NASA's Quest for Human Spaceflight Popular Appeal
NASA’s Quest for Human Spaceflight Popular Appeal, Roger Lanius, Social Science Quarterly
“Objective: Analyze NASA’s efforts to “sell” both its mission and its successes from its origins in 1958 to the present.
Methods: Use public opinion polling and qualitative sources to establish change over time.
Results: Study suggests that NASA’s public support was less important than most have previously asserted, and that the overall activities of NASA have been advanced by a small base of supporters, challenged by a small group of opponents, and sustained by a larger number of people who accept a status quo in space exploration.
Conclusion: A general public lack of support for expending many dollars on spaceflight has been a fundamental reality of NASA since its beginning. It is not changing, and probably not changeable, in the predictive future. Accordingly, NASA’s quest for human spaceflight’s popular appeal remains an elusive goal.”
Until there is commercial passanger services and people think they are actually involved it will not change.
In many ways you are correct. There are some people out there who are jetliner enthusiasts or airport enthusiasts, but not many. That is basically what NASA has been pushing-that everyone be a spaceship enthusiast. How many people really know much about the people who fly their airliners? Sure its a job that takes a lot of hard work, training and talent, and there are kids who want to grow up to be them, but its not a huge percentage of the population. The sooner we get beyond the idea that spaceflight is reserved for a few select government civil servants on a spaceship designed by the government, the more accessible space will be for all purposes.
Amen.
As you and others here point out, NASA’s efforts so far have not led to a widespread public outcry to significantly increase the scope and content of NASA’s programs and missions, nor an outcry to significantly increase NASA’s budget. Why not? Is it NASA’s inspiration methods, or something else?
Does AMTRAK have programs to inspire kids to get STEM degrees so they can become train designers? Does NOAA have programs to inspire kids to get STEM degrees so they can become hurricane forecasters? If not, why not, and if not, why does NASA have its STEM inspiration programs?
Maybe people are at heart are simply interested in certain things for unfathomable reasons, and very few can be persuaded by programs like NASA’s to become an engineer if they don’t like math to begin with, or want to become a farmer or a brewer?
(Isn’t it almost cruel to go to every school and try to convince every kid he or she can become an astronaut? What would you say if the NFL and NBA had programs that tried to convince every boy in grade school that he can become the next Tom Brady or Stephen Curry, if they spend more time in the gym than studying math and history?)
NASA inspires kids into STEM careers because that provides justification for NASA’s continuing existence. They don’t tell the kids that space is a very competitive field and most engineering graduates will not find jobs at NASA or any of its contractors. When the kids graduate and come knocking on NASA’s door, only then are they told “we didn’t mean that we needed you to come and work for us.”
In the retail business this tactic is called “bait and switch”, in which you lure the customers into the store with some great deal that is unfortunately sold out, but then you take advantage of their presence in the store to sell them something else.
A few years ago, the Onion had a good story along these lines. (If you aren’t familiar with it, the Onion publishes satire, not real news.) I was about NASA’s Space Camp program changing their curriculum. The new version involved the students writing and submitting proposals, which would then be rejected for poorly explained reasons. This would make the experience more realistic for the students.
If I were running Space Camp, I would make the students do Preliminary Design Reviews, Critical Design Reviews, and Anomaly Review Boards. Let’s see if they want to work for NASA after they sit through a few of those…
I’m in NYC this week to see the Michelangelo exhibit. And I have to say that if I weren’t a bit of an airplane geek I wouldn’t have noticed a bit about the aircraft.
NB: But as I AM interested in aviation, the airplane was a Bombardier C100. I was surprised to find this very small jet on a route from RSW to LGA usually served by 737 (from time to time a brand new long range 737) or even an MD88.
Did I mention small? It’s 1×2.
Are you sure it wasn’t a CRJ? The largest cost by far in airline transport is fuel, and the C-series are recent designs with the aid of computational fluid dynamics from the start, and have proven more fuel-efficient than their competitors, including the older 737, even in smaller cabin sizes. NASA aeronautics (almost a separate agency) has shown increasing willingness to work with industry and pursue advances in aeronautics in recent years.
You correctly point out that I got the ID wrong, and thank you. It was a CRJ900.
NASA can also focus on important scientific research and practical development needed by industry.
