Using Reality Television to Generate Public Support for
Space Exploration
by Bart L. Denny
February 27, 2008
On May 25, 1961—a few short weeks after U.S. Navy
Lieutenant Commander Alan B. Shepard, Jr. took America’s
first brief human spaceflight—President John Kennedy
boldly laid out his vision for the nation’s future in
space to a joint session of Congress. Kennedy’s goal
was audacious; he challenged a country that had not even
orbited a man about the earth to land one of its
citizens on the moon, and return him home, in less than
nine years. In his address, the President recognized
that his goal would require America’s space
establishment to overcome incredible technological
hurdles. He further acknowledged that the effort would
represent a staggering cost, yet he championed the cause
as one that America could ill afford to shirk (Kennedy,
1961).
In the nearly forty years since the first moon landing,
NASA has vainly struggled to recapture the national
sense of excitement and urgency that the moon race
generated for the agency’s program. American public
support for space activities over the years is “broad,
but not deep.” When asked if he or she believes that
the United States should have a space program, the
majority answer in the affirmative. However, when asked
if they had to choose between the space program and
popular social programs, most Americans become less
enthusiastic in their support for space exploration.
The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA)
and its supporters—in longstanding efforts to recreate
the early excitement surrounding Project Apollo—have
consistently failed to understand precisely why Apollo
generated such enthusiasm. Further, NASA and its
advocates, for the most part, misunderstand how changing
public attitudes, domestic policy, and geopolitical
factors mean that recreating such excitement for the
space program requires a radically different strategic
communications plan.
Further, if the U.S. space program is to stimulate broad
public fervor, it must change not only its strategic
communications, but must also implement radical
initiatives within a number of its programs; even the
most imaginative public affairs efforts will not
engender excitement if the programs they serve are not
themselves imaginative or exciting.
Such public affairs and Congressional engagement efforts
must not only create widespread enthusiasm for the
program, but—given the decades-long lifespan of most
large scale space projects—must generate an enduring
base of support relatively immune from both the
political flux inherent in the American system of
government. NASA public affairs and strategic
communications efforts must also have a plan for
overcoming the relatively short attention span of the
American public and news media.
The decision to undertake the Apollo moon landing
project, and the national resolve that saw the program
to its stated goal, represents an amalgamation of
circumstances that NASA will likely never replicate, no
matter how it tries. Apollo was probably the one-time
result of an ideal combination of emerging technologies,
superpower competition to emerge as the world’s
ideological leader, domestic political maneuvering, and
a desire to honor the slain President who challenged the
nation to reach for the moon.
The confluence of events culminating in the moon
landings amounted to the “perfect storm,” allowing the
Apollo program to enjoy support for a few years longer
than with what one could normally consider the political
best case—that is, a strong two-term President and a
sympathetic Congress. In the end, continued support
beyond the stated goal of beating the Soviets to the
moon proved unsustainable.
The Cold War began in earnest in 1949 when
the Soviet Union detonated its first atomic bomb. The
1950s saw Americans building bomb shelters in their
basements, with public hysteria, first about a bomber
gap, then—with the launch of Sputnik in October 1957—a
“missile gap.” When John F. Kennedy campaigned for the
presidency in 1960, he accused the Eisenhower
Administration of having allowed the missile gap to come
into being. As Nixon was Dwight Eisenhower’s sitting
vice president, and Eisenhower had allowed the missile
gap to occur, Kennedy publicly surmised, then so had
Nixon by extension.
By May 25, 1961, when Kennedy first proposed
to Congress that the nation should attempt a manned moon
landing by the end of the decade, the United States was
reeling from the latest blow struck by the Soviet space
program. On April 12, 1961, the Soviet Union beat the
United States to placing a man in space. The United
States responded just over three weeks later with Alan
Shepard’s Freedom 7 flight. The American answer
to the Soviet feat seemed almost pitiful in comparison;
Yuri Gagarin completed a full orbit in a flight lasting
nearly two hours, while Shepard’s mission had been a
mere suborbital 15-minute hop in a Mercury capsule that
was tiny compared to Gagarin’s Vostok.
Detractors of the U.S. space effort said the nation was
hopelessly behind the Soviets. The implications of the
Gagarin flight went far beyond the prestige the mission
lent to the USSR; there were genuine national security
issues at stake. If the Soviets could orbit a large
capsule around the earth, then they were capable of
launching very large nuclear weapons all the way to the
continental United States. Such a large payload
capability also had significant implications for
space-based reconnaissance and intelligence gathering.
