Space Movies Do Not Drive Space Policy
The Martian message, Eric Sterner, Space Review
“Surely, several interests want to capitalize on the melding of film and speculative reality. Damon recently visited the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, where he talked about his role, and NASA’s website proudly uses the opportunity to explain the real NASA-developed technologies portrayed in the movie. It can only do a space advocate’s heart good when Hollywood seems to discover the same sense of excitement in space that we see and experience every day. Sadly, if the space community seeks to turn The Martian into a commercial for sending people to Mars, we will fail miserably. The 2000 movie Castaway was nominated for multiple awards, including an Academy Award for Tom Hanks. It did not increase public support for sending people to deserted islands. Neither will The Martian bring them closer to Mars.”
Space Advocacy By Space Advocates Is A Failure, earlier post
“… when several space-themed movie blockbusters really get the public’s attention the same space advocates whine when America doesn’t rush to embrace their own peculiar space exploration notions and blame the movie’s scripts for not being in precise tune with the niche views of the true space believers. … If all anyone in the space advocacy community can think of doing involves adoring lame PR Mars mission stunts and grabbing the coat tails of sci fi flicks in hope of sniffing the fumes of the film’s success, then I fear there is very little of true substance for space advocates to actually be advocating.”
Keith’s note: Its great that NASA is involved with “The Martian” – as it has been with other movies. To say that there are no potential synergies would be totally incorrect. But for space advocates to expect some detectible shift in space policy as the result of a space movie is naive. I heard all of this expectant hoopla from the space world back when the twin (bad) films “Red Planet” and “Mission to Mars” were set to be released. Nothing happened. For all its prescient majesty, “2001: A Space Odyssey” did not result in a plus-up for the FY 1969 NASA budget. As always, Eric Sterner makes excellent points that echo my earlier rants on this topic. Yet what Eric writes (as with what I rant) will only be read by space advocates. And space advocates are notoriously adept at inbred choir practice inside their own special echo chamber.
Trust me, I would so very, very much like to be proven wrong.
Of course these movies have that impact. “2001” had that impact on me. But space agency budgets don’t get an increase when enthused viewers come out of the theater. All that space advocates want to do is hype the same ideas that they have hyped for 40-50 years that only seem to resonate with other space advocates who, by the way, are already converted. FWIW This poster hangs in my office now and hung above my desk when I worked at NASA.
Assuming then that your work with NASA Watch has had some positive effect on real world NASA policy or funding (or that it will in the future, I make no claim one way or the other on either statement), then we could draw a direct line of cause from fictional space exploration’s portrayal in Star Trek, to a real world effect that NASA has benefited from (this website).
That is why I think I am a little more optimistic about NASA’s clear desire to “ride the coat tails” of the Martian. The money and policy that it generates for NASA may not appear on a separate line item on a budget, or generate their very own bill in congress, but they are clearly real, and should not be trivialized.
I did not say NASA was riding coat tails. In fact I have said that I think it is great to do thing along with the movie. Why not try? I was referring to space advocates and my words are rather explicit in that regard – who seem to have this chronic nation that the next big space movie will get the word out and force a change in NASA’s policy and/or budget.
Don’t really like your comment; poster killer though. So I gave you an up arrow.
Makes no sense.
And I bet it earned you demerit points at NASA, as it was proof you weren’t grounded in reality (or some such).
The problem is that space exploration is hard. And it’s a collaborative enterprise. While a movie or book (or several of each) which strikes some chord in you may push you towards a space exploration career, there are many, many steps to take between the book and the first paycheck.
I think with the general public, the most realistic goal is to move the needle somewhat in a favorable direction. But no single movie, however well done, can do that.
To judge by the trailer and the book, The Martian should be quite good as an adventure story that gets most of its facts correct. That’s probably the best we can ask for.
Given that the USA has 350 million people, some of them undoubtedly will be influenced by Matt Damon (cool!) to take up the study of space in earnest. But that won’t feed JPL for long.
People commit to big expansive things because they’re stirred emotionally. Perhaps movies and books that appeal more to the imagination, rather than a gritty reality, are what’s needed.
Once again your lack of familiarity with NASA is showing. At least 50% of my coworkers in adjacent offices had something Star Trek-themed in their offices and we’d regularly sprinkle trek terms into daily conversation.
So why leave, if NASA’s such a hotbed of imagination and — dare I say it? — fandom? And more seriously, can any organization dominated by government bureaucrats inspire dreams of space exploration?
Oddly enough, I think they can. But not by making overt efforts at “inspiring youth through social media.” Instead, I think they should just get on with sending probes and people into space, and send back loads of straightforward imagery. Just do it, as some company once said.
Inspiration’s personal, and deliberately trying to evoke it is all but guaranteed to miss the mark. But if they just get on with going to other worlds, that’ll do the trick if anything can.
I don’t think we can realistically quantify the effect that space exploration in entertainment has on space exploration in the real world, certainly not the extent where we could say with confidence that “nothing happened”. Not because the effect was small, but because it is temporally spread out.
For example, I don’t think it is possible to quantitatively measure the amount of talent and human capital that Star Trek has brought to NASA. Nevertheless, I don’t think anyone would deny that the narrative of “I was inspired to study and work in aerospace because of Star Trek” is a real thing, with real effects, that happened to real people as kids, who now build real space hardware, make real space policy, and vote on real space budgets. And this is 50 years after Star Trek came into existence.
I wouldn’t rule out the notion that a sustained presence of entertaining, well produced, well written, and memorable movies about space exploration in our mediascape could have the same effect in the future. I would suspect it is impossible to quantify, but as such, impossible to dismiss as insubstantial.
Yet sadly, so many Chihuahuas were abandoned and Clown Fish were flushed down the toilet as the result of kids movies… there has to be a magic formula for manipulation out there somewhere.
Perhaps if we take our cues from the ritual that fuels 90% of a child’s energy up until puberty (Santa Claus), we can irreversibly imprint on kids the need to go into space by lying to them.
This could easily be done by finding some furry little marsupial from a remote island off New Zealand and put it in a movie where a little girl befriends the “alien” on an asteroid redirect mission. Then make sure we reinforce the lie that it is all real and that the only way they can ever have a Fluffy-McGuffin… is to support NASA’s latest human space flight programs.
Movies are fine as long as people can separate fiction from fact (which many get the two confused). It seems to me three characters (pirate, cowboy, spaceman) were/are in real life but nothing like how portrayed in the movies. Referring to “The Martian” it doesn’t matter if movies drive policy or not because Mars will always be 20 years away.
Maybe the difference between movies and real life is movies suggest that a grand NASA plan is executed.
Maybe you can’t plan to go the moon or Mars.
Maybe all NASA can should do is reduce the cost of launch , spaceflight, and living in space and see what “we” do.
Maybe I’ll have a fish farm in a used Bigelow Hab 🙂
Here is what happens, after someone watches the movies and becomes briefly interested in concept of martian agriculture for instance. ‘Q: So, when do you think i could work with a company that does something like that?’ ‘A: realistically ? 40-50 years minimum’ ‘Oh.’
That’s because lawmakers don’t divy out space funding based on voter preferences. They do it based on the number of dollars they get in their campaign coffers by space interests. True space advocacy is not about government funding. It’s about space education, innovation, and buzz.
Also, Government involvement in space will soon become irrelevant anyway.
Walt Disney made Wernher von Braun a household name.