Appropriate timing, given the recent Guardians Of The Galaxy nonsense from CASIS.
We don’t need wide public support. We only need measured, careful expenditure of $18B a year.
This is not complicated, folks.
I agree, leadership and a sustainable and reasonable architecture that leverages commercial and international partners can get us up and out of the gravity well for $18B throwing money at the problem while ignoring the internal issues is just shoveling sand against the ocean.
From my time with the Houston L-5 Society years ago I feel the report is correct. Space enthusiasts with real involvement in the field have long been a small group in the US. While the same is true of many areas of science and engineering research, NASA tends to rely more heavily than, say, DOE, NIH, or NIST on national prestige as a rationale rather than science or commercial applications per se.
Politicians enjoyed a brief time of carte blanche for investing in Apollo: A very expensive limited time response for an international leadership, image and confidence crisis. A new conparable crisis could not harness a wide public support per se, but their acceptance for a similar effort. The Apollo project lasted about a decade, with the financial support for even less time. The biggest strain on NASA’s image comes from the perception of deep bureaucratic proccesses that make projects far too long and expensive, becoming victims of the cyiclical political changes.
Exactly, NASA’s world view is based on the hope there will be another Apollo Project that will rain money on them. They have made paralysis by analysis a high art form. And they stubbornly still follow the old Von Braun flags and footprints strategy of LEO, Moon, Mars, only changing the slides as needed satisfy whoever is President. In short they have become a bureaucracy run by technocrats and driven by inertia.
This was a vision “reborn” by Administrator Mike Griffin who ignored all of the alternatives in favor of Ares I, Ares V, and CEV. Pretty much modern equivalents of Saturn IB, Saturn V, and Apollo CSM. So, here we are years later and Congress is still funding SLS/Orion out of inertia, and a desire for pork, rather than the alternatives.
The most sane alternative, at the time, would have been to design the missions to use the existing EEVLs while NASA simultaneously worked on enabling infrastructure and technologies such as LEO fuel depots.
Which was the program of the day (OSP) under Administrator O’Keefe that was moving forward. And one of the entries from the old OSP, the Boeing CST100, will be actually be flying next year on an ELV, something was going to do in 2010 under the OSP schedule.
If NASA watch is a thing concerned with support and exploration of deep space visit Facebook “Cool” Birds club play the first space sport using people space and socks. This is simple we on earth can join and play … or practice, the first space sport played by astronauts and international partners in an expandable module or inside the iss. Please tweet or share and look for kick starter this year. The future has a space sport and a league bringing all nations to compete and possibly play in orbit.
Plant a few more flags on the moon and NASA will attract much more public attention. And controversy.
I’ve gotta say – this looks like the author had a thesis and used the numbers rather misleadingly to support it. Look at his figure 3 – in 2008 – during the great recession, 2/3rds of the public disagreed that we spend too much and after both the Challenger AND Columbia accidents, agreement that we spend too much dropped – showing that people wanted to spend more despite the losses go life.
Moreover, what other public activity has consistently had 60+% support? Maybe the military and Social Security but in a country where an election victory in the mid fifties is considered a landslide, that’s not bad!
The biggest problems we have is not public support – its having an enduring political reason to want to go to Mars and a lot of advocacy that calls for an open ended commitment. People aren’t willing to spend trillions so that a small sample of humanity (almost certainly not them or their families) doesn’t get wiped out like the dinosaurs – but thats the most often cited reason for doing it by the advocates. The reality is we should admit we are going to explore not colonize – much like Antarctica. If it turns out to be worthwhile to colonize, then it will happen but making this your argument only makes it seem like Mars is even more expensive.
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The ISS is simply a space station designed by an international committee. The marvel is it works, but then a camel works as well 🙂 But ISS has paralyzed HSF at NASA for over a generation with very little to show for it.
A man looking at a hippopotamus may sometimes be tempted to regard a hippopotamus as an enormous mistake; but he is also bound to confess that a fortunate inferiority prevents him personally from making such mistakes.
G.K. Chesterton
So exactly what are the benefits that the marvel that is the ISS has provided that justified NASA wasting a generation of engineers and a $100 billion plus on it?
Recall it wasn’t a case of form follows function in terms of its design. It was based on what the Russians had left after Mir as a core, then what could be fitted into the Shuttle to add to the Russian modules.
