’s not pushing the boundaries of what is possible. The problem was solved 40 years ago.
I think what NASA actually would need to do in order to get the enthusiasm levels they want is to propose a mission which is well beyond what the average person on the street believes is possible.
True dat.
I can’t even fathom what kind of groundbreaking, terrestrial science could be accomplished with the budget NASA would be appropriating for this space odyssey. Consider the LHC’s pricetag at $8 billion, or ITER’s pricetag at around $15 billion. These pale in comparison to the cost of establishing a “moon base” or traveling to Mars. There is so much concern about the US possibly losing its stronghold on the top slot for scientific innovation, and yet the health of the scientific job market and the available resources would improve drastically with just a fraction of these misguided budgets directed toward more useful and multifaceted ends. And this rant is dangerously close to diverting to the subject of the misappropriation of potentially paradigm-shattering discretionary funding as a result of the ::cough cough:: war effort ::cough cough::.
I personally would like to see NASA put a couple more scientists on the project that will determine what course of action we would take if we discovered a meteor on a collision course with our planet (considering only a couple scientists are even thinking about this idea right now…damn armageddon week on the history channel for putting one major buzzkill on my holidays). Besides, who is going to volunteer to head to Mars? Either you’ll be stylishly careening toward the red planet in a massive lead spaceship, or you’ll be fried by cosmic radiation before you’re even close to sticking your beach umbrella in the red sand and basking in the utterly inhospitable atmosphere.
But oh man, a moon base would just be SO COOL!
You’re spot on as to why the kids don’t care about the moon. Unfortunately, kids probably don’t care about space probes and telescopes either, for exactly the same reason–it serves no near-term purpose for any life on planet Earth. And, frankly, there’s no point in sanctimony over people not caring enough about distant stars while their fellow humans starve to death. The stars will still be there even if we don’t see them (one supposes) while the children will NOT still be there if we fail to feed them. Yes, I know, Iraq is a bigger waste of money, but a smaller waste of money is still a waste of money.
I sympathize with the view that knowledge is good in and of itself, but I happen to think future scientists will be more qualified to build probes and analyze data than today’s scientists are, therefore we should spend most of our resources on making sure there’s still a future for future scientists to live in. If you want additional funding for NASA, you can’t just argue for “honest science”, you have to argue for “useful science”–science that will sustain us long enough to do better science in the future.
ah, Joe beat me to the war topic while I was typing up my comment…
Would that this were the case. Consumatopia is right. The young (and the old) are equally apathetic about projects that maximize the scientific knowlege acquired per dollar spent.
I think that today’s kids are simply too cynical to believe that this moonbase thingie is ever going to get off the ground in the first place and would rather wait and see before getting too excited over it.
Another piece of this puzzle is the constant media insistence that the vast majority of people in this country (and 90% of the Earth’s human population) just aren’t wealthy enough to deserve these sorts of opportunities. As Joe mentions above: I think what NASA actually would need to do in order to get the enthusiasm levels they want is to propose a mission which is well beyond what the average person on the street believes is possible.
That “average person” sees: wealthy folks purchasing space flights or other special rides and opportunities, disgusting displays of discretionary wealth expended on sweet sixteen parties, the growing gianormous disparity in the incomes levels of those that have and those that will never (oh that character flaw of the poor), and so forth and so on, on a daily basis (you can find endless examples in the MSM every day). Sending ten or so people to live on the moon is yet another example of the elitists getting something that few will every be able to even imagine.
We struggle as a society to make sense of our own lives, without beginning to ask the lot to offer tax revenues for manned-space exploration. Can we really envision a plethora of new technologies that are going to make all our lives better on a dying planet???? When will the next great sweet sixteen girl be given a ticket to ride off as a Branson’s space tourist?
I third the doubt. They don’t care about any long term projects, be they simple space exploration, scientific projects (either pure or applied) or otherwise. They are solely focused on short term rewards. If it were otherwise, their would a lot less environmental problems to fix.
