NASA and the public's view

[Grand Lunar]

Yesterday in class, as an off hand remark about why not to smoke near fuel, our instructor mentioned that as the shuttle program is going away, we don't need to make any one-time astronauts.

One person thought he said that NASA was going away, and asked about that.
The instructor then quipped that he wished it was going away, and told of what he read in the Orlando Sentinal about NASA's spending. He told of the ISS's expenses ($200 billion, he said) and how's it produced nothing (which is true, far as I know). Also mentioned was how after it's completed, it's only got 5 more years left.

I said nothing, feeling that I didn't need to start an arguement. Also, I wasn't there to debate; I was there to learn.

Still, I couldn't help be feel rather saddened; is THIS the image NASA is presenting now? As an agency that deserves to go away?

NASA once was great and respected. Has it come to just being viewed as pork barrel spending now?

In some ways, I can see the reasoning for this. The ISS hasn't delivered, and the shuttle is just repeating what we've done since Mercury.

With the Orion spacecraft and the missions planned for it beyond LEO, I hoped that "happy days were hear again". Seems I was in error with that assumption.

A better view of NASA is needed if we're to leave LEO again.


Something I'd do is show that it's only 0.7% of the federal budget that's being used per year.
Also, I'd show what other things the US spends big(ger) bucks on.


I recall an entry on Phil Plait's blog about ideas that NASA could use to improve it's PR program. That could help.


Thoughts? Input? Output? Data?

[JayUtah]

The problem is the belief that NASA must entertain. Saying the ISS is unproductive is simply wrong. I attended a graduation recently where about half the engineering M.S. and Ph.D. degree research was on engineering factors studied for the ISS, all of which had clear implications for ongoing, long-term, manned exploration of space.

The 1960s gave us a lot of short-term leaps. Those have a natural tendency to attract public attention but don't provide a sustainable infrastructure. But now we're into the serious business of space exploration, which isn't glamorous; it's a lot of hard, tedious work. The ISS is the test bed for all the new technology we'll need, and that's exactly what it's being used for. Building the ISS is half the exercise, just like taking notes in class is itself the learning exercise whether you read the notes again later or not. If we can build a spacecraft and keep it operating for several months on end, we'll know that we have the capacity to build a spaceship that will take humans to Mars.

And while I'm not a big fan of the shuttle program, saying that it does what Mercury does is simply too superficial a comparison. While it doesn't necessarily capture the public's attention, it's not necessarily meant to. It was hot stuff in 1980, but in 2008 it's the orbital truck -- just like it was supposed to be.

Dazzling the public and getting real stuff done in space are not always compatible goals. The U.S.D.A. doesn't worry about dazzling the public; why should NASA?

[JayUtah]

...I should add that those diplomas were being handed out by Margrit von Braun, daughter of Wernher von Braun and the dean of the graduate school that granted them.

[JayUtah]

The Orlando Sentinel is not the least biased view of NASA, by the way. If your instructor is going to teach from a longstanding NASA muckraker, then certainly the views he presents won't be very favorable.

[Jason Thompson]

May 13, 2008 10:11:38 GMT -4 JayUtah said:

The problem is the belief that NASA must entertain.

That's hitting the proverbial nail on the head, at least partly. The other problem seems to be the taxpayer's belief that his tax dollars should be spent on something obviously beneficial to him in some way. The sad fact is that many people can't see the benefit of space exploration. Most have no idea that many of the things they take for granted now spun out of the space program. I bet most hang-gliding enthusiasts don't know their favourite sport came from the Gemini program.

Part of the reason people lost interest in the Apollo program is that watching people dig up soil and rocks on the Moon just isn't very interesting to watch. Once the novelty of them being on the Moon has worn off, it is just two blokes in space suits laboriously collecting rocks from a very dull, grey landscape. The bits everyone remembers are a few minutes of publicity stuff from hours of sensible work, such as Al Shepard's golf swing, the hammer and feather, the first steps, etc.. From the other programs, no-one remembers the solar telescope imagery from Skylab, but they do remember seeing Pete Conrad twirling in zero gravity in the spacious interior. Obviously the astronauts aren't going to spend their time doing stuff like that when there is real work to do.

So it's a contradiction. They want their money to be spent on worthwhile pursuits, but what they want to see is astronauts larking about.

Moving on, to say the ISS has achieved nothing is like saying Gemini 7 achieved nothing, being mainly two blokes sitting in orbit for two weeks getting quite bored and cramped. Why keep them up for two weeks when no other Gemini mission was planned to last that long? What did it achieve? Well, in terms of Gemini nothing, but the long duration flight was necessary for what came after, because they had to prove they could build a spacecraft that could last that long, and that the crew could last that long, for the future Apollo missions. So it is with the ISS. It's for testing technology and improving our understanding of the effects of long duration space flight on human physiology and psychology. If NASA bypassed the ISS and went straight to a manned Mars flight then they'd have no proven technology to use, nor would they be able to anticipate the effects on the crew. If confinement and long periods of zero gravity are going to cause a guy to go psychotic, or the technology is going to fail after six months, we'd rather know that now when they're only in Earth orbit and we can get them back than have it happen twenty million miles away.

[Jason]

Part of the perception may be because the Soviets had Mir and other stations up for so long. The public doesn't see the ISS as doing anything more than the Soviets already did back in '80s.

[Grand Lunar]

I hadn't realized what has been done with the ISS. The complaint I've heard relates to medical research. I have heard insights being given into bone loss.

I didn't mean to directly compare Mercury and the shuttle. I just meant both share the same destination. Of course, both were designed to do that, so I shouldn't complain.

It seems the real key is to get the right PR out, and not opinionated views that have few facts to go on.

[Jason Thompson]

Another problem is that, to the average guy, discoveries are interesting, but the research that is necessary to lead to them is not. If we find evidence of life on Mars everyone will say 'oh, cool'. As long as we're looking for it and not finding it they'll say 'why are we wasting money on this?'. But you can't have the cool discovery without doing the hard work. If the work I'm doing now comes right, we'll have a cool, new, point-of-care blood testing device on the market that will benefit people a great deal. In the meantime, I am spending my days moving small volumes of liquid back and forth in a channel to see if we can do it without making bubbles, and working out good ways to stick different bits of plastic together. The end product will be interesting and useful. The work we have to do to get there is useful but dull. For a more relevant example, look at the number of people who know about Man's first steps on the Moon, and then compare that with the number of people who know about the earlier manned and umanned flights that led up to it.

It is a matter of PR. Frankly I think NASA should make a lot more about what we've got out of the space program to date and what benefits further work could offer, rather than relying on the perceived 'coolness' of future missions, having Men walking on Mars or routine flights to hotels on the Moon.