iPod Generation Indifferent to Space Exploration

An anonymous reader writes "CNN tells us that today's young adults are no longer excited at the possibility of space exploration: 'The 2004 and 2006 surveys by Dittmar Associates Inc. revealed high levels of indifference among 18- to 25-year-olds toward manned trips to the moon and Mars. The space shuttle program is slated to end in 2010 after construction of the international space station is completed with 13 more shuttle flights. The recent 13-day mission by Discovery's seven astronauts was part of that long-running construction job.' As a result, NASA's budget will include a greater amount of public relations spending."

Comments

Sounds Fair

[Anonymous Coward]

I think that I am in the Space Exploration generation, and I am indifferent to iPods.

They need a reason to care

[TheWanderingHermit]

They'll care about it when it's practical for some of them to take a trip into space or to the Moon.

Youth, by nature, tends to be more shortsighted than mature adults. We'll also likely see a change as that generation ages.

Re:They need a reason to care

[j00r0m4nc3r]

They'll care about it when they run out of places on Earth to build Starbucks and Dunkin Donuts franchises

Re:They need a reason to care

[cdrguru]

I think this is an incredibly wrong attitude. The youth of the 1920s and 1930s were the ones that were excited by the possibilities of space exploration. They grew up with the beginnings of space oriented science fiction and this formed the basis for everyone from Chuck Yeager to Neil Armstrong.

Today's fantasys are shaped by authors which focus far more on dark gothic horror and sex. Look where we are today.

No, it isn't the youth that eventually mature into beliving in space exploration, it is the youth that push the rest of the stay-at-homes into investing in the future.

It is dangerous and foolhardy to place the future of the human race at the mercy of the planet Earth. And viewing the planet as a closed system, without access to off-world resources is equally short sighted. As someone else once said, Humanity is too valuable to place all our eggs in one basket.

Re:They need a reason to care

[mangusman]

It's not just the iPod generation that doesn't care; it's the country as a whole that's lost interest. I'm a huge space fan (baby boomer) but I've lost interest over time simply because the Shuttle missions haven't done too many interesting things. And I'd prefer to call the iPod generation the CellPhone Generation instead. Cripes! Does anyone under 21 NOT have a cell phone. But I digress.

Re:They need a reason to care

[nizo]

They'll care about it when it's practical for some of them to take a trip into space or to the Moon.

Maybe NASA could drum up interest by giving travelers to the moon free iTunes store credit for each flight?

If by "space exploration"

[gelfling]

You mean "everything" I can agree.

iPod Generation?

[garcia]

There is no such thing as the "iPod Generation". Do not go and make up a name for that group just because you need to use the word iPod a certain number of times per day on the front page.

I certainly couldn't care less about space exploration (and I'm just barely outside of that demographic. I always thought it was a waste of time and energy to do a manned Mars exploration. Let's get the moon and space station finished first -- we've already started afterall.

After that, end the programs and use the money right here.

Re:iPod Generation?

[gEvil (beta)]

TFA's title is "NASA's vision lost on Web generation," which is still stupid and meaningless, but at least it's stupid and meaningless without dragging an overhyped brand name into it.

NASA's Vision Lost on Web 2.0 Generation

Ahhhh, much better...

Re:iPod Generation?

[TaoPhoenix]

It could be worse ... it could be the Zune Generation.

Meanwhile, I am in fact less interested in "trips" to Mars than a Base on the moon. All the launch efficiencies kick in, etc.

But we have to deal with a fundamental attitude that Bush rampaged on: we have to quit cowering in fear at the possibilities of terror attacks. We banned apple juice on airplanes for a couple months; the threat matrix is a zillion times worse for a space base. The movie Contact has a telling comment (we expected the attack, so we built it double.)

What could we have accomplished if we went to the moon instead of Iraq?

Re:iPod Generation?

[Reality Master 101]

Where would we be now if Columbus was told not to go on an expedition, because the European youth were apathetic to exploration?

It's worth pointing out that Columbus went on his voyage not for the "love of exploration" as everyone seems to think, but because he was trying to open up a new route to the Indies -- In other words, for profit. "Exploration apathy" wouldn't have affected things in the least.

Space will be explored when the explorers have the same motivation as Columbus. "Because it's there" is not going to take us very far.

Re:iPod Generation?

[Dunbal]

Where would we be now if Columbus was told not to go on an expedition, because the European youth were apathetic to exploration?

      Crushed under the heels of our Aztec overlords after their successful invasion and world conquest in 1879?

