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Commercialization

CASIS and NASA Ignore Each Other at #ComicCon2016 Over A Raccoon and Groot

By Keith Cowing
NASA Watch
July 24, 2016
Filed under ,
CASIS and NASA Ignore Each Other at #ComicCon2016 Over A Raccoon and Groot

NASA Will Put Rocket Raccoon And Groot On Its New Mission Patch, Gizmodo
“A major mission for us here at CASIS is to find unique and innovative ways to bring notoriety to the ISS National Laboratory and the research that is being conducted on our orbiting laboratory,” said CASIS Director of Operations and Educational Opportunities Ken Shields. It’s also part of a secret mission that might help us get a Rocket and Groot of our very own. “The reward for us [is that] we’ll actually have two characters go into space,” said Mitch Dane, director of custom publishing. Then he joked, “With a little luck, there’ll be a little cosmic radiation going on, they’ll come back alive.”
‘Guardians of the Galaxy’ team up with NASA: Groot, Rocket Raccoon on mission patch, Washington Times
“Director James Gunn, whose “Guardians of the Galaxy” grossed $773 million worldwide in 2014, was awed by the decision. “So cool. NASA Oasis has paired with Marvel and is using Rocket & Groot as an official emblem for the mission to Mars,” Mr. Gunn wrote.”
A Closer Look At The CASIS “Space Is In It” Endorsement, earlier post
“On 31 March 2016 NASA International Space Station Director Sam Scimemi sent a letter to Greg Johnson on a number of topics. Scimemi said: “We would advise caution in the lending of the ISS National Lab brand (via your “Space is in it” certification) too freely; care must be taken to that research performed on the ISS has actually influenced product development in advance of awarding the certification. Failure to do so weakens the brand and may lend an air of being nonserious in our mutual quest to fully utilize the ISS as a national lab.”
Keith’s note: CASIS issues a press release that mentions that Marvel comic book/movie characters at ComicCon are now ISS mascots or something. Alas NASA is there too – as @NASASocial – at the Marvel booth – and neither @NASASocial or @ISS_CASIS mention one another’s presence. Apparently CASIS thinks that Groot, a giant rock tree man thing, and a foul-mouthed raccoon are better poised to explain ISS science than ISS scientists. So – the movie director whose characters are being featured refers to “CASIS” as “OASIS” and doesn’t seem to know that this is all about the International Space Station – referring instead to “the mission to Mars”.
Meanwhile NASA makes no mention of this news and NASA is never mentioned in the CASIS press release. Yet news stories say that NASA is behind all of this. NASA only gets the credit from third parties – and when they get mention it is factually mangled. Nice job CASIS.

https://media2.spaceref.com/news/2016/comicon.jpg

Oddly enough NASA posted a picture of astronaut @astro_kjell at the Marvel booth at ComicCom. Marvel is the same company that is sponsoring the whole Groot/Raccoon logo thing with CASIS – and yet CASIS makes no mention of NASA’s presence at the same event – at their co-sponsor’s booth. CASIS whines and complains that NASA is not giving them enough quality time and then they go off and mount an uncoordinated PR stunt like this without asking NASA? NASA has already expressed concern that CASIS has marketing practices that are misleading. Can we get any more dysfunctional CASIS?

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

16 responses to “CASIS and NASA Ignore Each Other at #ComicCon2016 Over A Raccoon and Groot”

  1. Michael Spencer says:
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    How is failing to mention NASA a slight? Hard to believe that there’s anyone on the planet thinking the space station was launched by magic.

    And in any case turning away from previous efforts by NASA to popularize/utilize the ‘national laboratory’ is pretty much a no-brainer; NASA is superior when sending Cassini or Juno or whatever, but earned epic FAIL in getting anybody to actually use the station, spring loaded microsat launches and the occasional marigold flower excluded.

