More Inbred Thinking Amongst Space Advocates
Keith’s note: Explore Mars had a “leadership dinner” in Washington, DC tonight. This is a group photo (larger image) posted on Facebook. Here we go again. Another space group has a meeting. Guess who shows up: One female, nine males (mostly older white guys). This is not remotely representative of who will – should – explore Mars. The folks at Explore Mars mean well. But this event is representative of a much more pervasive issue in the space advocate community – lack of diversity. Until the usual suspects in the space advocate leadership clique get the message that they need to be far more representative of the taxpayers/citizenry who will pay for their party their impact will be minimal – at best. More choir practice in an echo chamber.
Keith’s update: I am told by a participant in this event that this was a “[this was a] random group based on availability. [The] president of the organization is a woman and two of the Board of Advisers are women (and another one pending), none of whom were present.” That said, the gender and age imbalance is still unrepresentative of the real world and will continue to be so – until the space crowd gets the message that they need to reflect the reality of the world around them – not the one they imagine inside their heads.
Given the small size of the group, I don’t fault them too much for it. It’d be a bigger problem if this was a full-blown conference.
When you ask these groups for demographics about membership, attendance, they never tell you. Maybe Explore Mars can change that.
Must be a slow news day…While space groups always need to diversify – including Explore Mars – we have an extremely diverse group around the world – with women and men of all ages running our projects. This picture is from a periodic dinner we have in DC. Last night, most of the folks who could come were men. I wouldn’t be surprised – at all – if our next dinner had a majority women. That said, Explore Mars probably should do a better job at highlighting the amazingly diverse group of people we have helping the group…
Maybe I have become jaded in my old age. I used to be a frequent participant in the conferences and social groups, but after 40 years in the business, and having seen so little progress and so much waste of resources; even when we make progress, like with the completion of ISS, we do not make use of it and wind up wasting it, and by the time we have finished one engineering job, like ISS assembly, everyone grows bored, wants to trash what we have and start over again in a new direction. Maybe if someone with deep pockets, like Musk or Bezos or another multi-billionaire puts in the required funds and shows the leadership, maybe we will make some progress. NASA people seem to be a cross purposes with themselves and I have given up hope for them. They trully seem to have no idea of where they should be going or why. I likely have fewer than 25 years left, and I doubt we will go anywhere with humans again in that time period. Talk of a manned flyby of a planet-for what purpose? If there is a purpose and a will to pursue it, none of these people have expressed or communicated it.
“…someone with deep pockets, like Musk…”
From what I observe I see many young people get really excited about space travel via Musk. But then Musk focuses on Mars which I think humans on Mars is a fantasy like it’s been for past 50 years. Will his followers find themselves in same situation, “after 40 years in the business…”? Now if SpaceX can get human rated Dragon to fly “routine” in LEO before Orion, things should get interesting.
20 years ago as a young physics student I concluded that nothing much would be happening without improving the technology and economics of space access. For the past 20 years, NASA’s approach to alternate space access has been arbitrary and capricious, so while there has indeed been conceptual progress, this hasn’t been reflected in the R&D program or anywhere else.
I suspect it’s a symptom of the lack of diversity in the workforce among the senior staff that tends to drive these things which is a reflection of the demographics of who got engineering degrees back in the 70’s/80’s. It’ll change as the younger crowd gets put in those leadership positions though the real solution IMO … if you want a true cross section of the population represented … is to engage all kids as young as possible in STEM in a serious way *and* have some great purposeful exploration missions for them to see it’s actually possible to do something with math. All the STEM outreach in the world won’t help if there is no attractive mission for them to apply it, and of course without the STEM knowledge we’ll lack the ability to even try. /soapbox
There’s plenty of interesting math/physics/technology involved in NASA robotic missions and commercial space ventures. The really smart students can see that the math for going to Mars doesn’t add up.
Not part of this group but there certainly is a lot of gnashing of teeth about so many “non-professionals” weighing in on space policy.
They will have more influence going forward as groups like the Space Frontier Foundation, National Space Society, and others get Millennials more active.
Yes, how dare the taxpayers express any opinions on how to spend their tax dollars – that should be left to those professionals that make their living off those tax dollars.
In terms of Millennials if they want something they will do it themselves and not expect government to do it. Look for them to move beyond NASA in their plans for space development.
Given that the drive to go to Mars is basically a legacy of science fiction from the 1950’s it is about what you expect.
Tuesday evening from 5 PM to 8 PM I attended the Arthur C. Clarke Foundation’s annual awards ceremony. The honorees included Jeff Bezos and NASA. This event was also in Washington, DC. Why didn’t the people who attended this dinner come this award ceremony instead? Or at least worked it into their schedule.
Because no one knew that the event was happening. The Clarke people never tell anyone.