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Education

NASA Stumbles Again When It Comes To Its Cool Stuff

By Keith Cowing
NASA Watch
March 6, 2013
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International Space Apps Challenge
“The International Space Apps Challenge is a technology development event during which citizens from around the world work together to solve challenges relevant to improving life on Earth and life in space. Join us in over 75 cities around the world or at home on April 20-21, 2013.”
Keith’s note: At the NASA Advisory Council Committee on Education and Public Outreach meeting on Tuesday, Leland Melvin, the AA for Education at NASA, lamented why people are not promoting the International Space Apps challenge and urged committee members to spread the word. Well … have a look at the NASA Education website. No mention is made of the International Space Apps Challenge. No mention at the NASA CIO, NASA Open Government, or NASA.gov’s calendar either. Yawn.
NASA’s Inconsistent Support of the International Space Apps Challenge, earlier post
“I think it is inexcusable that NASA has not made more of an effort to promote things such as the International Space Apps Challenge – especially when the White House places such a priority on things like this. There is much risk in this ad hoc and dysfunctional public engagement policy at NASA. Now that the first apps challenge event was such a success, efforts like this could continue – without overt NASA involvement – thus making NASA less – rather than more relevant. If that happens NASA only has itself to blame.”
Keith’s update: Here’s a related event that also gets zero mention on NASA’s Education website – or on NASA’s Space Technology Mission Directorate – the sponsor of the event itself.
Dark Side of the Jam: ‘On March 8th, game developers around the planet will gather to make games about space and science. The Dark Side of the Jam is open to all, whether you’re a veteran developer, hobbyist, or student. Ideally your games will not only be great achievements in coding prowess, but will help capture the public’s interest in the real science and technology advancements being made in aerospace exploration. DSJ is an educational project of the Night Rover Challenge. Learn more about this $1.5 Million dollar NASA Centennial Challenge for advanced energy storage technology.”

NASA Watch founder, Explorers Club Fellow, ex-NASA, Away Teams, Journalist, Space & Astrobiology, Lapsed climber.

5 responses to “NASA Stumbles Again When It Comes To Its Cool Stuff”

  1. old_1150 says:
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    Some of the many reasons for this is that too many NASA education and PAO people prioritize: A) pleasing their perceived bureaucratic masters instead of accomplishing their missions.  B) emphasis on subjective notions of political correctness as opposed to technical / scientific merit or even subjective “wow” factor.  C) “dumbing down” material which means much of the coolest stuff is mis-reported, if not simply missed.  D) emphasis on all of the above (a*ss-kissing, political correctness, dumbing-down) instead of investigation.  

    I cannot tell you the number of times at my NASA center that have seen massive education / PAO presence at pompous functions like awards, dinners, mission reviews, promotions, meet & greets, and visiting lectures whereas is contrast I can easily tell you the number of times (zero) that I have seen them walking around the center wandering into labs, facilities, and scientists’ office asking them what they do and taking dramatic photos and videos.

  2. Steve Whitfield says:
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    I had a look at the recent NASA Education web site and it’s the same thing as so many other NASA web sites — a jumble of pretty stuff and no clear organization of the content.  You can only poke around looking at things instead of going more or less straight to what you want.  Why do they have this desperate fear of anything resembling a Table of Contents?

    Even the Site Map page (accessed, as usual, by a tiny link at the very bottom of the page) doesn’t help; it’s just a grouped list of the major page titles.  And the Site Search is, of course, as completely useless as the site search on any site (how come none of them work properly?  They give you “advanced” syntax and then completely ignore it).In addition, the writing on the web site in most sections is that same old “look at me; I can sound sophisticated” nonsense instead of clear, unambiguous sentences.  When almost every paragraph reads like a cross between a PhD dissertation and the mission statement for a psychology group, people just stop reading.  The main page starts with the “About” spiel, and the first sentence is 29 words long!  I had to read that first sentence twice to understand all it was saying; I suspect the average person wouldn’t finish reading it once, and would be immediately disillusioned about the whole site.This non-communication seems to run through most of what gets written at NASA.  Everything reads like two highbrow eggheads discussing philosophy (only a slight exaggeration on my part).  Let’s face it, day in and day out, the average adult speaks at about (I estimate) a grade 10 level — not because they’re not intelligent, but because that’s all that’s necessary to satisfactorily communicate with one another.  Why make it harder than necessary?  Why deviate from what works?I strongly believe that a mandate should come from on high at NASA — before writing anything, understand the level and manner in which your target audience communicates with one another, and then write web sites, News Releases, educational materials, anything and everything for public (or possible public) consumption at the target audience’s level, while making sure that the spelling and grammar are correct (another NASA problem).The purpose of the written word is not to try to impress other people with your extensive vocabulary and esoteric writing skills; its purpose is to communicate — easily and effectively.  Unfortunately, I would say that NASA, on average, fails at this horribly.  If nothing else, they need to learn two basic rules: 1) Two short easily understood sentences are better than one long non-understandable sentence; and 2) there’s no shame in using simple, common, everyday words when they’ll do the job.

    To put things into perspective, I very much suspect that when people want news about what NASA is doing or has done, nasa.gov is the last place they go, when it should be the first.

  3. Littrow says:
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    “To put things into perspective, I very much suspect that when people want news about what NASA is doing or has done, nasa.gov is the last place they go, when it should be the first.”
    I think this is a pretty accurate statement. I go to NASAWatch first because hot items generally show up there first. Other news sites are SpaceRef and Space.com. Very biased sites like NASASpaceFlight.com and Americaspace are useful sometimes. But I rarely go to NASA.gov because, as  Steve Whitefield and others have said, its really not terribly useful. 

  4. Saturn1300 says:
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    I have just found a cool NASA tool called Trajectory Browser. Flyby of Mars is about the same in ’18 & ’20. ’21 a little longer. The best is ’14. ’21 looks better than ’18. It is slightly longer,but the rest is better. More study is needed to see if these would work. Many different inputs are possible.
    It looks like from this anyway, that ’18 is not the only year.

  5. Brian_M2525 says:
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    …too many NASA education and PAO people prioritize: A) pleasing their perceived bureaucratic masters…  B) emphasis on political correctness…  C) “dumbing down” material…  D) a*ss-kissing, political correctness, dumbing-down) instead of investigation…
    One has to wonder why people who have no knowledge-no education, no training, no experience- of how to relate to the public are put in charge of such functions within NASA. The rest of the world does not function that way so why does NASA? You have the head of Education in his position because ‘his parents were teachers’ but the individual no demonstrated training; the head of Education and PAO in the lead human space center is an HR/bean counter.

    Maybe NASA’s goal is failure?