[X] My Assistant

[djellison]

I know this picture doesnt look like much. It's grainy, it's bleached out quite a bit

But you owe it to yourselves to look at that picture, and think.

There is a rover climbing a hill on mars.

Isnt that amazing?

If you think hard enough - you can actually imagine being there. Walking with a rover, that we sent half a billion km's to a whole other world.

Sometimes, an image will just catch me off guard and I'll go "wow - LOOK at what we can do!"

Doug

[Guest_Richard Trigaux_*]

Truth be told, the media would rather have a failure to moan about, than another success.  Spaceprobe fails - they're like vultures. They can criticise, say it's a waste of money, then leave it alone.

Doug

Good example: Hubble. Hubble fails, high coverage. Hubble is cured and produces marvelous images, little coverage, only is specialized reviews. With some search we could find people who do not know that Hubble was repaired.


It is undertsandable that space may not be the main interest of everybody, but I think it is at least of interest for everybody. Some materialistic and "reasonable" peoples will say that there are more urgent issues, that we must stay with our feet on the ground, as we say in France. But I think that, once we have our feet on the ground, the best position for the head is above.

[djellison]

It's a carrot stick issue though isnt it.

Should the media give the coverage of things that are interesting, remarkable, newsworthy

OR

Should the media give the coverage that the public want (Big Brother, Michael Jackson, Jesus on a piece of toast)

And would doing the former change the requirements of the later?

Doug

[dvandorn]

Should the media give the coverage of things that are interesting, remarkable, newsworthy

OR

Should the media give the coverage that the public want (Big Brother, Michael Jackson, Jesus on a piece of toast)

Examples of American news people of the first category -- Edward R. Murrow, Walter Cronkite, Eric Sevareid.

Examples of the latter category -- Bill O'Reilly, Anderson Cooper, Britt Hume.

First category -- legends in their field. Second category -- hacks.

You're probably right that the bottom-line news organization owners are only interested in giving people what *they* think the people want, but that fact hasn't changed in the last 50 years. What *has* changed is that news organizations have been vetted by their wealthy owners such that organizations like CBS News no longer are alllowed to report the atcual facts of the great and important stories of the day, for fear that more people want to hear what someone "above" them tells them is important than what is *really* important...

-the other Doug

[djellison]

You would think in this modern media age - i.e. 400+ channels of television - that they could have something for everyone.

I still write regular emails to Sky Digital asking them to air NASA TV - and I'd pay for it - but they just dont care

Doug

[Guest_Edward Schmitz_*]

I had my dishnetwork turned off a while back. The only thing that gave me a second thought was lossing NASA TV. Much to my amazement, the receiver still works and gets a few stations. One of them is NASA TV!

Happy for me!

Ed

[brianc]

It's really interesting hearing the views of people from all around the world, I would be interested in a straw-poll of where the forum contributers live in the world and how they got interested in Spaceflight

I will start, I'm from a small village called Holcombe Brook, just north of Manchester England, I got inspired by a book the Observers Book of Manned Spacecraft, this was bought for me by my parents when I was about 7 (1966), I remember seeing the moon landings on TV, I also remember vividly coming home from school on a lunch-time and seeing the Apollo 17 Astronauts walking about on the moon. I was hooked, in those day there was virtually no 'news' on space, I joined an obscure group called The British Interplanetary Society and got good coverage through their monthly publication called 'Spaceflight' - I've followed all the missions since then, obvious highlights being the Viking Landings (which I remember the live coverage of Viking 1 landing) and the Voyagers. It's just great to be able to actually participate in these missions now that Doug has launced unmannedspaceflight.com

Doug, you sound as though you may be UK based (ref: Sky Digital !!!)

[djellison]

There is a thread about who we are already somewhere ( http://www.unmannedspaceflight.com/index.php?showtopic=881 ) But it's nice to see another Brit onboard

Doug

[brianc]

Thanks Doug - appologies for misposting !!