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.
Sean, 500 years ago people would argue what does Cristobal Colon (Christopher Columbus to you) want three ships (at the then cost of three space shuttles) to look for a route to the Indies thru the West.
And since then America (the US, central & south america. and Canada) has developed into where you live today.
Maybe in 500 years the Moon could be as busy as New York or California – wasn’t California a pretty empty ‘rock’ and what was there in Nevada begore ‘las Vegas’ arrived?
Who would have thought a hundred years ago that one third of the people on earth would spend at least an hour a day in a tin box with wheels – and half that time in a traffic jam during rush hour – not moving.
John Baez, sure the internet video-conferencing and communicating online can do many things and save many air miles, but as Sean and JoAnne have said here before you can’t have (or enjoy) the interaction of the wine party afterwards.
Also you can travel anywhere in the world on line, but people use the internet as a travel brochure and then want to go and visit the places ‘in the flesh’
Incidentally I don’t understanding shopping online other than music and books perhaps. Shopping for clothes and goods is still better in the high street stores.
And don’t forget when you shop online for food the food still has to be delivered … no replicators yet
Unless you call production lines semi-replicators. lol!
I LOVE the suggestion about leveraging celebrities and the media to sell the space dream. Having worked at NASA back in the eighties and actually having built and handled a few instruments that reached orbit and even other planets, I am definitely sold on the dream and, at the same time, frustrated with the current realities of a largely underfunded bureaucracy that is today’s NASA. Despite all the frustrations, though, it has been a banner year for the agency results-wise with Hubble continuing to perform, the unstoppable Mars rovers, and the Nobel prize nod.
Yet with all of that, most of my friends and colleagues are simply unaware of what is really happening. It is no wonder nobody is interested or supportive of expanded budgets. They never even hear the science news amidst the clamor of popular celebrity-driven culture. (this, in fact was one of the key motivators to start my own science and technology blog.)
This post reminded me of a rather sad moment that supports the need for celebrity spokespeople. Back in the mid nineties, when I was the CTO at MicroDisplay, my girlfriend of that era, also a fine product of MIT, was recruited to present at the Discovery Magazine technology awards ceremony at Disney World, and I got to tag along and chat with some other folks from the MIT mafia that happened to be around the show. Several other luminaries and celebrities were recruited to present, including Bruce McCandless, the first Astronaut to pilot the MMU without any tether. Here is the link to the canonical image from his first untethered space walk. How cool is that?
The grand irony for me was that after the show, I happened to be sitting next to McCandless as we watched LeVar Burton, then playing Giordi Laforge on Star Trek: TNG get absolutely swarmed with fans, while nobody even gave McCandless a second glance. I turned to McCandless and asked him if he thought it was odd that people seemed more interested in the person that pretended to be in space, rather than the first person to actually fly a jet pack in space. He chuckled rather ruefully,and we just shook our heads together. The power of celebrity indeed. At least I had a great chat with the real space jockey all to myself.
I’m a fairly young adult and NASA’s J-Track 3D still blows me away every time I play with it. I think there are a lot more opportunities to engage the youth along the lines of that level of interactivity instead of celebrity pandering. Another manned mission to the moon just seems like harebrained nostalgia. As Apollo 19 astronaut, Captain Bern Hembrook said, “I walked on the moon. I did a pushup, ate an egg on it. What else can you do with it?”
Ponte, you can get severely irradiated on it. The background radiation on the moon at solar minimum is 1 mR/hr (10 micro Sv/hr), about 9 R (9 cSv) per year. That’s 100 times the background radiation in London. On earth, the atomsphere is equivalent to a 10 metres thick (10 tons/sq. metre) radiation shield, and the earth’s magnetic field reduces the hazard by deflecting and trapping electrically charged particles. There’s no such protection on the moon. You’d need massive underground bunkers to avoid cancer risks. In a solar storm, anyone caught outside could receive a massive radiation dose. The moon is just not suitable for life.
Young chinese you say… (that would be me). Does that mean I’m googlized? Maybe I am… (ironically that’s how I found this blog).
Btw, what I think of the moon idea; it’s complete waste of time and money. While I admire the adventerous spirit, it lacks any application. What does going to the moon (again) do for science? (Zero-g projects don’t have to involve the moon. And oh yes, I despise mass media, for those of you who have read John Stuart Mill’s On Liberty).
