And as I tried to offer in my “Space for Improvement” article, you don’t need a Moon landing every week to keep the public engaged. When executed skillfully, a trip to the grocery store can serve as material for an engaging story. Make a list of ten successful movies (or even ten fun-to-watch television commercials!); not all their plots involved Moon-landing-caliber events and yet they did succeed in holding the audience’s attention. Why? Because the storytellers (directors, writers, actors) connected the audience to the characters. That’s what good storytelling is all about, and “the public” has been susceptable to its power for millenia.

If a few more people in the space business (not just NASA) woke up to this reality about human nature and exploited it well, a Sputnik-like paradigm shift might be in the offing, where science, engineering, and math are not viewed as solely the domains of geeks. Not guaranteed, but I think it would increase the chances of such a mindset change considerably.

I’m sure you’ll admit that our space program, even today, is full of characters… Thousands of stories are out there, waiting to engage the public—if only the stories were told effectively, i.e., with proper storytelling skills. And it doesn’t have to cost that much—in many instances, the “special effects” are already finished.

That’s the dreaded post-Sputnik educational experience. What you are proposing is integrating inspiration and entertainment into that paradigm. I would further modify that with nature and science and engineering.

That should be easy enough in the modern world, with the resources at our disposal, that’s already a project I am involved in. That being said, the inspirational part of the experience will have to occur on a weekly basis, and certainly with the magnitude of the problems of space exploitation, it will be expensive to provide those sorts of continuous inspirational results.

To those of us already ‘of the body’, ‘on the team’ and in on the secret, those kinds of amazing weekly inspirational experiences do already occur every once and a while, just with the space assets we are already flying, and several of us here on the board have been engaged in, and are still employed in, relaying those results to the space consuming public. In fact, this place itself caters to the demand for ‘consumer space entertainment’.

To really punch through to the masses you need really big inspirational events, but moon landings aren’t necessarily it, since we’ve already done that, and it will be a very expensive habit to accomplish on a weekly basis. These things should be different and exciting every week to be effective. Like ‘Star Trek’, for instance.

Something will come along. I’m partial to a single all out. record breaking. hydrogen powered single stage to orbit COTS attempt, using a retired space shuttle main engine, but that’s just me. We all have our specialties. Once the planet becomes a barren wasteland, I strongly suspect that everything we do in space will become relevant to modern everyday life.

The regular folks, the ‘normalists’, just haven’t realized that yet.

They haven’t had their ‘Sputnik’ moment.

This thread, though, addresses a very difficult challenge: convincing people to pay for something that they don’t necessarily see the value of. While I myself downplayed the value of the spin-off argument in terms of engaging the public with spaceflight, (http://www.thespacereview.com/article/802/1), I believe that it serves a purpose when offered as a “bonus” on top of the more direct justifications (many of which you have offered above–and then there are Mike Griffin’s “Real Reasons” (http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewsr.html?pid=23738)

Sure, as Go suggests, you could just put all the money straight into making a cell phone, but I don’t think a “cell phone development effort” would have done much to inspire an entire generation, including the likes of Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, etc, who went on to contribute extensively to our economy before they entered the Alt-space crowd. If you want to talk about spin-offs, I personally consider such inspiration to be the most valuable of them all.

We must be careful, however, to not employ a spin-offs argument exclusively or even as a main thrust, especially given the fact that so many items that most people think are space spin-offs (Teflon, Velcro) are in fact not. As I said, people really don’t care…they just like having their cell phones. But reminding them every once in a while (inside a proper context) wouldn’t be a bad thing.

One difficulty, though, is that many spin-offs aren’t necessarily direct “rocket-to-kitchen” items. Some little breakthrough in one bit of research (whether it’s supporting the space program or not) finds its way into some other entirely different field of research, and so on, and it eventually percolates into an everyday “can’t-do-without-it” item in someone’s house. Since so much of the public doesn’t truly understand the ways & means of technological development (programs on the Discovery Channel, etc, notwithstanding), many out there have a hard time following such explanations.

I believe that before any of these arguments will succeed in any great way, we’ll need to turn folks on better to the nature of science & engineering. And I use the term “turn on” in both senses; educate them while entertaining them. Then they’ll come to value space exploration on its own merits, since they’ll be closer to being “people who are already aware.”

apologies for the delay – I’ve been a little busy

The statement, without the indepth arguement, of seeing the importance of basic research, is mom and apple pie. The only people who I really get the “basic research” angle with what it coudl do for humianty, is scientists (because they understand the importance of basic research), and unfortantly, there remains something of a disconnect between scientists, and human spaceflight proponants.

To put it another way – your right that this won’t reach Joe and Jane sixpack, and I’d argue it doesn’t really reach even the middle class. The only way I see it reaching the middle class on this basis, is through the spin-off argument.

As I said, I don’t think you can make this the sole justification – the more you can tie it together, and link it throughout, the better off we are (from direct science, to commerical applications, and so on).

Why should we care about something that will take centuries to happen?

We know the past and it says we’ll be facing all sorts of dangers both from space and on Earth. We better start inhabiting space on a larger scale and we better do much more than we’ve done so far: our descendants depend on us.

Finishing soundbyte of about 45 words (not counting contracted words), is it good enough? Use it freely if it is (that goes for anyone including politicians, even those I disagree with ^_^).

Of course there will be plenty of detractors and that’s the point at which one stresses how human spaceflight will benefit finding solutions to all currently known problems while ultimately providing an insurance if all else fails. That’s the point at which one can tie in basic research, commercial spaceflight and habitation, spin-offs, Earth monitoring for both environmental and security concerns and so on.

Easterbrook: why should we care about something that will take centuries to happen?”

Because it won’t ever happen if we don’t lay the groundwork now. Where would we be today if, centuries ago, we hadn’t set down the foundations for global travel and trade? Answer = extinct.

— Donald

Easterbrook’s response was “While I suspect thats true, why should we care about something that will take centuries to happen?”

With a statement like that, you’ll consistently be facing that battle. Also, as I said, because its a Mom and Apple pie statement, it doesn’t tie anybody to actually doing anything.

Maybe, maybe, someone like Obama could take that statement, and if he were a believer in space, and spaceflight, he could run with it, and make it work. Unfortantly, we aren’t seeing anyone like that emerge. Perhaps we can convince Obama, but I don’t have any access.

“Studies of the electron led to knowledge of electromagnatism. More than a century later, that gave us the entire electronics industry, which nobody could have predicted in advance. Expansion into the Solar System today seems as useless as studying electrons. But, exploration and knowledge of the larger environment in which we live someday will give us skills, arts, and industries undrempt of today.”

— Donald

Further, most soundbytes have to be substantially less than 100 words. Get it to 50, or 25, then you might make it work. But 100 words, in a place where people understand the issue? Thats nothing special.

— Donald