Press Conference for Victoria Crater? Options

[Guest_Sunspot_*]

We haven't had a press briefing or conference in months... anyone else think Opportunities eventual (hopefully) arrival and exporation at Victoria Crater deserves one? If oppy makes it ok, it would, in my opinion at least, make it one of the greatest achievements in the history of planetary exploration and certainly deserves some public/press recognition. Doug, maybe you could ask if the rover team are planning anything?

[CosmicRocker]

What would you have them do? They did very regular press confs, on a daily and almost daily basis for most of the primary mission...but public interest had dropped to near zero by that point anyway.

I'm not sure, Doug. I'm sure I'd make a poor PR person, but I really think Nasa's PR and public outreach program is mis-managed. I won't say what I think is a large part of the problem because it would be politically incorrect. I don't want my criticism of this part of Nasa to be mistaken as a larger criticism of Nasa in general. I think the science and engineering that they do are phenomenal, and I know of no other organization that can do that as well.

I think there have been some good suggestions already made by others in this thread. Regarding the press briefings and conferences, yes, they held plenty of them early in the mission. As they became fewer and farther between it seemed to me that they continued to be well attended by the media. Eventually they became essentially nonexistent while the rovers were proving Nasa's engineering and science prowess on a daily basis. But all of the press briefings and conferences could have been much more effectively utilized for PR. They were broadcast live, but usually at times when most Americans were at work or school. They were rarely rebroadcast, while NASA TV instead ran endless reruns of old shuttle and space station footage.Surely the briefings about an ongoing and phenomenally successful mission were more newsworthy, and would't have cost any more to replay in prime time.

The MER mission has been remarkable in that most of the groundbreaking PR and public outreach has been done by the mission team and not the PR department. They are responsible for the nearly realtime adventure we all have been so fortunate to enjoy. That stuff probably is funded by the mission itself, but Nasa's PR and public outreach programs surely have their own budgets. All I am saying is that those progams could be more effectively run to bring the wonders of the universe into the living rooms of the taxpayers that support Nasa. Doing so would not only enrich peoples lives, but would also improve Nasa's public image.

[JRehling]

...I really think Nasa's PR and public outreach program is mis-managed. I won't say what I think is a large part of the problem because it would be politically incorrect. I don't want my criticism of this part of Nasa to be mistaken as a larger criticism of Nasa in general. I think the science and engineering that they do are phenomenal, and I know of no other organization that can do that as well.

This conclusion may be an outgrowth of the fact that NASA is one of about four space programs (and by far the best resourced) while it contains one of an enormous number of PR programs worldwide -- and by far not the best resourced.

I worked for NASA in a non-space research field. There was nothing special about the NASA personnel, and something very wrong with the NASA management. Things were much better in the academic institutions where I did that work before and after and much better engineeringwise in the private corporation I worked for later.

Essentially, if we say that NASA is "better" than ESA, then it is the better of two at what it does. In any way that it can be compared with a larger set of competitors in a fair contest, I don't think it would come off looking special. But it's a very large organization with many subparts, and certainly some talented people, so I don't know how you'd begin to perform such a comparison. But the problems I saw when I saw there resemble ones I've heard about from people at different centers with very different job descriptions. "Stifling bureaucracy" says it pretty well in two words.