I forgot to mention something, the likiness and the possiblity of being able to live on the moon might be increased if we developed our technology here on Earth more first.
When I was in my twenties, I worked on the Apollo project. It was an exciting time, we didn’t worry about why we were going to send a man to the moon, only that our little effort worked flawlessly. So I have an interest, perhaps with a bit of nostalgia, in seeing man make it back to the moon again. However, I’m inclined to believe that at the present time, the idea of spending billions of dollars to revisit the moon is politically motivated and deflects attention away from pressing scientific and social problems.
I would have been impressed if NASA had proposed a 10 year, 100 billion dollar program to find a solution for generating energy which didn’t pollute the atmosphere or produce radioactive byproducts with a half-life of 10,000 years. I’m thinking fusion, but I’m an artist and not up to speed on the potential solutions. Maybe I’m dreaming, but isn’t that how the future starts?
Ed Minchau–
I forgot about Velcro, but are you saying someone/something–the government, NASA, anonymous PR people–misled me about Tang and Teflon, too?
I’m shocked!
To concure with George Rodart, I’d like to think that the same collection of people (young or old) that are interested in science enough to care about going to the moon and mars are, strangely, exactly the same people who know about and are concerned about global climate change.
I hear that, as the Titanic was going down, the youth onboard were strangely un-interested in the hot new tunes the band wanted to play — probably the fault of jazz and radios.
Amen to that, Maynard.
…exactly the same people who know about and are concerned about global climate change. This is my perception also. I shared a ride to the airport with a young man who was an undergraduate at Caltech. We had a nice conversation and his concerns and interests were much more down to earth. I found it encouraging.
Since it’s the end of the year, the sinkhole for top ten lists.
If a wise government were to commit substantial funding to a scientific project, or projects, with the expectation they would be targeted to achieve practical results in the near future. What would they be?
Sean,
I agree with you that blaming the internet is probably wrong, but I don’t think your interpretation is correct. You say that apathy is …due to the complete absence of any compelling rationale for spending hundreds of billions of dollars on this project.
Well, if that’s the case, what scientific projects are young people more excited about? String theory? Dark matter? The complete sequencing of human DNA?
I don’t see young people as having much enthusiasm for science of any kind. Maybe you prefer other projects over manned space exploration, but is there really any evidence that large numbers share your opinion?
Daryl,
Wouldn’t you say that people are more excited about String theory, Dark matter, DNA since there is a market for popular books on these subjects (there may be a market for NASA’s program too but it might be smaller because one doesn’t see much popular book in that area)?
Chinmaya,
Well, the apathy noted in the CNN article was determined by a public opinion poll. While there may be a market for those books, is it really a significant fraction of the public (enough to make a dent in a public opinion poll?) I’m not asking rhetorically, I really don’t know the answer.
A colony on the moon? A city on Mars? What do these ideas really mean? They mean a prison on the moon, weapons throughout the solar system, a war on terror in space and a Martian war on drugs. Do we really need to spread the madness throughout the universe?
I’m for building a supercollider on earth and a huge gravity wave detector in space. I favor these and similar projects that would employ physicists in useful and ennobling capacities rather than as the weapons hacks that some 80%+ of physics graduates become.
But these are thoughts that belong only to star gazers and outsiders like me. You guys who at at the top in theoretical physics had betteer keep still – you could lose your funding!
How about taking a good look at our own planet before sending Americans to Mars for photo ops? NASA has hacked the funding of various climate satellites in favor of the Moon-Mars business – I’d rather see ocean color satellites and gravity-mapping satellites being put in Earth orbit for data collection. (The Hubble Telescope is another example of the kind of thing NASA should be doing, and the images produced are far more interesting to ‘young people’ then some Cold War-era replay of the ‘race to the Moon’).
I would have no problem redirecting a portion of our grotesquely large defense budget towards more peaceful means. I think this would be the only rational way to pay for it.
If only they were planning to do something new and interesting that required a human presence, like building a space elevator on the moon, then I’d be excited…as it is, what can humans do on the moon that robots couldn’t do for a fraction of the cost?