Perhaps it would not be long, many reasoned, before the
Soviets had the ability to place weapons in orbit, ready
to strike at a moment’s notice.
The 1950s and 1960s saw the United States and the Soviet
Union locked in a battle of ideas, as well. The “Space
Race,” was as much about national prestige as it was
about national security. While the USSR sought to
spread the influence of Communist ideology throughout
the world, the United States worked diligently to
contain it. Leaders in both nations understood the
inherent need of human beings to feel they are on the
winning team. The prestige bestowed upon the Soviet
Union by its feats in space might well convince many
developing nations that the USSR was, in fact, the
victorious side, and cause those countries to tie their
fortunes to those of the USSR.
The sense that the United
States was in a race to the moon with the Soviets—and
the ostensible victories the USSR had already won by the
early 1960s—certainly helped sustain the effort and
support for Apollo in a way only seen in times of
national emergency. The Soviets continued racking up an
impressive list of achievements in manned spaceflight
during the early sixties, and embarked on their own
manned lunar landing program.
In the end however, Americans were first on the moon,
and had the Soviets ultimately succeeded in placing
cosmonauts on the lunar surface—indeed even if any
country ever lands humans on the moon again—the
first footprints there will always be American;
for some, that notion remains enough. In short, it is
unlikely the public will encourage the U.S. government
to engage in a new space race.
Space historians often point to President John Kennedy’s
challenge as the catalyst to begin the moon program. To
be sure, Kennedy was an ardent supporter of the space
program and was first to publicly propose sending
American astronauts to the moon. Kennedy made an
eloquent case for the benefits to American society of
such an ambitious goal, and while acknowledging it was
an expensive endeavor, he argued that the cost of the
space program was less each year than the money
Americans spent on cigars and cigarettes (Kennedy,
1962).
The following year, Kennedy defended the lunar landing
effort in a speech at Rice University, warning his
audience that U.S. leadership in the world depended upon
its place in space. “The exploration of space will go
ahead, whether we join in it or not, and it is one of
the great adventures of all time, and no nation which
expects to be the leader of other nations can expect to
stay behind in the race for space,” Kennedy warned
(Kennedy, 1962). The President’s words, and the
gauntlet he laid down, inspired a nation.
In perhaps the most historically remembered portion of
the speech, Kennedy exhorted the nation, “We choose to
go to the moon in this decade and do the other things,
not because they are easy, but because they are hard.
Because that goal will serve to organize and measure the
best of our energies and skills, because that challenge
is one that we are willing to accept, one we are
unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win,
and the others, too” (Kennedy, 1962).
President Kennedy’s premature death and his successor’s
continued support for the moon landing effort—indeed
President Johnson was arguably a bigger proponent of the
Apollo program than Kennedy—combined with the national
view of the quest for the moon as a “race” with the
America’s Soviet archenemy to mobilize America’s
scientific and industrial might.
Public and Congressional support was enough to put the
nation’s space program on a footing rivaling even the
Manhattan Project, yet support began to wane even before
the first manned lunar landing. Enthusiasm in both
Congress and among the populace dropped precipitously
once the crew of Apollo 11 beat the Soviets to
the moon and returned safely home to a hero’s welcome.
In 1969, President Richard Nixon tasked Vice President
Spiro Agnew with chairing the Space Task Group, which
produced bold recommendations for a space shuttle, space
station, more ambitious lunar exploration, and manned
missions to Mars. The group’s proposals received a
lukewarm reaction from the Nixon Administration and
Congress, and only the shuttle received approval.
Even if Nixon had been as devoted a champion of the
space program, it is doubtful that the Space Task
Group’s recommendations would have cleared Congress.
Indeed, even before the first Apollo flight flew, it was
clear that the Apollo and Apollo Applications (later
called “Skylab”) human spaceflight programs would never
achieve the scale once envisioned. Had Lyndon Johnson
run for, and been reelected to, another term in office
in 1968, it is unlikely even he would have been able to
stand up for such an expansive space program, with the
monumental costs of the Vietnam War beginning to strain
the federal budget.
The deep base of support for the Apollo program, then,
resulted from a unique set of circumstances wrapped
mainly around deep national security concerns, actively
championed by two Presidents, funded by a largely
sympathetic Congress, and set in a time when American
culture itself was vastly different. Major space
announcements made by President Reagan and the first
President Bush failed to create a national imperative;
the second President Bush’s “Vision for Space
Exploration,” has generated little excitement, but has
at least resulted in design contracts because the
shuttle Columbia accident resulted, essentially,
in a mandate to retire the space shuttle (Ladwig, 2006).