    • kcowing says:
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      CASIS complains when NASA does not mention them. NASA asks CASIS to make note of the fact that they operate the ISSNL for NASA. CASIS then makes no mention of NASA.

      • Michael Spencer says:
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        CASIS is like a mosquito bite on NASA’s butt, is unable to get even a fraction of the attention that NASA routinely receives. They just want a piece of magic.

        I guess, having no real idea.

  2. Brian_M2525 says:
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    I get the impression that no one from NASA and no one from CASIS have ever sat down together to strategize how to go about marketing the ISS potential. Its not an odd concept. People in marketing schools all over the country learn how to do this all day long every day. And people in real businesses are engaged in it on a daily, hourly basis. You really have to wonder why NASA and CASIS are so dense.

    • ThomasLMatula says:
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      Since I teach marketing I have asked some NASA folks over the years about their marketing, and they point out that NASA is not allowed to do “Marketing” but only able to provide “public information” – I guess they believe there is some type of difference between the two…

    • Neal Aldin says:
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      From what I can tell most ISS ‘marketing’ since assembly was completed 5 years ago has been from the ISS chief scientist. She likes to hype the world shattering scientific discoveries made on ISS. After 5 years its grown a bit tiresome since there have not been any. In fact she has little to choose from since the amount and quality of science investigations is way down from what was done on Shuttle. They created an extensive database of payloads/experiments, though many are from earlier programs, not ISS. Of course the major discovery last week was about astronaut eyesight. Funny thing is that we’ve been flying long duration missions for 50 years and just now figured this out? Really though, I’d put most ISS science in the category of basic, not applied research. Major discoveries ought to be few and far between. ISS scientists do not seem to recognize the distinction. The problem comes back to, these simple servants really don’t know what they are doing. CASIS was apparently supposed to help but its a bit like the blind leading the blind. Who is least helpful, CASIS or NASA?

      • Michael Spencer says:
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        “Major discoveries ought to be few and far between”

        I get the sense that CASIS is so keen on announcing major discoveries that they forget the hundreds of non-discoveries preceding each. I’m reminded of the recent efforts to identify WIMPs in an experiment widely characterized as ‘failed’ because ‘nothing was found’.

        CASIS could do well to investigate wikipedia:

        https://en.wikipedia.org/wi

      • Vladislaw says:
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        What “long duration missions” were flying in 1966?

        • Neal Aldin says:
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          Long duration was classified as anything over a day. The Russians began with one week mission on Vostok in 1962. Gemini went from 4 to 8 to 14 day in 1965. Based on Gemini 7, they decided to double to 28 days on Skylab….The US was doing astronaut eyesight experiments beginning with the last Mercury, and on Gemini.

          • Vladislaw says:
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            Can you provide a link from NASA where long duration is defined as anything over 24 hours?

  3. Daniel Woodard says:
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    Years ago I was given an official NASA Mars Exploration Rover shirt, featuring “Duck Dodgers in the 24th and 1/2 century”. That show, particularly in its original Warner Brothers incarnation, had a depth of intellectual satire I just don’t see in the Racoon and Groot shows, which are rendered in 3-D but two-dimensional in characterization and ideas. If you are going to pick an emblem, make sure it has the symbolic meaning you really want to convey.

    • kcowing says:
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      I don’t have a problem with cultural cross overs with NASA. Indeed, done properly, they often engage previously un-engaged sectors of the population in what NASA does from a perspective that they can relate to – even if only a little. But when you screw up the launch of the crossover such that the message and the core branding is garbled you are just wasting everyone’s time. CASIS excels at wasting everyone’s time.

  4. Jeff Havens says:
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    Keith, um… did CASIS refer to Groot as a “a giant rock-man thing?” If so, they are showing depths of silly dumb there…. Groot is a walking talking tree, not rock. 😉

  5. Wendy Yang says:
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    Keith, it looks like autocorrect strikes again, since “CASIS” autocorrects to “OASIS”. Turn off autocorrect folks.