NASA Sends Mixed Messages On Exploration Plans

Editor’s note: If you go to NASA’s main VSE page at the NASA.gov website (also linked to by all other major NASA websites) there is a link on the right hand side which leads to a collection of conceptual art which depict various exploration concepts. Just pick the first lunar category (“lunar activities”) and click on a image at random. You get a long disclaimer within each image’s caption which says “Note: NASA currently has no formal plans for a human expedition to Mars or the Moon. etc. etc.”

This caveat is to be found on all exploration images in this gallery – and has been on these images for more than half a decade. I find it rather silly (and confusing) that NASA waves around all of these new architectures – complete with pretty pictures – within the aerospace community, yet the image galleries that members of the general public (and therefore the media) are directed to send exactly the opposite message i.e. that “NASA has no formal plans …”. Isn’t there anyone at NASA who pays attention to the ‘big picture’ aspect of the messages NASA sends out. Oh wait – that is what NASA’s Strategic Communications Office is supposed to be doing.

Editor’s update: This is what one of these image captions looked like before being modified. This is what it looks like now. It is curious that this image gallery – one maintained by an agency with thousands of very smart people – had these image captions online for so long – until some guy sitting at a computer in his basement pointed out this problem the other day. Clearly there is very little “strategy” in NASA’s “Strategic” Communications. Nice start Joe – but you still have a long way to go, and a lot left to do.