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Creating A Pervasive Space Meme

By Keith Cowing
NASA Watch
August 7, 2013
Filed under

Astro Mad Men: NASA’s 1960s Campaign to Win America’s Heart, The Atlantic
“In some ways, NASA’s tentacular publicity efforts are unique to the NASA — and to the world — of 2013. All the truisms that the Internet has brought to the worlds of advertising and publicity — direct user engagement! authenticity! — have found their way, inevitably, to the space agency. NASA’s contract with Life ended in 1970, 11 years after it had begun. It lives on, though, in some sense, in every story we tell ourselves about space and humans’ place in it. It lives on in every tweet and Tumblr post and Facebook update and email blast, in every attempt to capture and then maintain our attention and our love. It lives on in the fact that, when we talk, still, with wonder about humans’ success in putting a man on the moon, we’re less inspired by the moon itself, and much more inspired by the man.”

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

2 responses to “Creating A Pervasive Space Meme”

  1. Brian_M2525 says:
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    Good story!

    Unfortunately after awhile the NASA people began to believe their own marketing hype and think that the astronauts were somehow superhuman and were capable in any position and incapable of any wrong.

    No doubt most are pretty sharp guys and gals to have gotten selected into the program, but when you fly several hundred of them into space, which happened during the Shuttle era, its kind of hard to see how all of these astronauts are super distinguished and can do no wrong. We’ve seen plenty of incidences in the last several years where some have done things wrong. And besides that most of them, when they move into the program, are forced to give up their prior careers.

    Personally I’d rather see the Bob Gilruth’s, the Max Faget’s, the Cadwell Johnson’s and Robert F. Thompson’s, all of whom showed innovation, leadership, moxie, the ability to get the job done-these are the sorts of people who need to be recognized and promoted. I cannot think of a single one who is so recognized today for those sorts of abilities. Instead we have recognized a bunch of astronauts, and others, who really have done nothing more than follow in the footsteps of their predecessors. The current crop of the NASA recognized got ahead by getting along but made zero progress in the process.

    • Steve Whitfield says:
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      Although I don’t disagree with you, I think that we have to take into account the differences in reporting, editorializing, and biographical writing between the 60’s and today. Today’s reporting, etc., is much more invasive, much more immediate, and is dumped on us in much, much greater quantity than in the past. Combine that with the fact that today many of those who are receiving the largest or most repeated readership are often people without the relevant education and credentials that a “reporter” of the past would have needed to get into print.

      The net result is that we now get a very different kind of picture of the people in all of the various vocations associated with NASA and the space world. I think there has been a deliberate effort by the media in recent years to present the astronauts and flight control people as “just folks,” not supermen and women, or even in any way superior to the rest of us. I won’t speculate as to why this happens, but I’m sure we all can come up with theories pretty easily.

      I think it’s possible to identify those who do have the attributes you’ve listed above, but it would take a lot of first-hand observation and knowledge to make an evaluation of each astronaut, etc., in question. It certainly can’t be done living at a desk in front of a computer, which is all the effort that most of us are in a position to expend, including a lot of the people of the press.

      So, in some ways, our open, transparent NASA and space program are more closed than ever, so we don’t see a large portion of what goes on.