Another NASA News Conference With No News
Keith’s note: NASA held an Artemis 1 media briefing today. These were the only newsworthy highlights.
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Otherwise, NASA held an Artemis “press briefing” today that started at 11:00 am EDT. NASA talking heads use up 45 minutes with talking points and infomercials with Marvel superhero music and then they only had 20 minutes for actual press briefing questions. When a local TV reporter from update New York made mention of the fact that no one in their newsroom knew about this Nelson gave a somewhat clueless response by as to why space is not always newsworthy – because if NASA thinks it is then it must be interesting or newsworthy. He then answered a question about SLS cost and delays by using the using the multi-billion dollar, decade-delayed Webb Space Telescope to justify the multi-billion dollar, decade-delayed SLS program – because “space is hard”.
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I remember back to the first Saturn V launch in 1967. It was an unmanned engineering test flight so there would be little coverage, aside from the launch itself with Walter Cronkite holding onto the plate glass window behind him facing the launch pad, when it threatened either to break or come loose onto Cronkite’s head. NASA or the contractors took out a multipage ad in big newspapers, like the NYTimes, with the name “The Big Shot”, describing why the launch was important and how the future Apollo program would proceed if the launch was successful. People were not that interested; less than half the US population at that point thought the Apollo program was worth it. No one today is even aware of the “Artemis Program”. I wonder what people would think today with a similar amount of money and 15 years spent to take the Space Shuttle and reconfigure it into the SLS?
US was a different country back then.
Hate to break it to you … most Americans (most humans ?) don’t care about space. Sure they like looking at the pictures … mind you some think they are just so much photoshoped CGI (and Hollywood does a better job). No one really notices the “pittance” that Congress gives you, I suspect they (the US government) spend more on pens and pencils. They’ll be a little interested if/when we land people on the moon, but that’ll wane quickly. Remember no-one watched the Apollo 13 TV broadcast (until there was a real human interest story).
I don’t think the world or the nation was so different back during Apollo. Apollo was in the news some. You could not help to see it on the 3 networks or in Life, Time., Newsweek or Nat Geo. Most people thought it was mainly a race with the Soviets and therefore there was a purpose though most people did not like it. Except for the time during Apollo 11, when slightly more than 50% of the population thought it was a good thing that needed to be done, during the res tof Apollo most Americans thought it was a waste of money. That was what the polls showed. Today there are not the same level of trust in the media; too many competing stories. No one is aware of Artemis. Most people don’t care, All they know is their taxes are too high and NASA is a part of the problem.
If the US taxpayers knew how much time and how many dollars were spent on Artemis and Orion and SLS, then they would really have a problem with NASA, and rightfully so. Most of us who are avid space fans have a problem with it.