Poignant Video: NASA – The Frontier Is Everywhere (Update)

Keith’s 12 Jan update: The video has really gone viral (aintitcool, Huffington Post, Washington Post, and Gizmodo) . 1/4 million views in just several days. It would be a shame for NASA not to capitalize on this in some way. At a minimum can’t NASA’s YouTube channel “favorite” and “share” this video? Not responding sort of makes point initial made by “Damewse” i.e. “I got frustrated with NASA and made this video. NASA is the most fascinating, adventurous, epic institution ever devised by human beings, and their media sucks. Seriously. None of their brilliant scientists appear to know how to connect with the social media crowd, which is now more important than ever. In fact, NASA is an institution whose funding directly depends on how the public views them.”
Dear Reddit: Let’s become NASA’s PR department. Let’s make awesome/inspirational space exploration videos!, Reddit
“NASA needs all the help it can get and more people need to be excited about space exploration. I know we as a community have the talent to do this. From the community description: This will be a place we can come together to promote all of the great ideas and institutions that benefit us all (both short term and long term) but could use a little help with their public perception.”
“NASA – The Frontier Is Everywhere” – My 2nd attempt at what NASA marketing might look like if they made more social media content., Reddit
Comment by “Fandango1978”: “I sent it to Neil Degrasse Tyson yesterday, 1 hour ago he posted your video on Twitter and 3 hours ago on Facebook. NASA now officially knows about your video.”
Comment by “rgower” (who apparently is also “Damewse”), Reddit
“Sorry I’ve been absolutely swamped and overwhelmed with the response. CNBC and Fox news actually want to do interviews with me, believe it or not.”
I’d really like to know who “Damewse” is. As best I can tell from his videos he is a 24 year old guy who lives in British Columbia.

Keith’s 12 Jan update: One reader informed me that the author of this incredibly popular video is Reid Gower. The photo on this Facebook page looks like the fellow shown in several videos. You can follow him on Twitter at @reidgower

“Damewse“: “I got frustrated with NASA and made this video. NASA is the most fascinating, adventurous, epic institution ever devised by human beings, and their media sucks. Seriously. None of their brilliant scientists appear to know how to connect with the social media crowd, which is now more important than ever. In fact, NASA is an institution whose funding directly depends on how the public views them.
In all of their brilliance, NASA seems to have forgotten to share their hopes and dreams in a way the public can relate to, leaving one of humanities grandest projects with terrible PR and massive funding cuts. I have a lot of ideas for a NASA marketing campaign, but I doubt they’d pay me even minimum wage to work for them. I literally have an MSWord document entitled NASAideas.doc full of ideas waiting to share. I thought maybe, just maybe someone might be able to work their magic for me on that. But the primary point of this post is to vent my frustration with NASA. Sure, they’ve fallen victim to budget cuts but I honestly think cutting media will seal NASA’s own fate. Unless they can find a way to relate to the general public, support for their projects will always be minimal, and their funding will follow suit. A social media department would easily pay for itself in government grants because it could rekindle the public interest in the space program.”
Keith’s 11 Jan update: As “damewse”, the guy who created the video that everyone is watching notes, the original video, music etc., which served as his inspiration (and was reused), was created by Michael Marantz. This is his Marantz’s original video.