Can’t argue with those who say the money for a moon colony could be more wisely spent on other things which are needed now … but then I think of all the resources that are outside our gravity well – all that solar energy, the He3 from solar flares that may be collecting in the moon’s south polar craters, more fresh water ice in the rings of Saturn than salt water in our oceans, comet-loads of hydrocarbons, etc. – and I’d like to see us make a start at claiming those resources for the sake of future generations who will need them; and a moon base seems to me to be the best way to make that start.
There will be lots of challenges, but there may also be exciting solutions. E.g., an article in a recent issue of “Analog” magazine proposes using “high-temperature” (~200 Rankin) super-conductors to create magnetic radiation shields in the bottom of a polar crater.
Better think about blogging & online gaming.. is there a crossing point between that trend and Google, You tube, NASA ambitions?
In one among his several excellent popular books, Disturbing the Universe, maybe, Freeman Dyson describes the kinds of very small ( kilograms ) and very smart robots that could be designed to explore our solar system inexpensively and more effectively than humans ever could. It’s interesting to think not in terms of one or two robots but of hundreds or thousands of such rugged explorers peering into every crevice of the solar system and parachuting test tubes back down to us sensibly earthbound scientists. There’s really no argument here: the respective payoffs of manned vs. unmanned exploration are obviously hugely lopsided.
If the objective is colonization of space, well, then again there is no argument – that of course takes people. But it is my hope space colonization can be retarded for as long as possible, until we can find the wherewithal for solving some of our political and social problems here on earth rather than seeding these monsters throughout the universe.
Manned missions would offer only cheap political thrills for the unlettered and no inspiration to young people interested in physics – our topic here. Trying to inspire kids with trips to the moon is like trying to lure you theoretical physicists away from your next conference with some circus tickets. They know better and they deserve better, as does physics itself.
The Internet does not draw kids away from science. It obviously makes science far easier for children to access and learn. I remember hitchhiking to a tiny library in another town several miles away wherein I could behold its single book on calculus. The Internet is nothing but fabulous for science and curious kids.
In his same book, Dyson tells how the government pays him huge sums of money for his scientific studies from which he draws very sound and deeply considered advice, advice, he says, that the government *never* takes. So it’s All Aboard for Mars!, kids, unless some smarter and better motivated people can take charge of things. Maybe we would do better to find ways for encouraging retired physicists to enter politics (yuk!), and then things might naturally work out better for physics and young physicists.
Perhaps the answer to apathy is an even greater boondoggle. The administration should announce the Warp Drive Project.
Sure, it won’t lead to a warp engine. But it will employ a huge number of physicists, who are bound to make fundamental advances of some sort. And it’s harder to be apathetic about exploring the galaxy. Until, of course, it’s generally realized that it’s not going to happen. But that public realization could take many years.
I just recalled an article that I had read recently in a local newspaper which suggested helium-3 as a motivation for going back to the moon. I found the archive:
http://www.madison.com/archives/read.php?ref=/tct/2006/12/23/0612230276.php
The motivation here is strictly energy and economic in nature, and not science.
You might be interested in watching some videos that a videographer friend of mine made for the 2006 “2nd Space Exploration Conference”.
The website isn’t very beautiful, but the short videos are awesome. They really demonstrate some of the mixture of apathy and enthusiasm that “kids” in college feel. Plus they sorta tug at the heartstrings of smart people. 🙂
Anyway, here’s a link to the videos themselves: Space Walking
Although your article was very intriguing, I strongly disagree with several of your opinionated views. I myself am 14 and a freshman in high school. However I am very interested in science and on an advanced academic track in school. I also plan to become a Quantum Physicist after graduating from collage. Several of my friends are also on academic plans and do take an interest in science and the state of Scientific Awareness in the world. I believe that many people assume this generation of teenagers doesn’t take plan ahead for or understand the future, although many of us do. They also do not understand that the typical stereotype for teenagers is evolving. Many of the advanced teenagers are just like other “normal” students. I myself am a cheerleader and basketball player. Most of my friends also participate in several sports and clubs along with other teenagers. However I do agree with your main which states that the population of scientifically aware teenagers is dwindling. Never the less, at this time many kids still take an interest in the universe and how our world is progressing.