Present-Day Public Perception of the Space Program
A Zogby poll conducted in March 2007 found 66 percent of
Americans polled were interested in space exploration.
Eighty percent of respondents to that poll found space
exploration important to national prestige, though a
lesser but still commanding 74 percent said that
manned space exploration was important to U.S.
prestige. The Zogby poll found that 71 percent of
respondents opposed any cut to NASA’s budget, but only a
third favored increasing the agency’s budget (Zogby,
2007).
NASA support is broad,
but not deep. If forced to prioritize, the public at
large consistently favors social programs, education,
and national defense spending over increased
expenditures for the space program. In a Harris Poll
conducted in April 2007, respondents were asked to
choose two programs—of twelve listed—should see reduced
spending if budget cuts were necessary. The space
program topped all others in the Harris poll, as the
choice of 51% of respondents (Stine, 2007: 15).
Even worse, a study conducted in 2004 by Dittmar
Associates, found that, overwhelmingly, NASA lacks
support among young adults, aged 18-25—the future
national tax-base, and not much further in the future,
the nation’s political base (Dittmar in Engaging,
2006: 5). While support for space exploration among
those who remember Project Apollo is high, no one under
35 was alive yet when the last man left the moon, and
few under 40 even remember that event.
Put simply, the Dittmar
Study showed that young adults find no relevance in
NASA. While 32% of young adults surveyed found NASA
“relevant or very relevant,” another 17% characterized
their attitude towards the space agency as “neutral,”
and a full 51% said that NASA was “irrelevant or very
irrelevant.” A full 79% of young adult respondents said
that NASA’s budget would be better spent elsewhere.
Young adults in 2004 were worried about things more
relevant to their own lives, including jobs, the war,
and education (Dittmar in Engaging, 2006: 6).
The public’s relatively short attention span exacerbates
this situation, particularly among young adults. At
this point in NASA history, the space shuttle is a “has
been,” while the Constellation program—the
agency’s next manned spacecraft—is, in the view of the
Space Generation Working Group—hosted by the George
Mason University’s Center for Aerospace policy—too far
from executing any big milestones to generate widespread
excitement (Finarelli and Pryke, 2007: 7).
The Space Generation Working Group found that one of
NASA’s fundamental failures in telling the space
program’s story is that the agency speaks more in terms
of hardware than of people. Most people, the Working
Group noted, “do not indentify with hardware; they
identify with people. They relate to human connections
and stories…NASA, of all U.S. Government agencies, has
the ability to create engaging human stories” (Finarelli
and Pryke, 2006: 9).
The Space Generation Working Group noted that while it
easy to make astronauts heroes—and the Space Generation
Working Group maintains NASA has de-personalized the
astronaut corps during the shuttle era—it points to
engineers on the ground as a source of great stories,
noting in particular the story of NASA Flight Director
Gene Kranz during the Apollo 13 mission. Perhaps
even more interestingly, the Space Generation Working
Group contends that even robots can become “empathetic
characters experiencing frustration in their attempts to
achieve a clear goal” (Finarelli and Pryke, 2006: 9).
Dr. Patrick Collins points out that “staff and media
spokespeople from space agencies like to emphasize their
educational role, and they encourage school children to
study science and to apply to become astronauts—although
the probability of success is barely one per million”
(Collins, 2003). Collins contends that the efforts from
NASA and other space agencies’ educational advocacy
“efforts are of little efficacy,” pointing out the
“rapidly dwindling interest in the sciences” (Collins,
2003). Clearly, Collins’s observation show that most of
the space agency’s strategic communications message gets
lost in transmission.
Alan Ladwig, a former NASA associate administrator for
policy and plans shows keen insight into why NASA’s
public engagement efforts fail. “If you are satisfied
with continuing to talk about trips to the Moon and Mars
and show artists’ conceptions on PowerPoint charts, keep
rely on the techniques of the past two decades,” says
Ladwig. “…if you want to continue to talk about our
future in space, keep showing eye-straining,
mind-numbing viewgraphs when you talk to the public.
Those things turn the excitement of space into the most
boring endeavor undertaken” (Ladwig, 2006).
In a more hopeful aspect of the Dittmar study, 61% of
young adults responded that commercial human
spaceflight—including projects such as Burt Rutan’s
Space Ship One—was extremely exciting and relevant,
because “regular people can get to go” (Dittmar in
Engaging, 2006: 6). Taken with the rest of the
Dittmar study, this seems to indicate that space
exploration has the potential to be very relevant
in people’s lives.