Sean, although it is true that people are all too quick to blame (or, in the case of Wired magazine, praise) the Internet for everything, it seems plausible to me that lack of interest and engagement in certain activities could stem from an overload of stimulation and choice — for which the Internet is partly to blame. I see this in myself: I find it hard to concentrate on any one thing because so much is coming at me. I used to be a political activist (on nuclear weapons in the ’80s, on Bosnia and public transit in the ’90s) but then got so overwhelmed by the world’s problems that I didn’t know which to pick, so I picked none.
First, the same might have been said of the Apollo program or, as Consumatopia pointed out, of science — or art, or music, or anything that isn’t strictly utilitarian. Second, a lot of people think that the thrill of human exploration is a compelling rationale. Indeed, I would argue that science falls under the category of exploration and thus is no different in principle from climbing a mountain just because it is there. Third, I don’t think any human endeavor works in the linear way you suggest. Science certainly doesn’t proceed neatly from motivation to action. The two are intermixed or even reversed.
George
NASA employs 80 message spinners and all they can come up with is the transparently uninspiring management-speak about leveraging capabilities and energizing coordinated efforts? Why don’t the people who write like that feel shameful? I do think we need a new set of pejorative descriptors of management-speak language.
The solutions put forward–anything except develop a compelling program, it seems–make me cringe the same way I cringe when Lynn Johnston tries to write youth slang in For Better or For Worse. Maybe their movie placements can involve a young boy dreaming of energizing coordinated efforts when he grow up.
Shoot, the Mercruy, Gemini, and Apollo programs gave us Tang and Teflon for only a few lousy billion dollars; who knows what a half-a-trillion-dollar ticket to Mars will produce?
How about because people in my generation are more concerned and/or more informed about the news telling us that the world is going to pieces – that a good college degree is no longer the magic ticket to a nice stable career; that the world is being run by politicians increasingly disconnected with reality; that state welfare is an increasingly expensive mistake, and that a savvy investment portfolio is really the only acceptable minimum for a comfortable retirement – that the world is an uncertain, somewhat uncaring place that eats naïveté for breakfast, dogma for lunch and idealism for dinner, and we have no option but to go forward anyway.
Please, give us Gen Yers some credit for some modicum of brains. The baby boomers have their problems; we have ours.
Google does not destroy man’s ability to wonder. It enhances what man is able to conceive by giving him/her access to a vast amount of information. New ideas I get from the internet give me a lot more to think about than I otherwise would.
People should be more worried about the brain washing that can occur if one is limited in the amount of information he/she can access. You will find that most societies who try to brainwash people do so by limiting the information they have access to, like these Polygamous here in Utah. First thing to go is all access and information from the “outside” world.
Philip, Tang and Teflon (and for that matter, Velcro) predate the formation of NASA.
Hi Sean, – because it is there, that’s why?
Why do the young want to go to Thailand?
Why do the young want to go clubbing all night?
Why do the young want to drive pedal to the metal?
Why do the youn want to ‘own’ dvds – what no ipod?
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Why do the young want to get drunk or ‘out of their heads’?
Why do the young want Nike or whatever other brand name?
Why build cars that can do 150MPH with a 55MPH or 70MPH limit on roads.
Why force cheap food from Africa onto the EU, when Africans are starving
PS – Audi cars have more patents than NASA.
Maybe german and EU engineering is where it’s at. May Be.
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Having argued — repeatedly! — against the Moon base and Mars mission, I’m happy that Sean has also been arguing against these. But, I’m even more delighted that young adults have a “high level of apathy” about these boring and incredibly expensive projects.
Blaming the internet for this is a bit silly. However, in a certain way it makes sense.
The big shift from the 1960s vision of the future to the present vision is that we’re now less interested in exploring “outer space”, and more interested in exploring “inner space”: biotechnology, nanotechnology, computers, and their various blendings. Right now there’s just a lot more fun stuff to do with small things on Earth than big things far away. And, the internet is part of this!
You can sit at home with a cheap laptop, access the collected thoughts of humankind through the internet, and talk to everyone in the world — or you can power up an enormous expensive rocket to shoot through 384400 kilometers of bleak empty space to land on… a bleak empty rock!
And now NASA says: “We did that, and we brought back some rocks — but now, if we all pay even more, someone can live on that bleak empty rock!”
