Lobbying, NASA, White House

Save Space: catching on or falling short?

Florida Today provides an update today on the status of Save Space, a Space Coast effort to get half a million letters in support of space exploration delivered to the White House. The article gives the impression that the movement is gaining momentum (“catching on”, as the headline puts it; “gaining steam”, as the lede paragraph claims), noting milestones like donated space on digital billboards across the country and the number of partner organizations that have joined, from Space Florida to local businesses like Taco Shack of Titusville. (Another partner organization is Florida Today itself, something the article fails to disclose.)

However, there’s little evidence in the article that Save Space is anywhere near its goal of 500,000 letters by the end of this month. A spokesperson for the Brevard County government, which is hosting the site, says that it’s “impossible to determine” just how many letters have been sent to the White House. The other statistics provided don’t sound optimistic: for example, the spokesperson said that the site has generated 42,000 “hits”. If she’s technically correct, that’s very poor, since each page will generate several hits for the various files that comprise it. Even if she meant visitors (or, better, unique visitors), that’s still a tiny fraction of the 500,000 letters, unless each visitor plans on writing more than 10 letters. The Save Space Facebook page just passed 2,000 fans, the article adds, a stat that sounds good but again is still far short of the 500,000.

If the organizers could come through on their goal of 500,000 letters, they likely would get noticed by the White House: as POLITICO reported last week, the White House is currently getting 65,000 letters a week, on top of thousands more phone calls, faxes, and emails: enough that there’s a backlog of mail that has to be processed. Dumping 500,000 letters there over a short period of time would presumably get some attention. A few thousand? Not so much.

The campaign is now backing away from that October 31 deadline, as the article states it will now be “an open-ended venture” until the president makes a policy decision. That might give them more time to collect more letters, but no guarantee they’ll rise above the noise of other mail arriving at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

[Note: I’m on travel the next few days, so updates here will be limited.]

13 comments to Save Space: catching on or falling short?

  • OK, Foust, we’re waiting to hear what kind of space business you have in Curacao.

  • Major Tom

    This mismatch between the 500K letter goal and the less than 50K internet “responses” was easily predictable just based on the 15K size of the KSC workforce or the 500K total Brevard County population. Some of us wrote such in this forum when the campaign first rolled out:

    http://www.spacepolitics.com/2009/09/28/can-a-letter-writing-campaign-save-florida-jobs/#comments

    On a somewhat related topic, the poll in today’s Washington Post Express asked readers “Do you think going back to the Moon would be a waste of resources?” The results were 58% Yes and 42% No. (Note that you have to vote to see the results.)

    http://www.expressnightout.com/pollcenter/index.php?poll_date=2009-10-23

    It’s a self-selecting internet poll, so it’s not worth much. But to the extent it reflects the opinion of young workers in the nation’s capital — the readership the Washington Post Express is aimed at — it’s a little interesting.

    FWIW…

  • Robert Oler

    The thing is that efforts like this are absolutely meaningless. It is not only the numbers that are puny, but it is the response…all from areas that have “space industry concerns” which implies a very very narrow constituency base.

    what this effort shows is how “thin” the “space line” is…there just is no national hue and cry over saving human spaceflight as we know it.

    Robert G. Oler

  • common sense

    “what this effort shows is how “thin” the “space line” is…there just is no national hue and cry over saving human spaceflight as we know it.”

    One of the reason is that the space community has followed the Cold War path for way too long, not diverging, not evolving, one bit since then. Don’t we keep hearing the old tired cries of the “what if the Chinese, the Indians were to stand foot before we do?” and the “because it’s hard” arguments? None of the future generation of tax payers relate to any of that stuff (to be polite).

    So, today, where is the next generation? On the Internet and IT world in general, not space, and I am only stating a fact not criticizing one way or another (just in case). Remember how (in part) this WH won the election? Until some one makes a case that this next generation will support the game will be over, or at the very best on life support.

    Most science may be done with robotics, a lot of science. So very little hope on that side.

    The possible arrival of COTS and the so-called “private” sector is the only real hope, at least for now. It does appeal to the youth. Better believe it because I can see a lot of reason to trash the whole thing. And an Ares-1X failure would likely entomb Constellation, if not HSF, and whether it’s a prototype or not won’t matter…

  • Robert Oler

    common sense. I concur completely…one cannot make someone interested in something that they ultimately have no chance of participating in period.

    And the sales pitch that one sees today is right out of the cold war handbook (latest article on the “Chinese are going”:

    http://www.economist.com/specialreports/displaystory.cfm?story_id=14678539

    it is a fairly sad state of affairs

    Robert G. Oler

  • Derrick

    Gosh I had to set CNN straight this morning with their headline “NASA to test world’s largest rocket” …thankfully they corrected it (let the quips on that commence).

    I’ll also steal a line from Al Gore in saying that public support is a renewable resource.

  • David Davenport

    Prediction: The Ares I-X launch will reveal that that Ares does indeed have thrust oscillations — pogo-ing — of about 10 percent nominal thrust. There is no practical way to fix this thrust oscillation problem.

  • Anon

    Robert,

    ”One of the reason is that the space community has followed the Cold War path for way too long, not diverging, not evolving, one bit since then. Don’t we keep hearing the old tired cries of the “what if the Chinese, the Indians were to stand foot before we do?” and the “because it’s hard” arguments? None of the future generation of tax payers relate to any of that stuff (to be polite).”

    Even worst are the attempts to justify it on science or soft power projection or so called technology spinoffs. Those arguments haven’t worked with the public for 40 years – why would anyone expect them to work now? Hey, those arguments are bad enough to even turn off space advocates from supporting NASA.

    The only thing that will sell space to the public is the way New Space is selling it, namely that its about space settlement, tourism, space energy, wealth creation! That is what the nation wants to see from space, not more boring National Geographic specials on Saturn…

  • Robert Oler

    Anon wrote

    I find very very little to disagree on with the post you made. Some (grin) but not much.

    The problem with human spaceflight is that it never really transitioned from “test flying” to actual accomplishing something of relevance. Going and doing in space by humans became (and is) a means until it self. One can see this in all the justifications for it being cobbed up to try and save the status quo.

    The quote by Robert Crippen about saving “high tech jobs”…is illustrative…he never says why those jobs have value, just that the are “high tech” and that alone should make them valuable.

    Problem is that today’s America is not the sleepy America of the 60’s where “high tech” was “wow” but it is the America where my ten year olds video conference from their home computers with their school “counterparts” in Greece.

    There is no “return to the Moon to stay” or whatever the phrase is…unless there is an industry in space that can justify the expense through the possibility that at some point “industry” will take advantage of the capability that is developed (or can take advantage of it).

    Going back to the Moon, to stay as they say, is kind of like Supersonic flight. The same reason that has stymied commercial supersonic flight exist for going back to the Moon and “staying”

    Robert G. Oler

  • Robert Oler

    9 billion dollars and 600 million on this for about 2 minutes of flight…zounds

    Robert G. Oler

  • common sense

    I am glad the flight apparently went on fine even if Ares I is eventually terminated. I hope the team got all the data they needed if any and even though the vehicle is not really representative of the actual CLV.

    Let’s move on now!

  • Anon

    Yes, Let’s see what the Falcon 9 does when its finally launched. Hopefully Elon learned from his string of failures with Falcon I.

  • […] of the space program delivered to the White House by the end of October. By late October, though, that goal looked doubtful: the metrics they had provided (in terms of web traffic and Facebook fans) appeared to fall far […]

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