NASA Returns to Moon, Gen X & Y Yawn

Again, I’m late to the game on this: NASA seeks to reverse youth apathy to manned space exploration.

Other’s have covered this issue in some detail, and have correctly observed that the real apathy is towards NASA’s efforts and not those of the emerging private sector, and that Whitesides’ suggestion that NASA provide a public personality is actually part of the problem, since it underlies to some degree the agency’s risk aversion (c.f. Christa McAuliffe).

A little detail that caught my eye, though, was this suggestion on how to improve NASA’s “strategic communications efforts” (i.e.: PR):

At an October workshop attended by 80 NASA message spinners, young adults were right up there with Congress as the top two priorities for NASA’s strategic communications efforts.

Tactics encouraged by the workshop included new forms of communication, such podcasts and YouTube; enlisting support from celebrities, such as actors David Duchovny (“X-Files”) and Patrick Stewart (“Star Trek: The Next Generation”); forming partnerships with youth-oriented media such as MTV or sports events such as the Olympics and NASCAR; and developing brand placement in the movie industry.

Umm…you sure you guys wanna go with that? First off, David Duchovny’s association with space concerns UFOs and conspiracies in which the governments of the world collaborate with aliens, stuff that — while entertaining as fiction — makes the “moon hoax” lunacy referred to later in the article seem rational by comparison. And then there’s Captain Picard, last noted here pooh-poohing the very idea of going back to the moon and on to Mars.

While it’s not surprising that a tentacle of the federal government would convene a giant powwow to brainstorm strategeries for thinking of ways to formulate approaches for addressing the issue, it is a little surprising that said tentacle would have 80 “message spinners”. (But only a little.) It’s sad that they only come up with the same old grandiose PR plans — if they were smart, they’d encourage bloggers who just happen to be working on elements of the VSE (ahem…) to provide the public with a daily, inside perspective on what is going on. Yes, that would appeal primarily to those who already have some interest in space exploration, but it would help to nurture that interest in ways that NASA’s boring, juvenile-oriented, and content-free web presence does not.