Dr. Mary Lynne Dittmar says, “NASA must identify who its
customers really are—including customers that it may not
recognize as such...it must first understand that real
value is created in the marketplace, not mandated by
policy” (Dittmar in The Space Review, 2007).
According to Dr. Patrick Collins, the government space
agencies of the world actually stand to gain
considerably from supporting space tourism. Collins
contends that 80 percent of the U.S. population
supported space tourist Dennis Tito’s flight to the ISS
aboard a Russian Soyuz—in spite of NASA’s rigorous
opposition to the flight. Collins maintains that Tito’s
mission and those that followed, the suborbital manned
spaceflights of Scaled Composites’ Spaceship One,
as well as other space tourism possibilities actually
stimulate significant interest in space exploration
(Collins, 2003).
If the world’s governmental space agencies were to
invest substantial resources to assisting the
development of commercial activities, Collins contends,
they would generate public interest for the agencies’
other enterprises, and would remove what he calls a
public perception that the space programs are “Cold War
relics doing work of little economic value” (Collins,
2003). Instead, Dr. Collins says, both NASA and ESA
actively thwart space tourism, a behavior contrary to
NASA’s statutory responsibilities for encouraging the
commercial use of space (Collins, 2003).
Space exploration must become far more participatory, if
it is to retain support with the public at large. The
Space Generation Working Group noted that young adults,
on a scale far greater than their seniors, are used to
interacting with their environment and with the
information they receive—the internet, and video games
are far more interactive forms of information and
entertainment than traditional media. Young adults, The
Space Generation Working Group report contends, require
will filter out content that is not interactive as part
of the “barrage of media noise they are exposed to
continuously” (Finarelli and Pryke, 2006: 8).
Both the Dittmar study and the Space Generation Working
Group recommended exploiting a number of “new media”
venues that NASA should make use of in disseminating its
message. These include podcasts and blogs produced
by crews in flight, computer games, toys, content,
adventure tourism not necessarily taking place in space,
and content targeted at multiple demographics—not simply
adults or school children (Finarelli and Pryke, 2006:
7, and Dittmar in Engaging, 2006: 8).
Witness the success of
reality television programs and amateur talent contests,
such as CBS’s Survivor or Fox’s American Idol.
These programs tell compelling human stories—to a huge
audience, at least—and in many cases, feature the
ability for the audience to participate.
A space-related reality television show and related
contest should serve as space exploration’s flagship
engagement project in a larger, integrated and
interactive marketing campaign aimed at eliciting broad
participation in the nation’s space program.
To avoid a number of legal issues that may arise, NASA
should not order, manage, or finance this public
campaign; this type of activity is better handled by the
private sector, to include non-profit “space advocacy”
groups, marketing firms, and commercial business. NASA
should merely cooperate with this marketing campaign,
where it is legal to do so. The space agency, and the
wider U.S. space sector, will all benefit from the
interest generated by the campaign.
The detailed rules, procedures, and operations of a
space-themed reality television show are beyond the
scope of this paper; the author presents a number of key
concepts for the contest, but leaves the details to
professional television producers. A number of
regulatory and legal issues—liability insurance will be
expensive for such a project, for example—are beyond the
scope of this paper, but the show’s producers and
sponsors will need to deal with them, if the project is
to be successful.
1.
Basic Premise:
The Space Reality Television Show provides an
opportunity for the winning contestant to fly in space
aboard a commercially contracted space vehicle. It is
preferable that that America’s “Alternate Space”
community—companies like Space Exploration Technologies,
Transform Space Inc., Planet Space, and others—provide
orbital space transportation for the winning contestant.
2.
Basic Eligibility:
a.
General:
Race, sex, national origin, citizenship, and profession
practiced have no bearing on eligibility. All
candidates must have reached the age of majority, but
advanced age will not exclude otherwise healthy and
medically qualified entrants. The candidate should
reflect qualifications different from the traditional
NASA astronaut. Contest finalists—all applicants chosen
to appear in the television program—should all
demonstrate a gift for telling a compelling personal
story in a way that generates interest in the space
sector. Viewers must see the contestants and easily
believe, “That could be me!”
b.
Medical:
Every contestant must be in reasonably good health.
Contestants would have to pass a physical and mental
evaluation. It is unlikely this physical would be as
stringent as for, say, a test pilot. NASA’s screening
criteria for its former shuttle payload specialists may
be a good guideline.
c.
