Expedition 41 Has Returned
Expedition 41 Returns to Earth
“Expedition 41 Commander Max Suraev of the Russian Federal Space Agency (Roscosmos) and Flight Engineers Reid Wiseman of NASA and Alexander Gerst of the European Space Agency touched down northeast of the remote town of Arkalyk in Kazakhstan at 10:58 p.m. EST (9:58 a.m., Nov. 10, Kazakh time). While in space, they traveled more than 70 million miles.”
I wonder how much NASA spends on TV coverage of landings and launches in Kazakstan? -the ones that no one watches? I wonder why we have to send our NASA people there instead of relying n our Russian and Kazaki partners? The recent closure of the public information office is educed a bunch of employees and the flow of information. My guess is that if this ‘live’ service were to go away no one would notice.
People going up to space on a rocket and returning through the atmosphere at 17,000 mph is a significant event, regardless if it has become a yawn for the average person. I doubt if the cost of live coverage is that much relative to many other things, and there are people that watch it just like there are people that watch unmanned rocket launches live. Of course some percentage of those people maybe are watching in hopes of seeing something go spectacularly wrong, but if that is their motive they probably tire pretty quickly since events like occurred two weeks ago are pretty rare.
I don’t dispute that there might be some people who tune in to every launch and landing, but I wonder if NASA sending “their team” to cover the event is required or whether a Russian team couldn’t provide the same level of visibility with no cost to NASA? NASA has recently laid a lot of people off shutting down major elements of the public services, news media, history and education organizations. It seems like there might have been alternatives.
From a cost standpoint you are right but the way I look at it NASA is legally limited in being able to promote itself, and one of the few things they can do is broadcast events like this so I don’t mind some money spent. Although if the viewership is low I realize it’s harder to justify