Recall also the motive wasn’t space settlement or industrialization, but to give the Shuttle something to do beyond just going to orbit, especially as commercial satellites were banned on it, and to keep Russian engineers from leaving to foreign nations to earn a living.
Given that it shouldn’t be surprising it was so expensive to build, is expensive to operate, and is still looking for a real purpose – re the threads below on CASIS and finding justifications to keep it in orbit. Yes, the Emperor is naked. And now they want another naked emperor around the Moon, AKA the Deep Space Gateway.
My comment was more focused on your implied snark regarding camels vs your criticism of ISS which carries some wisdom.
But in the same vein…what have you contributed directly to the creation, implementation, and execution of multinational HSF programs that might validate your criticism?
The decision to build a space station (back when it was Freedom) was made before its purpose was decided on. In fact, _after_ the decision was made, NASA issued requests for information and held some workshops or conferences to figure out what it should do. Unless there are ulterior motives, the normal practice is to decide what you want to do before you decide how you are going to do it. I think that’s enough to justify criticism of the ISS-related decision making process.
Sadly the DSG seems to be following a similar strategy. NASA has the SLS/Orion and now needs a real mission for it. Landing on the Moon is too risky, too many ways to lose an astronaut. And just sending Orion around it will get old fast. So why not do what worked with the Shuttle and build a space station in orbit around it so Orion has someplace to go? Then give it a name that sound adventurous.
What will NASA do with the station after it’s built? Don’t worry they will figure out something just as they did with the ISS. Just say it’s an important part of learning how to go to Mars, that worked for ISS under two Administrations.
If NASA is lucky they will get the same international partners to go along with it so Congress will have to fund it no matter how expensive it gets. The bureaucratic “problem” of how to keep the next generation of NASA engineers busy so pork keeps flowing is solved!
And you wonder why so many kids have tuned NASA out?
Yep. We often disagree, Dr. M., not here.
I’m often quite distressed, having to make this point, over and over and over. I’m distressed because the human race has a solid future in space. Based on experience, though, the road to Homo caelus does not pass through space stations.
(kinda long; but here’s the lede:
…the idea of a necessary space station has remained stuck to our upper palette since the late 1950’s. Sorta like a dog eating peanut butter for the first time, wondering “how the hell did I get into this mess?”)
I’ve tried to make the same point here and in another thread but perhaps you’ve made it better here.
Roughly 1948-1960 was a period of wild dreaming about space. In the US, lots of dreaming was happening amongst various military groups as well as nascent civil thinking. These ideas had in common the supposition that person-kind would find space an habitable place, given appropriate technology, and that’s the rub.
Summarizing:
• That HSF to Luna, Mars, or elsewhere was/is a desirable policy;
• That a BR (Buck Rogers) approach would be best — a single machine taking off from Earth and landing wherever;
• That then-current and then-foreseeable boosters were far too weak without additional sources of propulsive energy to even come close to BR.
Hence the need to ‘top the tanks.’ The additional fuel stores could happen wherever it made sense, but LEO was thought to be the easiest/best place to establish refueling facilities.
And now to the central point, which is this: that the need for a space station was simply an accepted fact that wasn’t questioned.
The march of technology change things, but the idea of a necessary space station has remained stuck to our upper palette since the late 1950’s. Sorta like a dog eating peanut butter for the first time, wondering “how the hell did i get into this mess?”
Ah, the standard argument that space scientists/engineers use when they have no other. It’s only the folks who work within the industry that have any right to criticize it. No one else does.
My professional background, teaching and consulting, is in strategic management and planning, something NASA really should start using. The very lack of strategic planning (very diffferent then the project management based approach they use and call planning) is why NASA is so stuck in the mud. They are very much like the steam locomotive manufacturers, thinking only of how to build better steam engines instead of asking if they even should be building steam engines. Indeed, that is an example I use in my classes on strategy.
In short, NASA is so busy seeing the trees they don’t see that the forest has almost disappeared. The 1950’s vision that Dr. Von Braun had (Shuttle, check Moon Landing, check Space Station, check) is as out of date as 45 rpm records. But the space community still doesn’t move beyond it, indeed, they don’t even think there is anything beyond it. So to praise the ISS instead of realizing it was a 25 year, $100 (200 now?) billion dollar detour down a dead end street. And then resume their 48 year old fight over Moon vs Mars while the other 99 percent of America tunes out.
