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Policy

Space Studies Board is (Not Really) Interested In What You Think

By Keith Cowing
NASA Watch
October 28, 2013
Filed under , , ,

A Last Chance to Tell the NRC *YOUR* Ideas for Human Spaceflight — Via Twitter, Space Policy Online
“The National Research Council’s (NRC’s) Committee on Human Spaceflight is offering everyone a last chance to provide their ideas on the future of the human spaceflight program via a Twitter chat tomorrow, October 29, 2013. This is the first time the NRC is using social media to obtain input from the public. Anyone who wants to participate should tweet their ideas using the hashtag #humansinspace. Input will be accepted during a 27 hour period on October 29 — from midnight Eastern Daylight Time through the next midnight Pacific Daylight Time.”
Keith’s note: “Everyone”? I don’t think so. The SSB only told a handful of people about this last minute Twitter thing. What is really odd is that they did not even bother to inform the media or larger websites that could help spread the word. Indeed, they only told their panel members at the last minute. Oddly, just last week, NAS SSB staff specifically asked me to come in to talk to them on this topic and promised to keep me in the loop on things like this. So much for that.
I am not certain how the NAS SSB expects to get much input if they hide notices on their website and only drop a hint on one or two inside the beltway websites and tweet once to accounts with a hundred or so followers. Yes, I know things go viral easily – but a little strategic thinking and some serious visibility could have been achieved. Indeed, what about the rest of the 300 million people (i.e. “everyone”) who pay to operate NASA – and also pay the NAS SSB for their $3.6 million studies?

Here is the most bizzare part – this wordy and self-cancelling disclaimer on the stealth NAS SSB page:
“The Committee on Human Spaceflight will be accepting input via Twitter from 12:01 a.m. EDT Tuesday, Oct. 29, to 3 a.m. EDT Wednesday, Oct. 30. Tweets with the hashtag #HumansInSpace that are received after that time may not be accepted as input to the committee. This request for input is open to any and all interested individuals wishing to submit their own ideas on the future of human spaceflight. Because participants are self-selected, these inputs will not be used to judge the prevalence of attitudes or opinions within various communities. However, the input is intended to help ensure that the committee hears about important issues from interested parties.”
Huh? My take: “Send us your tweets but since you (not us) are making the decision to comment (and since we have no idea who you are) your comments won’t really mean anything – but we want to look like we asked for 140 character tweets and listened to actual people – maybe – unless you did not hear about this until after the fact.”
NAS Space Studies Board Quietly Announces Online Public Access After Event Starts, earlier post
“Attendees in the audience at the event were unaware that this event was being webcast or available on telephone dial-in. Indeed, I asked the SSB ahead of time and they said it would not be webcast or audiocast so I came into town only to learn that I could have listened from my office. Thanks guys.”
Yet Another Slow Motion Advisory Committee on Human Space Flight, earlier post
“Net result: the committee’s advice will be out of synch with reality and somewhat overtaken by events having taken a total of 3 years, 7 months to complete. Oh yes: the cost of this study? $3.6 million.. The soonest that a NASA budget could be crafted that took this committee’s advice into account would be the FY 2016 budget request. NASA and OMB will interact on the FY 2016 budget during Fall 2014 and it won’t be announced until early 2015 – 4 1/2 years after this committee and its advice was requested in the NASA Authorization Act 2010.”
Why Does Space Policy Always Suck?, earlier post

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

5 responses to “Space Studies Board is (Not Really) Interested In What You Think”

  1. Rocky J says:
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    KC, yes their statement on the tweets is confusing and disappointing. In their defense, maybe it was meant to say that the tweeters are considered individuals not representative of any attitudes or opinions within various communities not representing any group. So the committee can entertain themselves by reading a few of the best but I think they do need to compile and tally up the voices with respect to specific concerns. However, I think that using tweets is a cop out, an easy way out to give the appearance of democracy, candy coating.

    One of the committee members is the young lady, Ariel Waldman, that created SpaceHack.org. She sits amongst a bunch of Old Guys. I wonder how her attitude about NASA has changed. It’s not the fundamentals such as “We will go to the Moon … and do other things”. It is the politics inside and outside NASA and how such a committee functions that is in her looking glass.

    • kcowing says:
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      The NAS SSB are demonstrably clueless when it comes to social media – or even basic PR. They are uninterested in any input outside their own little echo chamber. If they were truly interested in what taxpayers had to say then they’d have made this panel’s efforts vastly more open and available to the public early on- not throw together a few last minute trivial attempts to look interested.

      • Rocky J says:
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        Half way through the 24 hour tweet up, there is <200 with the #Humansinspace hash. Of those referring to SLS, it is 8 to 1 to dump it with 3 that are not clear. Despite such a small count, its probably close to the truth because there has been no skewing of the tweets by, say, an advocacy group’s members. And apparently, the space exploration societies’ involvement with this NRC committee’s tweet up is near zero. Lets see how the committee spins this or ignores it.

  2. David Barstad says:
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    Buy A DRONE

  3. Rocky J says:
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    The NRC committee on Human Spaceflight failed to offer the public a true voice on the matter. If the committee really wanted the opinion of the public, they should have created a survey web page with simple yes/no/undecided choices to questions directly related to the issues they need to address, to those issues critical to the future of manned space flight. This survey page should have remained open for months and all the advocacy groups should have been informed of its presence.

    The count is actually about 1700 tweets with #humansinspace hash. Of those, 20 speak directly to SLS – 14 to trash it, 3 to keep it, 3 that are not clear.

    The vast majority of the tweets are effectively non-sense or do not attack the issues that this committee really needs to address. Most are more on the order of ‘Make more rovers with sequins on them so we can see them from Earth’.