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Artemis

JSC Goes Out Of Its Way To Hide Good News (Update)

By Keith Cowing
NASA Watch
September 9, 2019
Filed under
JSC Goes Out Of Its Way To Hide Good News (Update)

Cruz’s test: how to keep Houston central to space flight [Editorial]
“But the flesh-and-blood part of the techno-wizardry of the Space program has always run first through Houston. Not Huntsville, Cape Canaveral nor any of many NASA facilities around the country. Isn’t the Texas congressional delegation disproportionately influential on this issue? It sure ought to be. Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas chairs the Senate subcommittee on space. Rep. Brian Babin of Woodville is the ranking Republican on the House space subcommittee. Yet, a key part of one of the most ambitious plans in NASA history quietly walks out of Houston and ends up nearly 800 miles away. That dog don’t hunt. Even before the announcement was made officially, Cruz, Babin and Texas’ senior Sen. John Cornyn fired off a letter Aug. 15 demanding the pending decision be reconsidered.”
NASA Invites Media to Economic Impact News Conference with Texas Comptroller’s Office
“NASA will host officials of the Texas Comptroller’s Office and news media on Thursday, Sept. 12 as the Lone Star state announces a special economic impact report for the Johnson Space Center in Houston. The report, “The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA): A Texas Institution with a Large Economic Impact,” highlights employment numbers, average wages, gross domestic product, and grants that NASA introduces to the state. The report also details the center and its workforce’s influences on education, tourism and future growth, particularly in the Gulf Coast region. NASA’s impact on Texas, and Johnson’s position as the world leader in human spaceflight, remain strong as the agency moves toward human exploration of deep space with the Artemis program and a landing on the Moon by 2024, initiatives that include many key roles at Johnson. The news conference will begin at 11:15 a.m. CDT Sept. 12. Media wishing to participate in person must request credentials from the Johnson newsroom at 281-483-5111 no later than 3 p.m. Wednesday, Sept. 11. Dial-in participation will not be available.”
Keith’s note: This is silly. After the decision to put the Human Lander responsibility in Huntsville, NASA wants everyone to know how much of an impact NASA spending has in Texas. But unless you can make it to a room at JSC next Thursday you won’t be able to hear what is said. Johnson PAO apparently does not know how – or does not care to provide a simple dial-in for media – or an audio or video feed for people elsewhere to listen/watch. One would think that NASA would understand that this sort of news, while pertaining to Texas, has applicability to the region and can also raise awareness in other states with regard to NASA’s economic footprint. Given the sheer number of vendors for Artemis and other NASA programs, the entire country benefits.
Oh yes the press release says “View the upcoming economic impact report and get more information on the Texas Comptroller’s office at: https://www.comptroller.texas.gov/“. There is no obvious mention of the report on that website. But if you search for “NASA” you get a link to this page where you see lots of pretty NASA pictures – but no link to the report. There is no mention of this event at the JSC home page. NASA HQ makes no mention of this press release on their press release page or the Artemis page. Nor is there any mention on the nasa.gov home page or its calendar of events.
Look at this Texas portion (larger image) of the list of companies that are suppliers to SLS/Orion/Artemis: “2019 Deep Space Exploration Systems Supplier Locations“. These 182 companies are located all over Texas. I’ll be willing to bet that nearly all of these companies have no idea that there is a NASA website that lists all of the small business that work on this project. The Texas Comptroller seems not to know about it. JSC does not mention it either. Why go through the time and expense of collecting this information if no one is told that it exists?
If you make it hard for people to find – or hear – your good news they may not find it. NASA has yet to figure out how to tell people about its good news. Meanwhile Jim Bridenstine has managed to learn how to livestream events from his cellphone. Baffling.

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

2 responses to “JSC Goes Out Of Its Way To Hide Good News (Update)”

  1. Brian_M2525 says:
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    What is even more silly is to think JSC is having as big a role in future space flight as evidenced by even the awarding of the manned lander to Huntsville, or by other recent moves to place programs at Kennedy. Even programs JSC leads like Orion and ISS have moved so slowly and been so costly that they have become examples of how not to do projects, rather han Apollo’s 50 year old inspirational value. ISS is a particularly good example. After 40 years and $ 100 billion its been functioning in space for ten years and NASA has failed to capitalize on it, choosing an organization, CASIS, that with a poor choice of personnel, failed at its primary mission to find and integrate users. And NASA itself has done no better, choosing to bloviate about its great advances in science on ISS, which have been largely nonexistent, rather than recruiting researchers from across industry and academia to pursue real advances. In fact JSC made it so difficult, time consuming, and costly by having forgotten what it learned in the last 40 years about payload and science integration, that now many researchers avoid NASA. They do not want to become bogged own in bureaucracy.

  2. Nick K says:
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    If I were JSC, I would not be too proud of the fact that the Lander went to MSFC. If JSC had been doing good jobs on getting Orion built or on getting users on ISS, or on any of the other projects over the last many years, I cannot imagine that any other center could have taken their place as the “Manned Spacecraft Center”. 35 years ago there was an attempt made to take the Station away from JSC and give it to MSFC; and JSC stood up to the then Administrator, Fletcher. They did it by showing that JSC was where the expertise resided. Now I don’t think that expertise resides in NASA any longer.