Keith’s note: I did an A.I. search. There are approx 114,500 grammar, junior, high schools (public & private) in America. Space them out from here to the Moon (239,000 miles) and you get one every 2 miles. 3 million classrooms is 12 per mile. That infrastructure houses 55 million students – the Artemis Generation. As a child of the Apollo Generation I think a successful metric for NASA outreach for Artemis II and beyond would be a NASA poster, study plan, model, webcast in every classroom in America. Prove me wrong. NASA has had a decade or more to plan this. (Thanks Grok!)
Biologist, Explorers Club Fellow, ex-NASA Space Biologist and Payload integrator, Editor of NASAWatch.com and Astrobiology.com, Lapsed climber, Explorer, Synaesthete, Former Challenger Center board member... More by Keith Cowing
“Hey boss, I’m speaking to an Elementary classroom next week – the teacher is a friend and the kids are dying to meet someone at NASA. Should I use leave or is that something I can do on the clock?”
Typical NASA response: “Whoa whoa you aren’t allowed to speak on behalf of the agency without pre-approval. You need to fill out a set of forms and get Center-level approval, and everything you plan to say must be approved by OCOMM.”
“never mind.”
100% correct! Speaking as a NASA employee is more of a punishment than anything else. On top of it, speakers’ bureau/PAO provides nothing to bring for engagement.
I speak to kids at schools all the time and have never gotten flak from OCOM. Heck, I’m actually able to charge a small number of hours to outreach. Now, getting materials to take with me to those schools and give out to kids, can be like pulling teeth.
In the early 80’s when I did a series of co-ops and starting working in industry, at every stop someone had that cutaway poster of the Shuttle. Except when I briefly shared an office with an engineer from France at IBM.He had a poster of the TGV!
Which would inspire the next generation of engineers and scientists more, NASA actually getting to the moon with no posters in the schools or posters in the schools and NASA not getting to the moon any time soon?
I realize getting to the moon and having posters in the schools would be the optimal solution.
I offered suggestions other than just posters.
Wow, times have changed. Back in the ’90’s, I drove myself from Goddard over to Duval High School, and supported a ‘Get Away Special’ Aerospace class they had, helping them build and navigate the process for launching a Get Away Special on the Space Shuttle. Which they did,,,it housed a bunch of roaches! Got lots of press! No one from PAO was in the loop, or asked me to fill out forms, nothing like that. The GAS program, and its cousin Student Experiment Modules (SEM), which were 10 small modules housed in a GAS can, reached lots of students all across the Nation. We flew about 275 GAS payloads (over lifetime of the Shuttle) and around 140 SEMS experiments (over 7 ish years…) Those days are clearly gone now.
SEM Experiments reached K-12 students.
Not where NASA people have gotten the idea they need some sort of clearance to speak. I’ve given dozens of talks to schools, civic groups, churches, etc. A few times on the mid1980s a supervisor wanted to know what I would say. But generally managers and supervisors have been supportive for speakers bureau or more recently for ‘NASA Engages’. The talks seem to have no relationship to NASA Eduxation, which appears focused on things like robotics or other esoteric topics that only have a tangent relationship to spaceflight. It is true there are no longer educational publications (like posters) for most subjects.
Goddard has made it clear for 5+ years that folks have to get approved for outreach.
Yea I got yelled at back in the day when I was a NASA civil servant and went to a local school one afternoon. The person who scolded me had never been a teacher. But I had.
My person ethos has always been that we serve the people in our nation. I always told my neighbors that their taxes pay into what we so and thus, we are at their service. I’d tell them–Got a science or engineering question? I’ll try to answer it within my domain of understanding. Ask me to come to a school, I’ll make it happen.
OCOMMS control gets in the way. Not once had they helped me devise experiments or provide stickers/lithos/etc. Projects and their outreach people do that.
That office should be more media relations/PR vs education/outreach and projects should return to the local ed/outreach POC.
Centralizing and eliminating that function-> control and gatekeeping awesomeness from reaching the American public.
agree 99% – a few folks in OCOMMS “get it” – but the oppressive group-think smothers that most of the time.