Is it any wonder that young adults are unexcited about this prospect?
I agree totally with John. And like I’ve said somewhere before, I have no desire to leave the beautiful trees, butterflies and bunnies in my backyard, and my wonderful dog, for a bleak, dull, lifeless rock. A single hour walk through the woods is probably more brain stimulation than you could get from the surface of the moon in a hundred years, and you don’t even have to go anywhere to do math! We even keep discovering fascinating species of animals, birds, fish, etc. right here on our very own planet. We have little knowledge at all of the bottom of our very own oceans! I think this project of sending people to the Moon and to Mars is just an extension of an old and out of date macho engineering culture, and I emphasize the word “engineering”, because that’s all it is; there is no science there.
And speaking of dogs, I think mine would be incredibly unhappy trying to sniff stuff through a space helmet.
Thanks for this post! I think your appraisal is dead on. Average people, I think, see many of the same things most scientists see: Hubble is exciting. Looking for earthlike planets is exciting. Exploring Europa’s oceans is exciting. Sending people to kick around on a barren rock in the hopes of sending them to a more distant barren rock – dull, dull, deadly dreadful dull.
As a young adult and physics student, about the only interesting thing about these aimless manned “explorations” is the excitement watching CNN live, in case the thing blows up (and disappointment when it doesn’t.)
Stephen Hawking has enthusiastically come out in favor of space colonization in the name of reducing the odds of a complete wipe-out of the human race, and I think he’s on to something.
Many smart people are saying, “Yeah, but that’s best left to the private sector.”
Is this realistic? Are people like Virgin Galactic really going to find enough incentivesprofit in space to colonize?
Ditto. As I said in one of my blog posts
(http://angrylabrat.blogspot.com/2006/12/spaced-out.html)
this endeavor is just another blatant attempt at distraction from Bush’s failures (war, deficit, education…..). As a scientist and a lifelong lover of all things scifi, I long for a realistic return to space. But let’s have true scientific justifications and a meaningful attempt.
I was a space junkie from the time I was little. When the 25 anniversary retrospective for the 1969 moon landing came around my 9th birthday, I devoured all the TV specials and books that came out, including “Lost Moon” before it became “Apollo 13”. I eagerly followed news on the web regarding the great replacement to the space shuttle, the Venture Star! (Anyone remember that? They sank about a billion into it before the fuel tanks cracked and they realized it was unworkable). Then I watched X-mission after X-mission get cut for budgetary reasons, until suddenly there was nothing left. Then Bush walks in, drops some bit about the moon in his State of the Union, and suddenly NASA loses half its science budget with no one noticing. Between being a blatant Bush plan to cut NASA science spending, a design as exciting as a new Ford Pinto (though probably more sensible than another wing-based design) and general ignorance from the public (guess how many people know that the capsule is called “Orion.” I didn’t until I just checked on wikipedia), it’s no surprise that this isn’t generating big buzz from us “idealistic youth.” Personally, years of bullshit from both NASA and Bush has dimmed my enthusiasm significantly. My money is on private ventures now: Scaled Composites, Bigelow Aerospace, SpaceX. And, while we’re dreaming: a space elevator past geosynchronous orbit by 2020! Now there’s a project to inspire a generation.
Perhaps the apathy is due to the “been there, done that” problem: sending people back to the moon is like remaking a classic movie. Not always so exciting as the original … in fact, often it is just boring. To get any publicity at all, it has to be hyped out of all proportion, or perhaps it will get publicity if it ends in disaster (which is pretty likely, seeing NASA’s recent safety record).
As a NASA scientist/engineer, I’m running far and fast from most of the Constellation projects for the moon and Mars. But a lot of people inside NASA don’t think it’s going to happen like it’s being hyped — just waiting it out until a new President and administrator are in, when it will be scaled back to something maybe more reasonable.
That said — I think everyone’s being a bit territorial and myopic when the complaint is that if instead we just funded LHC-II/ Thirty-meter-telescope/ My Big Project that the “youth” would be excited by that. They wouldn’t care about that either — when one is speaking about the broadest section of public youth. As others have said, rarely, if ever, has “youth” monolithically gotten behind some great scientific venture.