      That's usually what happens to me when I play civilization, anyway...the bastards :)

iPod generation?

[Enoxice]

"iPod generation"? WTF? How is that name relevant to...well, anything?

Anyway, I'm in that age range. I can tell you that space exploration is as exciting as it ever was, but I'm indifferent (or, rather, have negative feelings) towards NASA doing it. Wasting all kinds of money on projects that are either never finished or are spectacular failures that could be used for more useful things.

Strange, I would have thought the reverse...

[ReptilianSamurai]

I'm 20 years old and nothing excites me more about the near future than space exploration. The idea that in my lifetime we will likely have a moon base, or go to Mars is hard to believe.

Then again, I read Slashdot, so I may not represent my demographic. ;-)

NASA hasn't done anything exciting recently.

[Kadin2048]

They don't care because it's been a while since NASA has really done anything interesting. It's tough to get excited about space exploration when it's a handful of people riding up and down in a vehicle that's older than most young people's cars, and doing incomprehensible/boring stuff when they get there.

Space exploration was exciting when it meant putting people on the moon; the public has lost interest when it just means sending people up to LEO over and over again, and the people in question aren't them.

I suspect that if we put a person on Mars, you would see an immediate renewed interest in space exploration. But seeing the state to which NASA and the government in general has fallen, I suspect most young people are (wisely) too cynical to believe that will ever occur. Thus they don't care, and turn their attentions to things that seem to be actually progressing.

Re:NASA hasn't done anything exciting recently.

[ericdano]

Yeah. And it takes them......forever to do anything. I mean, this space station......how many years has it been under construction? Hubble needs repair and they are planning on doing it....when?

It's hard to get excited about something that is moving so slow.

Re:NASA hasn't done anything exciting recently.

[timeOday]

I agree, the golden era of space exploration only lasted for the first decade, which was in the 1960's. It's very easy for me to imagine why people were so excited when every year brought fantastic new achievements, but then aerospace more or less leveled off. Me, I'm just old enough to remember the first Shuttle mission, and I can't say much has happened for manned space exploration during my lifetime. If anything I think it has diminished a bit. IMHO, unmanned is where it's at.

Re:NASA hasn't done anything exciting recently.

[M-G]

Don't forget that our current mode of space exploration is something that this generation has grown up with. I remember the first shuttle launch. To a teenager today, shuttles have been flying their entire lives, so to them there's no real novelty to captivate a large audience.

Re:NASA hasn't done anything exciting recently.

[Thansal]

That is the nail!

For a large number of us the concept of putting a man on the moon (let alone in space) is practicaly pedestrian, as opposed to in the 60s when it was a truely amazing (and NEW) thing.

I grew up with the knowledge that space flight, and going to the moon were things we have done, and we did them a LONG (to a 7yr old) time ago.

I for one still am interested in what we are doing in space (I am 23, just for ref), however it isn't the type of thing that it was when we first started.

Now most of us are more interested in what is happening at home (Earth), and understandign that better.

Re:NASA hasn't done anything exciting recently.

[paeanblack]

I think the problem lies in the lack of mystery. In the '50s-'60s, we didn't know if we were going to make it to the moon. We had no idea if it was, or ever would be, possible for a human to make it there and back. Today, putting someone on Mars is, in the minds of the current generation, purely academic. It won't be terribly difficult, just very expensive. That's neither mysterious or interesting to youth.

Perhaps the rate of technological innovation and incremental improvements have much to blame for this attitude. When kids grow up assuming next year's model will be twice as fast and one-third the price, it raises the question, "Why do we need to go to Mars right now?". The extension of this is, "If the same equipment will so much cheaper next year, just like an iPod, why not save some money and visit Mars later. Mars isn't going anywhere."

Re:NASA hasn't done anything exciting recently.

[shaneh0]

Interesting idea. Especially the pragmatist idea of waiting until "next model year."

I personally have hopes that the moon base will be sufficiently interesting to stoke the public demand for a Mars mission.

I'm 24 and when I was in grade school I had a teacher for 3 & 4th grades that was an absolute space nut. We had a chapter of Young Astronauts in the school, she had a space-shuttle cockpit (made from mostly wood with a bunch of dials and toggle switches inside) in her classroom that we could sit in and she filled the class with a sense of excitement about what was going on out there.

It's also worth mentioning that at this time NASA was a bit more exciting, too. Hubble just launched. Endeavor was brand new. And IIRC the Voyager had just left the solar system.

