Clark Lindsey, who's covering space stuff much better than I could hope to right now, given my schedule, has some thoughts about the effect of seeing Mars on the public:

The article speculates that this sort of remote sensing of Mars via the internet will satisfy the public's interest in the planet. I think it will have quite the opposite effect. The landers' imagery transforms Mars from an abstraction into a real place and will entice and inspire many either to want to go there themselves or at least to want to see living, breathing, thinking representatives of the human race go there and report back their impressions and experiences in person.

No daily permalinks yet, so scroll down to January 27th. There are other good links and info there as well. And listen to Clark on The Space Show tonight. There will be a live stream available here.

Hobbyspace has had permalinks for a long time, just not immediately obvious ( click the Archive button next to post date )

Thanks Rand for the links to HobbySpace. Sorry about the confusion over the archive. I've now made the permalinks more explicit. I hope to find the time one of these months to upgrade to a genuine web log system.

Rand, I do a lot of docent work at Space Odyssey at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science. We had a big to-do for the landing on the 5th and the 24th, and we had 1400+ people show up and pay $5 to watch what they could have seen on TV, but do it with others and in the Museum. (Okay, it is a pretty cool museam, but still....)

They did this and stayed until after midnight to see the news conference.

They came back the next morning -- we had more attendance Sunday morning than we have had in past free Sundays.

There's a lot of enthusiasm out there.

How can we harness it?

Sure would be nice to see at least one of those guys sitting on the JPL dais just once remark whistfully how what he's seeing is so wonderful that he wishes he could be there in person some day.

Charlie,

With regard to your comment on harnessing enthusiasm for Mars exploration - right now is a critical time for the future of the space program. A new commission lead by Edward Aldrige, and a new organization at NASA (Code T), are developing plans for NASA's human spaceflight program over the next two decades. They will be presenting the results of their planning to the key decision makers in the next few months. It is imperative that the public contact the members of these new offices while they are in the planning phase. If they are going to do a "NASA-centric" space program, we need to make sure it is done in the most efficient and prudent manner possible.

James

James, could I suggest that we try to eliminate the "prudent" part? One of the difficulties in the NASA approach is that, frankly, we aren't willing to take a few casualties.

I think Lindsey is just right - the whole teleprescence bit on the internet is all about whetting appetites. People go to websites and see places ON EARTH and decide to go there to have their own experiences. And the better it is imaged and generally described on a website, the more the desire grows to be in that place.

This is exactly what NGO advocacy groups have been pushing for, the Big Preview, and it is indeed energizing the public.

James

"It is imperative that the public contact the members of these new offices while they are in the planning phase. If they are going to do a "NASA-centric" space program, we need to make sure it is done in the most efficient and prudent manner possible."

So how _does_ one go about influencing these people? I could call up NASA HQ in D.C. and ask for Ed Aldridge I suppose ...

Arguing that people will be "satisfied" by pictures of mars is just like arguing that people will be "satisfied" with pictures of the Grand Canyon. Under that logic there should be no reason to visit the moon; we can see that by just walking outside at night.

Course, getting people to desire visiting mars is a far cry from getting people to support a government program designed to get only a limited number of people to mars for an indefinite purpose. The lure of a peronal mars visit might be enough to interest the youth of today, but all the older folks (and I use the category quite broadly) will need to be reminded of how they will benefit from Mars exploration before they are willing to pay the bill. This is one of the primary reasons for preferring a focus on lunar development when describing US space goals. Mars is cool for the kids, but I'd be perfectly happy if someone would just fly me to the moon.

I think people here are taking a somewhat wrong approach. The biggest question seems to be "How can we get them to support our vision?"

Charlie, did you actually talk to and, more importantly, listen to any of those 1400 people who showed up? Listening is as important as talking in verbal communication. Some of those 1400 people no doubt came out of a desire to see another world close up -- and to do it with other people. For others it just could be the most entertaining thing they could think of doing that day. Still others could share the vision of becoming a spacefaring species.

We complain quite a bit about professional journalism organizations get things wrong. What we tend not to note is the extent they listen to their audience. They might be totally ignorant about, for example, space exploration and development, but they are more aware of what the public wants than we are.

Listening is a skill that can be learned. We might not get to be as good a communicator as, say, Peter Jennings, but I think we can get good enough for our purposes. And, by doing so, we can begin to supplant the Peter Jenningses of this world when we really know more about the story than they do.

With respect to the "prudent" part - prudent doesn't equal "no loss of life", although one certainly hopes that things go smoothly. Prudent means "no stinking Battlestar Galactica spaceships", which you will remember clearly from the elder Bush's space initiative. It also means setting a realistic schedule - if the plan is to go to Mars 'someday, once the resources become available', it simply won't happen. You may notice that most recent headlines are on a "Humans to go to Mars" theme: I think this is indicative that people are excited about this program because of Mars, not because of the moon.

As to what we can do to influence the decisions: we need a coordinated effort with a coherent message. This sort of lobbying will probably be done by the various space-activist groups. The only thing more effective would be to gain control of one of NASA's big contractors and start putting out concept artwork, like Boeing has done.