"Interstellar": A (Missed) Opportunity for NASA to be Relevant?
INT. FRONT PORCH, FARMHOUSE – NIGHT
COOPER: (sighs) We’ve forgotten who we are, Donald. Explorers, pioneers. Not caretakers.
Donald nods, thoughtful. Weighs up his words.
DONALD: When I was a kid it felt like they made something new every day. Some gadget or idea. Like every day was Christmas. But six billion people … just try to imagine that. And every last one of them trying to have it all.
He turns to Cooper.
This world isn’t so bad. And Tom’ll do just fine – you’re the one who doesn’t belong. Born forty years too late, or forty years too early. My daughter knew it, God bless her. And your kids know it. ‘Specially Murph.
COOPER: We used to look up and wonder at our place in the stars. Now we just look down and worry about our place in the dirt.
DONALD: Cooper, you were good at something and you never got a chance to do anything with it. I’m sorry. But that’s not your kids’ fault.
Cooper looks up at the stars above.
Keith’s note: What will NASA do in terms of public outreach when “Interstellar” is released? They dropped the ball when it came to “Avatar” and the producers of “Gravity” never bothered to seek out NASA’s help. This film is expected to touch deeply upon themes that point to the core of what NASA does – and will do so in a manner that leaps beyond the usual preaching to the choir that NASA does inside its own self-reinforcing echo chamber.
Perhaps NASA is waiting (and desperately hoping for) results that will be published in a credible peer reviewed journal. I refuse to get excited about White’s work until peer reviewed results from him provide something to get excited about.
NASA is not going anywhere until our elected officials provide the leadership (political guts) and the financial resources to do great endeavors. As of this morning both political parties continue to demonize each other showing no concern for the country’s problems.
Of course they are all concerned, but they have just convinced themselves that only they (and their power base of supporters) can save the country. So both sides are locked into denial, unable to extricate themselves. It’s a serious problem (denial is real, a necessary human survival skill I often think), and I have to struggle not to demonize the other side myself.
We might all begin by noticing that our current system of financing political campaigns is almost a machine for generating political corruption, guaranteeing as it does that all candidates, however pure and true-hearted, must still depend on wealthy individuals, corporations, and power groups to have any hope of getting elected and of being able to change anything.
Good luck … I do not think warp drive is possible as proposed by a number of reasons. But worth learning … Things are more objective and less related. But White has had his 15 minutes of fame. I liked the pictures of himself that he published in the media. Are quite Hollywood. Do not pass it.
What if we didn’t sit around and wait for NASA to do something? What if we chose ourselves to seize the moment, open the public discussion, and create the result that we want in much the same way as you did with ISEE-3?
Maybe NASA’s relevance lies in, I dunno, exploring the universe, rather than making sci-fi movies?
How about helping others the settle universe, starting with the inner Solar system.
NASA is not funding a warp drive project. you know that. we know that.
why articles like this make that absurd claim is beyond me.
NASA is giving some equipment and a small amount of funding support to one project that is attempting to determine if space can even be bent at all.
this is hardly a “warp drive project”
it is like claiming that an experiment to see whether or not a tinfoil boat will float in water (such as http://www.kids-fun-science… ) is an effort to build a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier.
the experiments may demonstrate that a warp drive is a feasible technology, but there’s still decades of work that would need to be done to develop said technology, and that’s only if the experiments that are being done in this project are successful.
maybe they are afraid of reporters making false claims like they are working on a warp drive.
By contrast I remind all that the first Iron Man movie had some great scenes shot inside the SpaceX factory floor with Elon Musk getting a cameo role dialoguing with Tony Stark.
Priceless. For a few moments anyway.
NASA did, in fact, provide unofficial input to producers of Gravity. They opted not to take that technical advice and instead made a completely unrealistic (albeit fun) movie.
Run this video before the movie…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_3B...
That would be an excellent commercial–wait, let’s call it a PSA–to see running on TV.
The past greatness of NASA enterprises has involved advocacy of the federal executive branch. . . such as “We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy. . .” , and Nixon’s early support for the Space Shuttle program.
Americans (much like other people, I imagine) tend to concern themselves with the matters of their daily lives until (and unless) larger matters like space exploration are made relevant to their lives somehow. Presidents like Kennedy made these things matter to people.
It is difficult to see how such sweeping endeavors can recapture the wider public imagination without similar support and advocacy from Capitol Hill. Sadly, I don’t see such support forthcoming from either party in the near future. That leaves the development of space to commercial enterprise, which at this point has little incentive to spend on projects beyond the orbit of Earth itself.
As such, the question should be “What will the federal government do in terms of outreach when ‘Interstellar’ is released?”. . . but we all know the answer. Nothing.
KC-the reason this movie will be mostly ignored by NASA in terms of public outreach is because it touches on climate change, and anyone NASA who might otherwise have jumped on the movies momentum as an opportunity to talk about NASA’s mission will instead show the usual spineless caution.
I’m dismayed I still get the occasional slur or insult to climate change science in official telecoms, replies-to-all emails, and casual Monday morning movie conversations. This from people who are relatively educated with degrees in engineering. I made the mistake once of pointing this out only to invite vicious email insults; this flat-Earth minority (very, very small) of climate change deniers may have no credibility, but boy does that dog make a ruckus barking.
No, NASA will occasionally jump on some safe movies, of the Armageddon, Contact kind. You know, the astronauts in slow motion, wave Amercan flags, transformers kind of fare.
Yes, quite so. The admission of common problems, but of a non-military kind of threat, would create an inconsistency about small government. Better to deny climate science, and if your really good at the denial part you’ll not even recognize this connection, eliminating any cognitive dissonance entirely.
The world quit warming a generation ago. That’s the measured reality. So, yeah, I deny any alleged “science” that contradicts measured reality.
As for the “inconsistency about small government” I’m sure its just a coincidence that all the proponents of the Anthropogenic Global Warming hypothesis also happen to be politically left-wing and that all of their alleged “solutions” to the “problem” involve giving people like themselves complete control over virtually every aspect of private activity on the planet.
No, it’s not the measured reality at all. The warming has apparently slowed, but that’s to be expected. Then when you consider the unusually hot year of 1998, it’s not a surprise that a span of time after that appears flat.
Lastly, your comment complete ignores the tiny fact that there are other heat sinks on Earth. During that span of time, the oceans kept warming.
I’ll wait for your peer reviewed published paper refuting climate change, but until that time comes, your opinion won’t be very convincing.
Maybe NASA can get behind The Martian which is about to begin production soon. The story itself involves NASA and it’s mechanisms directly.