My point is that todays adults can get todays kids interested in this. And also that the prospect of people living on the moon is new and exciting enough that it just might work.

Re:NASA hasn't done anything exciting recently.

[Kadin2048]

I think you summed up my feelings more eloquently than I would have. I think the problem here is that Slashdot caters to a geek audience, and geeks tend to find the idea of a robot probe more interesting than most non-geek people do. To most people, even the Mars rovers and the Voyager probes were just curiosities. I think the general attitude is "well, if we can put a man on the Moon, of course we can put a robot on Mars...duh."

It doesn't matter what NASA does with robots -- they could send them to Pluto and have them building robot cities and making little robots and god knows what else -- but most people would still regard the high-water-mark of the space program as July 20, 1969. There is a fundamental difference between robotic exploration and human exploration, and it doesn't matter what kind of pictures you take or what kind of data you bring back, if it's not a person, it's just a bunch of geeks dorking around with expensive R/C toys.

The day we put a person on Mars, people will be gathered around their TV sets, the same way they were in 1969. But no number of robots or probes are going to engender that kind of interest.

Re:NASA hasn't done anything exciting recently.

[icebrain]

So, if you don't have a result you can hold in your hand in the next five years, it's useless? It reminds me of Michael Faraday's demonstration of electromagnetic induction to the British Prime Minister of his day. Far from being impressed, the Prime Minister said, "Of what use is this discovery, Mr Faraday?" Faraday replied, "Of what use is a baby, Mr. Prime Minister?" Babies certainly don't solve any problems on their own, and require a lot of education and development before they truly benefit society. Right now, human space travel is somewhere about the zygote stage. We can get to the point where it's truly useful, but only if we're willing to put the effort in to develop the technology and don't just sit around whining that "it's too expensive, and I want it NOW!!1!" If the Wright brothers, Otto Lilienthal, et al had decided that "we shouldn't worry about developing airplanes until we can cross the Atlantic in them and drink champagne whle we're doing it," we would have never flown.

Everyone seems to be seeing space exploration as pure scientific research. Yes, that is nice and useful and all... but we should be looking at it with the goal of eventually expanding human presence in the universe. I refer you to http://www.wellingtongrey.net/miscellaneous/archiv e/2006-12-18-why-go.html as an example. Unfortunately, I don't think the general public will take the idea too seriously until either (A) we find life (possibly intelligent) or (B) we see a big asteroid headed our way. And by then, it may be too late.

Let's see...

[Scareduck]

We're running out of oil, faced with the probability of using ever-more CO2-generating coal to fuel our civilization, and we're (the "we" being "anybody who's paying attention") supposed to be excited about sending astronauts into orbit to solve exactly none of these potentially life-threatening problems? I'd call that a good thing. I'd call that knowing your priorities.

Re:Let's see...

[canadian_right]

We are not running out of oil. We are running out of cheap oil. Global warming is only a threat to poor people (callous but true). These are NOT life threatening problems for most people on the Earth. Running out of oil is not a problem at all as we have lots of time to switch to other energy sources. Global warming is not going to be fixed in the short term, if ever, unless it starts to directly affect lots of rich people.

This whole "we should fix all problems on the Earth first" attitude drives me crazy. The major problems on the Earth are not technological problems, they are purely political. People die of starvation because of politics not technology. We have the technology to feed everyone. We already grow enough food to feed everyone. So why do thousands of people die every day from starvation? Politics. We will NEVER fix all the problems on the Earth. Waiting to fix them all means waiting forever.

We should be excited, enthused, and willing to spend money on space exploration because it is the future of humanity. We need to expand to other planets. We need to move out of the parents home. We need more than one basket of eggs. In the long term there is nothing more important than space exploration that leads to people living, permanently, on other planets or habitats.

They don't get it

[ConanG]

Patrick Stewart? David Duchovny? Unless they fly on the shuttle or in the ISS, they won't have any effect.

Kids aren't interested in space because nothing new has happened except a disaster and a "space station" in the last 20 years. They aren't excited because NASA isn't going out of its way to make us believe that one day they will be able to travel to space. Unless, of course, they get a PhD. by the time they're 25, in perfect health, and a model citizen.

If they really want to ignite interest, let regular folk go to space. For the last 50 years, only the most perfect people have been given the chance to go. It's our turn...

