“You’re about 50 years behind the times.”

And you’re clueless about what the conversation was. It wasn’t about NASA outreach, it was about personal outreach.

“Today, it is less overt however”

NASA’s outreach efforts with the general public depend on how “exciting” things are, which since we’re “only” doing science-type stuff on the ISS and around the solar system with robotic systems, it does not rise to the level of “excitement” for the general population. Students, sure, especially in engineering and science areas, but not the general population.

And that’s no surprise. Space has to compete with all the other “exciting” things going on here on planet Earth. Once the first step is made on some new piece of space ground, the public has shown that their attention span goes somewhere else.

As an example, for the life of me I couldn’t tell you who was in Apollo 12, and until Cernan rose from recent obscurity, I wouldn’t have remembered that he was the last person to leave the Moon. And I follow the space program far more than John & Jane Q Public, so don’t expect much from them. In the end, it’s meaningless trivia – all that matters is whether the public got value for their tax dollars, not who the chosen ones were that got the glory.

“But it is meaningless national leadership tells a generation of kids growing up that we’ve abandoned the moon because ‘we’ve been there.’ Point is- new generations have not.”

As usual you prove that you can’t read and comprehend.

Obama didn’t ban anyone from the Moon, he only said that NASA, with it’s limited resources, would be traveling to an asteroid as it’s next exploration mission beyond LEO.

Maybe you haven’t heard, but we’ve been to the Moon, many times, and we met Kennedy’s goal of “before this decade is out, of landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to the Earth”

Going back to the Moon would be neat and interesting, but NASA doesn’t have unlimited funds for neat and interesting things, and if the goal is to reach Mars then learning how to survive a trip to an asteroid gets us to Mars quicker than setting up a golf course on the Moon.

We all have busy lives, but informing the public about space issues isn’t a bad idea.
You’re about 50 years behind the times. NASA has had a pretty good outreach program in place sine the Mercury days, when they actively curried favor with major media outlets back in the heyday when space was ‘new and exciting.’ Today, it is less overt however, the outreach is much more hands on these days, what with computer/web interaction and personal interaction with students and such by folks who’ve been there. Anecdotal case in point- my own niece, a young student, spent some time interacting w/Sally Ride on matters space and locally, the late Wally Schirra use to make a point of visiting grade schools and high schools to discuss matters space before he passed. Cernan also makes a point of it as well. And some years back, the public was able to question shuttle crews on orbit via PA events so the outreach exists. But it is meaningless national leadership tells a generation of kids growing up that we’ve abandoned the moon because ‘we’ve been there.’ Point is- new generations have not.

It’s only been a year and three months since the Administration announced those targets and deadlines. Webb did not have AS-201 thru -204 or Apollo 4-20 planned 15 months after Kennedy’s set the goal of a lunar landing within a decade. NASA didn’t even have the LOR architecture or the arrangement of Saturn V’s engines decided by then.

Your statement makes a totally unrealistic claim about today’s programs based on an utter lack of knowledge and understanding about the timelines of prior programs.

“Congress has a right to request additional information, including other potential destinations, as well as tentative dates-even if those are just for planning purposes.”

For the umpteenth time, Congress isn’t asking for “destinations” or “dates”, “tentative”, “for planning purposes”, or otherwise. Read the actual article. Posey doesn’t use any of those words. Again, you’re projecting what you want onto what members of Congress are actually saying.

“And when Congress wants information, they get it.”

Congress might get that information if that’s what they were asking for. But they’re not. They just want a go-ahead decision on their $38 billion SLS earmark. (And they’re not getting that until after the end of August, if ever.)

“We all have busy lives, but informing the public about space issues isn’t a bad idea. However my experience has been that their eyes glaze over pretty fast – such is the interest in space that the nation at large has.”

Yeah well space is pretty close to me

Their eyes glaze over because they do not relate, hence my babbling about the higher calling or something like that, associated with pride and chest thumping. We can do that in such a way to actually accommodate our desires and ambitions for real open dare I say space program.

“Heck I am going to turn into some preacher soon if I don’t pay attention”

We all have busy lives, but informing the public about space issues isn’t a bad idea. However my experience has been that their eyes glaze over pretty fast – such is the interest in space that the nation at large has.

Vladislaw wrote @ August 13th, 2011 at 6:34 pm

“This concept is not about the actual bodies in space. It is about building support for NASA.”

I have previously thought this, but if NASA’s budget is going to be fairly static going forward, then the only way we’ll expand out into space is by non-NASA activities.

NASA is important for certain core activities, but I would argue that they are more important for the technology development side of things than manned exploration. For instance, if NASA was allowed to spend their SLS budget on technology development instead of the SLS, then I think America could expand into space much faster and sustainably.

But in order for those in Congress to see what the better choices are, the SLS and Shuttle pork constituencies must die off. We’ll see what happens when NASA delivers the official SLS cost estimates – maybe that will allow for a semi-rational debate about where the money can produce more activities in space. I’m not holding my breath that it will happen in today’s political climate, but you never know…

“Sure you could have a game show broadcast from a Bigelow station, but how many bodies and how much traffic is that generating? It’s not like people have to go to space to watch the sport, so I think the entertainment industry in space will be limited to infrequent traffic, not lots of scheduled traffic.”

