The President’s Commission on Moon, Mars, and Beyond has released the agenda for its final public hearing, scheduled for Monday and Tuesday in New York. The hearing will feature two sessions on international issues, two on science (lunar “and other space science” and astrophysics), as well as sessions on sustainability, media, business, and space advocacy organizations (called “Space to the People!”). Sean O’Keefe is scheduled to speak Tuesday afternoon, just before audience comments, a press conference, and “deliberations of commissioners”.
I am curious, does anybody know what the rationale was for picking San Francisco, Atlanta, Dayton, Washington, and New York for public hearings?
I was sort of expecting hearings in Los Angeles and Houston – afterall the majority of aerospace activity goes on in these two places.
My best guess for the rationale is that they wanted to take the space issue out of its usual support base and see what the response was in “typical” American cities like Atlanta or San Francisco.
It did kind of make them a pain to get to, although I am going to make the NYC hearing to do a little networking and try to get the message out that space has to be about more than science. It also has to involve industry and commerce to really get moving. There needs to be some serious new thinking at NASA and in government about how and why we’re doing this whole space thing.
I think it also would have helped to hold them on weekends rather than during the week. It’s tough in this economy to take the time off to get to something like these hearings. I’m thinking that that may have contributed to the relatively light turnout in SF.
Thanks Ken,
It certainly does seem that the commission wants to gather the off-the-beaten-path perspectives, and I think that’s a healthy thing.
I just hope that they have their finger on the pulse of the rest of the US aerospace infrastructure, and that they have a plan. After all, no matter what they come up with to secure long-lasting public support, it will become very difficult to sustain if the aerospace infrastructure appears that it can’t deliver and the key dates get pushed too far over the public’s event horizon. I think the committee needs to come up with something quite exceptional on this last point to succeed.
Personally, I’m waiting to see what happens to the middle management at NASA. It’s their sometimes maladaptive attitudes that propagate down to the rest of NASA, and that is the place where I would expect meaningful change to begin. Unless the committee will recommend disbanding NASA, then I’d hope they’ve given this some thought too.
Well, mystery solved. The commission members today mentioned that they’ve been visiting the NASA field centers but not holding public debates there.