Improving NASA's Public Relations -- a Thought Experiment Posed byFrank Sietzen

Frank Sietzen, a space journalist and co-author of "New Moon Rising,"
about the return to the Moon initiative now under assault by the Obama
administration, poses an interesting question on the NASA Watch
website

http://www.associatedcontent.com/art..._a.html?cat=15

One of the things that has bothered me over the years is the spin that NASA
tends to put on things that make them seem expensive rather than functional.
It's hard to simply explain but let's try a few examples:

"We spent a million dollars developing a pen that would write in zero
gravity" The taxayer wonders why they didn't give the astronaut a $5.00
mechanical pencil.

"The Lunar Modules cost their equivalent weight in Gold."

"These switches cost $2.00 at the local hardware store store. By the time we
get through testing them they're worth $250."

There tends to be a desire to present things in familiar terms - so we
present aircraft carrier deck lengths as equivalent football fields, as
opposed to feet.

So NASA is trying to show how careful they are or just how special a
particular item is - but somehow comparisons like this voltmeter cost more
than your house is the wrong way to go about it.

It's kind of a cross between the Bride's father running around at the
wedding telling each guest how much each item cost - enjoy the wine I spend
$300 a bottle for it , and some out of touch nerd trying to impress his
friends - my laptop cost as much as 122 footballs.

There's one other aspect - you settle on something that won't sell in the
first place and then try to convince the public. (Like Obama's plan for
NASA) This usually starts with some person known to the public saying
something like "These are really exciting times" and then they drop the bad
news on what it is - like having a look at the L1 point. Does anyone
actually believe we can sell a trip to look at a mathematical point in space
as meaningful to the American people.

On Altair they were planning an outpost at the moon's south pole. The
hazards analysis for Apollo ruled out any high latitude sites due to
lighting constraints. This was a complete new mission with many new
challenges. Yet somehow NASA never countered the Been There Done That Folks.
This was supposed to be the first step to develope the Mars mission, and
NASA never defended itself against those who preached it was a simple return
to the Apollo missions. In fact it was very close to the Apollo Applications
that would have followed the first six missions that died thanks to Richard
Nixon and the $10Million per launch, 2 week turnaround shuttle advocates.

I guess the real thought here is Macy's does marketing surveys on what will
sell and NASA doesn't. My belief is that by setting the present course -
Obama has assured NASA's demise.




Val Kraut

On 09/09/2010 08:40 PM, Val Kraut wrote:
One of the things that has bothered me over the years is the spin that NASA
tends to put on things that make them seem expensive rather than functional.
It's hard to simply explain but let's try a few examples:

"We spent a million dollars developing a pen that would write in zero
gravity" The taxayer wonders why they didn't give the astronaut a $5.00
mechanical pencil.

Urban myth. NASA spent zero developing the Fisher Space Pen; the Fisher
company developed it from its own pocket and NASA just bought pens.
Pencils are unsuitable for spacecraft because the graphite can break off
and become an inhalation/eye hazard to crewmembers and an electrical
short hazard for switches. The story about the Soviets continuing to use
pencils is false; they adopted the Fisher space pen in 1968.

On 9/9/2010 5:40 PM, Val Kraut wrote:
One of the things that has bothered me over the years is the spin that NASA
tends to put on things that make them seem expensive rather than functional.
It's hard to simply explain but let's try a few examples:

"We spent a million dollars developing a pen that would write in zero
gravity" The taxayer wonders why they didn't give the astronaut a $5.00

Urban legend: http://www.snopes.com/business/genius/spacepen.asp

On 9/9/2010 7:22 PM, Jorge R. Frank wrote:

Urban myth. NASA spent zero developing the Fisher Space Pen; the Fisher
company developed it from its own pocket and NASA just bought pens.
Pencils are unsuitable for spacecraft because the graphite can break off
and become an inhalation/eye hazard to crewmembers and an electrical
short hazard for switches. The story about the Soviets continuing to use
pencils is false; they adopted the Fisher space pen in 1968.

Gagarin did have a standard pencil with him to take down notes during
his flight...he managed to lose it shortly after he entered orbit in
zero-G and it ended up floating around and vanishing under his ejection
seat with the notepad it was tied to...where he couldn't get it back.
The Gemini flights used stock cameras, and even the Hasselblad cameras
used on the lunar surface during the Apollo flights weren't all that
highly modified over their civilian counterparts other than increasing
the size of the knobs on them so that they would be easier to use while
wearing pressure-suit gloves, and finishing their exterior in natural
metal rather than black leather to keep heating down in the bright lunar
sunlight:
http://www.hq.nasa.gov/alsj/a11/a11-hass.html

Pat

Urban myth. NASA spent zero developing the Fisher Space Pen; the Fisher
company developed it from its own pocket and NASA just bought pens.
Pencils are unsuitable for spacecraft because the graphite can break off
and become an inhalation/eye hazard to crewmembers and an electrical short
hazard for switches. The story about the Soviets continuing to use pencils
is false; they adopted the Fisher space pen in 1968.

My point here was that NASA just seems to present things in the wrong way. I
remember on LM they kept harping on worth it's weight in gold. A nice
statistic that gets the point across it took a lot of effort - but I/m just
not sure it's the good PR thing. Maybe something like required N highly
skilled technicians and M engineers to assemble and test over a six month
period would have been better - see it creates jobs.

Another example is some of the grasp at straws things the ISS was supposed
to make possible and better our lives - yet never seem to materialize.

Maybe my real point us they seem simply out of touch with the audience be it
congress or the voters.


Val Kraut