News Media Sees Through That #NASA #JourneyToMars Thing
NASA Announces Journey to Mars Challenge, Seeks Public Input on Establishing Sustained Human Presence
“NASA is embarking on an ambitious journey to Mars and Tuesday announced a challenge inviting the public to write down their ideas, in detail, for developing the elements of space pioneering necessary to establish a continuous human presence on the Red Planet.”
Keith’s note: I was listening to WTOP radio around 11:15 am today when Scott Goldberg from ABC Radio came on as a guest. He was talking about NASA’s recent call for the public to submit ideas for how to go to Mars. Goldberg wondered if there weren’t enough rocket scientists already at NASA to work on this and that perhaps NASA was doing this to somehow keep the public momentum going while they battle for funds in Congress. (main points, rough paraphrase). It would seem that the PAO #JourneyToMars thing isn’t fooling the news media much.
Reminds me somewhat of how the big movie studios used to do nationwide talent searches for the star of their upcoming big production. Most of the time it was done for pure publicity like in Gone with the Wind where in spite of a nationwide search for “Scarlett”, internally they were only considering established actresses for the role.
AT&T bought into the Mars hype from NASA – their latest ad campaign asks where you’ll be when humans first set foot on Mars. The answer for most of us – DEAD! They obviously believe a mission to Mars is eminent.
It wasn’t too long ago that the taxpayers looked to NASA to tell them where we needed to go next in space and how we would get there. Now NASA appears to be looking for the common people to tell NASA where to go and how to get there. What was NASA’s purpose?
An interesting twist. Usually this website is complaining that the public has no input on all matters NASA.
When they hear your complaints and try to do something about it, cynicism?
You apparently do not read NASAWatch very often.