As for what should be down to actually move forward in space, including HSF, you could just google my name and ASCE or ISDC. You will find the various papers and presentations, including on how to actually build public support for space based on established practices used by successful non-profits. But it wasn’t invented by NASA, so NASA or is cheer leaders have no interest in it. Space after all is “different”.
Thomas,
You are so not getting me or where I’m coming from. So sorry for that.
I’ve wondered if a concept or argument can be so complex that Einstein’s oft-repeated quote is wrong (“If you can’t explain it to a six year old…”).
One thing I am pretty sure about, though: I don’t think I’ve ever had an idea that complicated!
Lyndon Johnson, who pushed for NASA to be created while in Congress and then shaped it as Vice President recognized how fickle public support was. He was a political mastermind who understood how things worked. That is why he pushed for creating Marshall, Goddard, Stennis, Johnson and Kennedy space centers along with the Michoud Assembly Facility. All of those activities could have been located at the Cape, but they were spread across the Old South. Lyndon Johnson recognized the only way to give it staying power was to create jobs in the Old South where members of Congress are fanatical, because of the poverty that existed before WWII, about defending funding to their districts first, no matter what party they are in.
That is how NASA survived being closed after Project Apollo. It’s why the Shuttle was created, along with the ISS and most recently SLS/Orion when President Obama tried to cut NASA funding. The members of Congress from those states are dedicated to keeping the funds flowing for NASA.
Public Opinion only comes into the picture in terms of making it costly for members of Congress from other parts of the country trying to cut NASA’s budget. It makes them look “unamerican” to oppose the progress and exploration of the frontier NASA represents so they basically ignore it as long as the budget stays about the same. Or they use it for “horse trading” – I will vote for SLS if you vote for ethanol being required in gasoline. It’s not nice, but its how the government works.
“SLS/Orion when President Obama tried to cut NASA funding” Just to clarify, Obama tried to transfer funding from Constellation to Space Technolgy. When Congress mandated SLS/Orion, Space Technology was slashed and Commercial Crew kept at an inadequate level for several years.
Yes, ISS is an engineering marvel, but how great it would have been if NASA had planned adequately for its full utilization, starting decades ago. NASA instead decided to cut their support for science and utilization and they cut, eliminated the processes they had established over decades of development for getting the science on board.
And since it was designed, developed and built years ago, why hasn’t the cost of ISS dropped precipitously? Sure NASA’s budget is stable but why can’t NASA figure out how to apply those dollars where they are needed instead of continuing to pour money into projects long after they have reached maturity? A flash every few years is more than what we are getting.
And why is NASA so inefficient and ineffective? Why has a safe, simple, soon Orion taken 15 years; so far, and will take another 10 years before it goes anywhere or does anything? Why is it less safe than Shuttle when its priority goal was safety?
NASA human space flight is broken and not progressing, and it does effect public and Congressional support, but more importantly it effects progress in space flight.
Your ideas are fine if we just want to maintain the status quo. If we want to make space accessible and a part of the world of commerce and industry, then a government-paid for program is not enough. I am putting my faith in people like Musk. Quite frankly, supporting NASA means little any more since NASA seems to make no progress regardless of the support they receive.
Ever seen a picture of the ISS control room? And compared it to a similar facility in Hawthorne?
What exactly is your point?
As soon as we get cost-effective transportation to space, all of this begins to change. Wealthy billionaires will start to do things that only NASA could have done in the past. The policy makers will take note and start changing if only to stay relevant. Just like how SpaceX is causing its competitors to start to try to become more cost-effective, the policy makers will find it increasingly difficult to maintain the expensive, slow, uninspiring status quo.
There are things that could be done to hasten this transition. COTS, Commercial Cargo, and Commercial Crew were able to survive political challenges and have partially changed the mindset of the policy makers. A set of “Lunar COTS” programs could do the same. A Masten Terrestrial Demonstration of a full-scale Centaur (Xeus) lander over the Mojave desert could create a change in mindset about how soon and at what cost crew could be sent to the lunar surface. So, there’s things that we as space advocates can do such as advocate for:
– Lunar COTS
– “The Falcon Heavy should be America’s next Moon rocket”
– Xeus Terrestrial Demonstrator ($20M)
– Demo of a surface habitat for extended stay
– Etc
With all due respect, my own anecdotal observations run counter to what Mr. Launius’ report suggests. I think support for America’s space program runs deeper that the report.