Could it be due

[Timesprout]

To the fact that most kids these days are clued up to the vastness/emptyness of space, the barreness of Mars and the Moon and the difficulties of actually getting anywhere, nevermind finding and colonizing other planets. A trip to Mars or the Moon then seems like an utterly insignificant step towards the space exploration and technology they see in the movies etc. They know it has to be done but the cool stuff comes much much later and most likely not in their lifetime.

This is no different then Apollo

[0racle]

After Apollo 11 landed on the moon and the US beat the Russians to it no one cared about what NASA didi after that. No one was interested in space exploration in the first place, it was all about beating the Russians.

The solution is obvious...

[LighterShadeOfBlack]

...land an iPod on Mars.

Why don't we see Aliens?

[paladinwannabe2]

Because Aliens are busy sitting at home experiencing virtual realities. Once computer simulations reach a certain point, you can create a universe bigger and more entertaining than the real one.

Re:Why don't we see Aliens?

[b0s0z0ku]

Once computer simulations reach a certain point, you can create a universe bigger and more entertaining than the real one.

Nah: it'll be limited by human conceptions of what the universe ought to be. I'll bet that the real universe has parts that are more interesting (and frightening) than we could have ever imagined them to be. And this won't change the fact that we'll be just as screwed if the Earth somehow gets rendered unfit for habitation.

-b.

Why?

[Randolpho]

Why are people increasingly disaffected with space exploration? Well, aside from general apathy -- I mean, come on, it's 18-25 year olds, the most apathetic (is that a word?) age -- most of us are "meh" about space because we highly doubt FTL travel will ever actually occur. The planets in our solar system are extremely distant and inhospitable, and terraforming another planet like Mars or Venus is also highly unlikely.

The "exploration" aspect of space is basically gone; we've been pretty much as far as we can feasibly go. It's not a frontier anymore, and it won't be until some future Columbus makes it to another star system and brings a few natives back.

They grew up with space...

[tlhIngan]

The 18-to-25s that aren't showing any interest, well, there's a good reason.

For most of their active life, as far as they were concerned, space flight is an everyday occurance.

They grew up with the Space Shuttle. They grew up with space stations. Exploration is practically common (face it, with the Mars rovers since the mid-90's...). So is it any surprise that manned exploration would get a yawn?

This happened in the 70's. I believe by Apollo 13, no one watched space launches on TV anymore (if the networks would even carry it) nor did the public actually care (until the tank exploded).

For those who grew up in the 70's, well, spaceflight was a mystical thing. These feelings probably stayed. It's basically assumed that spaceflight is a boring reality these days.

Go back a few years, say around the time I was born, and yes, you'd probably find more excitement about spaceflight (hell, I'd love to go).

Take aviation - nobody thinks much about hopping on a plane (other than the PITA that is security nowadays and long lineups) to go somewhere. Go back to the 1950s when travelling by commercial jet was fairly novel. Now, well, it's just another form of travel. The same thing is happening to spaceflight. The novelty has worn off on this "generation" - they grew up with it, and probably assume it's always been the case.

Re:They grew up with space...

[Fallingcow]

Haha, so true.

The ISS is a total waste of money. It's not even half-finished, IIRC, and probably never will be completed.

NASA's public image would be enhanced if at least *some* of the shuttle missions and IIS activities were focused on something other than the following two items:

a) keeping the IIS supplied and working
b) OMFG WTF WILL ANTS/GRASS/WORMS/CRYSTALS DO IN ZERO-G!!!11eleventy1

Hubble and the Mars Rovers are the only cool things they have, and they're letting Hubble die. The Rovers are unmanned. Modern manned spaceflight is about as fun as watching your local plumber do his job, or watching the local elementary school kids grow beans in a clear plastic glass next to the window. WHEEE.

How about this...

[metlin]

...the iPod generation seems indifferent to science and engineering in general, and seems more interested in applied technology.

I'm within the age-group that they specified, but I enjoyed building Tesla Coils, playing with all kinds of electrical and electronic equipment, pyrotechnics and the like.

These days, a lot of kids in my age group aren't particularly motivated towards building anything.

They'd much do things on the computer. Hell, most of them do not even consider Lego Mindstorms to be vaguely interesting.

Then again, I bet every generation feels this way about the newer generation. Who knows?

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

We are not the ipod generation!

[boobavon]

We don't call the 60s kids the sex without condoms generation! I resent the ipod designation.

Re:We are not the ipod generation!

[khendron]

No, we call the generation after that the sex without condoms generation.

Actually, you might be stuck with iPod generation. I think the term was coined by a think-tank organization, and it is actually an acronym for "Insecure, Presssured, Overtaxed, and Debt-ridden."

