Too depressing, unless you’re in denial.

Some other Supreme Court geezers will be retiring by that time, and the new Republican President can appoint some Christian patriots to replace the superannuated Supremes.

Anyone want to talk about space?

Now that that’s accomplished, and some momentum’s going, we can wipe our hands of this stinking bastard. All we need to do after that is to survive the rest of this White House’s term…

So, with all that free publicity, why do you bemoan the lack of NASA promotion?

> The outreach to the public shouldn’t be NASA centric. It should include
> the merits of exploration, commercialization and colonization of space
> LEO and beyond.

I would agree with that, but what does it have to do with your previous comment that “NASA has no way to promote itself”?

NASA probably spends as much on various forms of promotion as New Space companies spend on everything they’re doing.

Pathfinders Initiatives not included in educational budget is 28.8 million; 3.3 mil Educator Astronaut program; 13.9 mil NASA explorer schools; 8.9 mil Science and Technology Scholarship program and 2.7 mil Explorer Institutes (science centers, museums, planetariums and other informal education institutions)

Most of these programs benefit non-tax payers or higher educated people that would tend to understand the merits of space exploration and commercialization. Only e-Education and Explorer Institutes are aimed at the general public.

Shuttle lunches on TV – this coverage is inconsistent and the broadcasters have as much negative information as positive information. Either way how does seeing the Shuttle lunch connect an AVERAGE tax payer’s hard earn money to benefits to paying for gas, mortgage, vehicle repair, electricity, etc… Movies like IMAX Space Station and Walking on the Moon, Right Stuff, mini series From Here To The Moon and many others do a much better job than the news inspiring the general public. The way you reach Joe Public the tax payer is not the same as reaching a space enthusiast. The outreach to the public shouldn’t be NASA centric. It should include the merits of exploration, commercialization and colonization of space LEO and beyond. I don’t know the answer to that but it’s important, just as important as the united lobbing efforts in Washington.

Every Shuttle flight is covered on television. Millions of people have watched Shuttle flights live.

Hundreds of airshows take place every year, but no one questions why we should have airshow programs. They don’t insist that airshow performances be justified by flying science fair experiments or by “spinoff benefits.”

The public doesn’t support spaceflight because of spinoffs any more than they go to airshows because they think aerobatic planes may lead to better carburators. In the words of Tom Wolfe, “They all want to see Buck Rogers.”

If sport aviation can be justified for its own sake, why not spaceflight? The difference, at present, is the cost. Airshows are affordable. Shuttle flights are not.

> One problem is NASA has no way to promote itself since it can’t directly
> advertise like the pork producers and their other white meat ads.

What makes you think that? NASA has a huge education and outreach budget and their own television channel.

Where did I “refuse to admit” that?

There’s a big difference between admitting that Apollo existing and claiming, as you did, that we will never see a greater achievement as long as we live.

In fact, you’ve now gone beyond that to claim there will never be a greater achievement as long as *any* human is alive.

That is a very strong and extraordinarily pessimistic claim. It means you don’t expect humanity to survive very long, or you think we’ve reached the pinnacle with Apollo and it’s all downhill from here. I don’t believe either is true.

> However, the main contribution of the wider Apollo project (including
> Mercury and Geminii) was to prove inarguably that human spaceflight was
> even possible.

Vostok proved human spaceflight was possible before Mercury. And the X-15 would have proven it even without Vostok, Mercury, Gemini, or Apollo.

The main thing Apollo proved was that spaceflight, using capsules and ELVs, was incredibly expensive. That “proof” helped frighten investors off for decades.

> We say, “of course,” today, but before these projects there was no of course
> about it.

The engineers working on the X-15 and DynaSoar had no doubt that human spaceflight was possible. Some scientists at NASA might have thought the human heart would stop beating in zero-gee, but any pilot who had flown zero-gee knew better.

> Edward and his friends would have a lot less support and money — and
> might not even ideologically exist — if the government’s of the United States
> and the Soviet Union not put more than half-a-century of effort into proving that
> all of this could be done.

Even if that’s true, the governments of the United States and Soviet Union did a lot more than Apollo. (The Soviet Union never did Apollo at all.) If you want to talk about the legacy of Apollo, you must also credit it not only with the first Moon landings but also the cancellation of Dyna-Soar, the orbital X-15, the Air Force lifting bodies, and even Lunar Gemini. Delaying the development of low-cost space transportation by 50 years for the sake of a few Moon landings is a questionable good.

Spinoff fuzzythink is a direct consequence of NASA’s free publicity, and not any kind of alternative self-promotion.

I think spin-off inflation comes from the fact that it’s hard to convince the general public and government as to why we should have a space program of any kind, human or robotic without any physical evidence of benefit. One problem is NASA has no way to promote itself since it can’t directly advertise like the pork producers and their other white meat ads. It would be nice if space activist groups spent some of the dues money on general space commercials in support of space. The aerospace companies have done some ads but not really aimed at the general public. This could help balance the media inaccuracies and general inflation of facts. It’s good to have congressional support but a public funded space program will need support from private citizens and NASA spin-offs aren’t going to be enough to merit such spending.