Did you know that the Smithsonian NASM is America’s most visited museum and ranks in the top visited museums in the world?
The NASM is part science center and museum, so it seems to me that there are lots of Americans interested in aerospace science. Everyone seems to know about Elon Musk and SpaceX. Nerd culture is on the rise,and with that seems to be growing interest in space activities.
Think of all the people who thronged to see the shuttles go to their final museum resting places. How about all the folks who massed in Times Square to see the Mars rover touchdown? What about the success of The Martian in both book and movie form?
In summer 2014 I visited the KSC visitor center. The shuttle program was finished for 3 years by then and Obama’s FY 2010 rollout had come and gone. Yet the visitor center was packed with families. Here’s something else: those families paid 50 bucks a head to tour the place. That doesn’t count snacks or money spent in the gift shop. To me that says something about how the average citizen might be willing to fund NASA’s endeavours.
My final observation: I help run an aviation museum at the site of the old Glenn L. Martin Co. plant in Baltimore. Often times we have ex shuttle astronauts as guest speakers at our little museum. These have been our most popular speakers. Often times our auditorium is standing room only.
I think public support is there. Support from our politicians is lacking.
There are certainly plenty of visitors at the Air and Space Museum, or at KSC’s visitor center. But there are also plenty of visitors at Disney World. Compared to Disney, I wonder how much they are willing to pay to get into Air and Space (currently, nothing) or the KSC visitor center (I forget the price of a ticket). Realistically, that should be the cost per hour of entertainment. I also wonder about repeat visitors.
The article in question used the phrase “a mile wide and an inch deep.” I’m not sure if you aren’t saying that should be “a mile wide and a foot deep.”
The simple comparison to the hundreds of billion to 20 billion between NASA and the military says everything about the priorities and mental state of our culture (violence and fear). Just a quick look at human history, Rome being a good example, of how human masses are placated, or distracted, by the action or construction of ever magnificent, monolithic, events. Humans have not changed and will not change soon. The only way for NASA to grab the masses, in an ever growing mass, is to keep doing and “accomplishing” great deeds and feats of valor. funny thing watching humans, and Ive found that just because you are human does not mean you really understand humans. I touch on all this in a paper from a few years ago: http://adsabs.harvard.edu/a…
Yes, I realize I am a bit late in posting my comment here. Let’s just say I have been this weekend doing a number of things that are not space related. I like and respect Keith’s NASA Watch, but there are times when I can’t look at it.
Launius does bring up groups such as the L5 Society, noting that many people with a significant interest in space exploration and development have been active for a number of years without having the effect on the nation and world that lots of hoped that we would have.
Like lots of children growing up in the 1950s, I did get interested in space for reasons that Launius documented. In the 1970s, though, I moved away from that interest for a number of reasons. O’Neill’s book got me quite interested again though. The problems facing our country also had a significant impact as well. Think energy, environment, etc.
Today we have an establishment that, while it does a decent job of keeping going, has significant limits and needs some reforms both to achieve triumphs many people want and even to get people interested again in space.
One significant change some of us think is important is to bring in people with a wider range of talents than is currently the case. That could promote the field and bring about more success than is currently the case.
One item I have on my blog is A Tale of Two Space Days. It compares two Space Days. The more recent is an event at the Smithsonian Udvar Hazy Center. The older one was at the New Jersey State Museum back in 1984 I organized that one. Yes, we got twice as many people to come to a smaller museum that was not completely focused on air and space. How did I manage to do that? My blog posting Background of an L5 Society Activist describes talents that I brought to this important task that too many people in aerospace — indeed in tech fields in general — do not have.
What about today?
People might be surprised to find out that I am not even employed in aerospace. I was driven out of Goddard Space Flight Center some years ago by really bad management. Attempts to get employment in the field have not been successful. Yes, I have shown talents that I think can help. Some other people agree with me.
Enough for now.
Hand in there Chuck. I was in the L-5 Society as well, and remember the hard work of trying to build public interest even in Houston.