This concept is not about the actual bodies in space. It is about building support for NASA. It is often said that support for NASA is a mile wide and an inch deep. I believe the shallow support is because people do not see space, in there face, on a day to day type basis. It is not something they will participate in, not even in their wildest dreams. If people see space in their lives not just from the rare NASA probe but regular cable shows, Virgin Galatic space rides, et cetera, I believe NASA would not have such a hard time getting more taxpayer support for space in general and human space exploration in particular.

If a reality show in space that participants got their through luck or lottery doesn’t matter. It does say to people that yes, even you have a shot at it, even if that chance is remote. Look how many play a game of chance for a shot at their dream. That is something that NASA can never offer but to a very select few with “the right stuff” therefore barring a lot of Americans from that dream.

Just a few words. We all keep talking on “how” to do things. Fuel depots and the likes. Well they are not there today they may never be there ever. This is not the point. You seem to focus on the detail so to speak. We need a more general approach. One that will force Congress to do something, not circumvent Congress, we cannot, right or wrong. One aspect of this strategy is actually being implemented by NASA it seems. Congress wants nonsense? Sure we’ll give them nonsense. And we’ll drag our feet. So yes SLS will die, most likely MPCV as well. We all know that to have a real exploration program we do not need HLV, not really, especially not SD HLV and you don’t want to live in a capsule all the way to Mars. Unfortunately it takes time for this to happen. It cannot be by using a magic wand. In any case. The approach is multiple. Yes we enforce competition, fixed cost for things that do not need a lot of development. We may keep cost plus for such things as a Nautilus-X concept but well TBD.

As for China and others and the Manifest Destiny. We can try and be a little smart. As a leader the USA brought you the space station, now the USA is bringing commercial market, the USA welcomes international, nontraditional participants such as China. Well go ask some good marketing people and they’ll build the language for you. No need to be exclusive of anyone. Quite the opposite actually. In other words what do you think Bolden was doing in his outreach to the middle east? Where is the cash you think? Where is the technology? Where do we need reconciliation?

And well “yes we can do” all at once. We just need to work on the message. We need to gather the public. Not gather common sense, Coastal Ron and Vladislaw. We and others only are the choir. We need to sing the song right now and be inclusive of all here and abroad.

Heck I am going to turn into some preacher soon if I don’t pay attention

“We do not know what kind of commercial money making opportunities will present themselves once capital has access at a reasonable rate.”

Agreed. And that opportunity will never happen with government-run transportation like the SLS, as the Shuttle proved.

Bill White has some good ideas, but I differ with him over how the money will flow. I think he tends to see lots of space activity because of various forms of space tourism, but I think tourism will only constitute a small percentage of the actual dollars spent in segments such as transportation.

Sure you could have a game show broadcast from a Bigelow station, but how many bodies and how much traffic is that generating? It’s not like people have to go to space to watch the sport, so I think the entertainment industry in space will be limited to infrequent traffic, not lots of scheduled traffic.

NASA research facilities like the ISS require lots of scheduled transportation, so they are the revenue foundation that will allow the entertainment industry to piggyback on already scheduled transport. Grow that traffic, and you grow the need to lower costs, which ultimate leads to more and more traffic and cost reductions. You know this, so I’m just saying it for other readers.

Great conversation.

Two conversations that have some of the same parallels. There are major points from all of you that I agree with, so I think it’s more a matter of how do we get things from where we are to where we want to be.

I do agree with Vladislaw on the point about the STS legacy infrastructure needing to “die” in order for us to really move forward. Congress (and others) are focused on continuing the STS derived hardware with SLS and whatever else they can dream up. Until that goes away politically, it will be a drag on our ability to move forward with what’s next. Which is what “common sense” I think talks about regarding Congress.

If people stop wanting to rely on STS hardware, then maybe we can start focusing on what the future transportation systems should be. Here is where I think NASA leadership has an opportunity to do what Congress has ignored for political reasons – ask what the best way is to expand out into space and explore.

Congress doesn’t ask because Congress is only interested in funded solutions that benefit the required constituencies. I think what NASA could do is organize a summit of the industry, science and educational communities and see if they can develop a framework with NASA for how we’ll move forward.

I’ve written about this before (Google “Coastal Ron wrote @ April 23rd, 2011 at 6:02 pm” for the Space Politics thread), so I won’t go into detail, but one thing that would be nice to have defined is the initial transportation regions that should be established in the Earth local area. I see four that would provide logical routes and destinations that would help the space industry build products that overlap and support each other.

Today the commercial industry is focused on what I call the Earth-LEO-Earth (ELE) route, which is cargo and crew. That supports operations just about anywhere in LEO, which includes the ISS, and will also support Bigelow stations and all the other space stations being proposed. To go beyond this requires some generic hardware systems, like fuel depots, and specific ones like transport systems to the next destination (L1?).

One thing that industry likes is predictability, since it lowers their risk of building the wrong product for the wrong market. Getting agreement on what everyone thinks the defined routes and destination are could lower that risk, and allow lower cost and more purpose-built transportation to be developed, keeping costs low but flexibility high.

My $0.02