Education and Training:
The contest should require no specific education,
training, or degree. The contest should feature an
aptitude test that proves the passenger has the basic
intelligence and aptitude to serve safely as a passenger
on a spacecraft. The contest organizers should not
actively recruit military test pilots with graduate
degrees in engineering, for example, as these
individuals have a reasonable chance of becoming an
astronaut when compared to the public.
3.
Initial selection process:
Interested persons should enter the contest by
submitting essays, videotapes, or other media as decided
by the show’s producers, that show their basic
qualification for the contest, and that demonstrate the
promise of telling a compelling story that will
stimulate interest in space.
Producers may wish to travel around the country and
conduct auditions—as the American Idol show
does—or panel interviews. Judges or interviewers should
include personable former astronauts, celebrities, and
other recognizable personalities, and these interviews
or auditions would become part of the television
program. The show’s producers and judges would then
narrow the field to perhaps twenty candidates who would
compete in training for space flight.
4. Astronaut Training: This is the main part of
the reality show. Perhaps broken into two teams of ten,
the contestants would train for spaceflight, including
academic instruction, high-performance jet flights,
survival training, zero-g flights, and challenge
events. Not all events would necessarily be relevant to
the candidates’ specific flight; some episodes may focus
on the teams living in a simulated space or lunar
habitat, or feature challenges astronauts and cosmonauts
either faced historically, or will have to surmount
during the course of the “Vision for Space
Exploration.” NASA’s participation, by way of opening
up training facilities, would be helpful during this
part of the project, and would serve to educate the
public—perhaps in spite of themselves—about the space
agency’s endeavors.
During their training,
engaging trainers, engineers, or former astronauts—whose
personal stories could add interesting perspectives to
the show—would guide the “astronaut candidates” through
their training, providing valuable feedback. Failing
training events will see candidates eliminated from the
competition—though the producers will have, hopefully,
chosen finalists who would complete the training, but
for being voted off the show. Ultimately, the viewing
audience should have the ability to vote for their
favorite candidate, choosing the winner, just as they do
with American Idol.
5. Prizes: Ideally, the grand prizewinner would
fly in orbit aboard either a commercial
spacecraft—preferably—or a Russian Soyuz. The first
runner-up might receive a shorter, suborbital flight
aboard a craft such as the Scaled Composites-Virgin
Galactic Space Ship Two. Each of these
prizewinners would have a backup, in case of medical
issues or problems late in vehicle-specific training.
The actual flights would make a great culmination for
the reality show.
To enhance the feeling of the public at large, the
contest could award thousands of other prizes, such as
high altitude jet flights, simulated “Mars Expeditions,”
trips to Space Camp, Rocket Racing League or X-Prize
Foundation event, zero-g flights to entrants who do not
make the cut to appear on the show. A number of
co-branded contests and sweepstakes, sponsored by a
variety of commercial enterprises, and awarding a
variety of merchandise and other smaller value prizes,
could further improve enthusiasm for the contest.
6. Commercial
sponsorship: The reality show would, hopefully,
gain corporate sponsors that would help pay to for the
vehicle, in return for advertising, not just on the
show’s commercial breaks, but on the spacecraft and
contestants’ apparel, as well.
While the aerospace and defense industry—including giant
firms like Boeing and Lockheed Martin as well as
“Alternative Space” companies—have a great deal to gain
from sponsoring this reality show, other companies
outside of this industry should consider sponsoring the
contest. Perhaps, like NASCAR, there could be a number
of spacecraft-building and flying teams, sponsored by
corporate giants, and the contest could actually become
annual or grow into other events featuring multiple
spacecraft types.
For three decades, NASA has clung vainly to the notion
of rekindling some kind of national nostalgia for
Apollo, rather than realizing that times change, and so
does the American culture, and the way that culture
interacts with the world around it. NASA should learn
to better target its message, but should not bear sole
responsibility for communicating its message; there are
numerous other stakeholders in the U.S. space sector,
and all should be part of a concerted effort generate
public support for space exploration—with emphasis upon
“new media” outlets.
Commercial manned spaceflight stirs far more public
interest than the NASA program, particularly among young
people, especially because it provides the potential for
“ordinary” persons to some day travel in space. A side
effect of commercial space ventures is increased
interest in the NASA space exploration program.
The U.S. space sector, as a whole, should leverage the
public interest in commercial human space flight, and
the fascination with “new media,” particularly reality
television programs to generate engaging personal
stories that captivate audiences, educating them about
the space program and its benefits, almost without the
watcher even realizing he or she is learning. Such a
strategy will go far in countering the view among young
adults—who will become the taxpayer and political base
sometime during the course of the “Vision for Space
Exploration”—that the space program is irrelevant.
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