Sci-fi set unrealistic expectations

[Jerf]

Sci-fi set unrealistic expectations. Current technology can barely get us to the moon, it might get us to Mars in several months if nothing at all goes wrong, and when we get there, there's very little we can do of consequence other than bang on rocks and report back how sparkly the insides are.

This is a far cry from warping halfway across the galaxy to save the universe from a universe-threatening quantum disturbance with no particular relationship to reality.

As our capabilities grow, as they will, it might get more exciting again. For instance, even if we never get a space elevator, it is still theoretically possible to have a space age with rockets; it's "just" a matter of getting enough energy, cheaply enough, with fusion.

But until then, it's become clear to anybody who can think (and that's more people than the sometimes-somewhat-elitist Slashdot crowd will credit) that nothing terribly interesting is going to happen anytime soon in the space industry.

Opiate of the masses

[dsanfte]

Democracy is a fine device for trending national policy decisions towards what people really want. In this case, for this age group, it seems that most people want to sit around playing the PS3 all day, and they really don't care about much else. Electronic games are the new religion of our age. Sad as hell.

Fortunately, the US is not a democracy.

Stop calling us the iPod generation.

[Red Samurai]

It's fucking insulting. I don't have an iPod, and I fucking hate the iPod. And regarding space exploration: show us something new instead of reporting "OMGWTFLOLBBQ there may or may not be water on Mars!!one" every two minutes, and you may have us interested.

Re:There is probably nothing out there anyway

[GreggBz]

That's completely opposed to my experience.

The more and more we learn about space, the more amazing I find it. We always knew it was mostly empty, so that's not news. But here is some news,

You don't find exoplanets captivating? 182 of them.. don't you wonder what they look like? You don't find sub-terrain oceans with who knows what below the surface of Jupiter's icy moons or water flowing on the surface of Mars not so long ago the slightest bit interesting? How about the ever changing notions of the shape and nature of the Universe and it's origins?

Frankly, our own ideas of space aliens, and perhaps our expectations of finding them as we expect are boring. If we find Klingons tomorrow.. yawn..

If recent planetary and deep space science has taught us anything, it is that we have no idea what to expect.

We can already do it...

[Pojut]

We have long had the technology to build a base on the moon. Do you know how much easier and cheaper launching exploration vehicles, both manned and unmanned from the moon would be rather than from earth? I know the DISTANCE isn't that big of a change, but the GRAVITY is a massive change, it would take exponentially less energy (read: fuel) to launch from the moon...Not to mention the observatories and labs that could be set up...after all, what better place to research low-gravity technology than in *gasp* LOW GRAVITY

The probelm is funding. The feds don't want to put any money into space. If we took the budget we have put into the Iraq war 8 years ago, a moon base would already be under construction and ready to be completed in 5-10 years. Like I said, the technology has been around. The FUNDING has not.

I know why people nowadays don't care. Alot of people feel we won't do anything of great percieved importance in our lifetime as of right now, but hey you gotta start the advancement of the race some time. Why not now? When else in history have we had the opportunity to? We have the technology, the money is in circulation, and we have the motivation (survival).

Why the hell are we being so stupid as to throw away such an opportunity?

Because the current manned space program is boring

[joshv]

So can anyone tell me, what, if any real and important science is taking place on our beloved space station? And please don't tell me 'research on long term effects of zero-G'. We're only confirming finding from 20 years ago.

Absolutely nothing interesting has happened in the manned space program since we first repaired Hubble in orbit. Since then we've done nada, nothing, zilch, zero, bupkiss of interest to much of anyone, be they John Q iPod, or a PhD in astrophysics.

The manned space program has become utterly irrelevant. NASA can spend as much money as they want trying to get people excited about 'crystals' grown in microgravity, but we have heard it all before.

Do something new and different. Send people someplace they haven't been before. Or maybe let's get people living, I mean really living, on the moon. It is not impossible with today's technology. It just takes more imagination and political will than NASA currently possesses.

Crap Detector Alert - no study details given

[Toby The Economist]

> The 2004 and 2006 surveys by Dittmar Associates Inc. revealed high levels of indifference among 18- to
> 25-year-olds toward manned trips to the moon and Mars.

Erm, that's it? that's all we get?

How big was the sample? how were they chosen? was it ten people chosen from a Big Brother audience? what questions were they asked? how exactly do you decide what "indifference" is?

What a complete load of tosh. An utterly unsubstaniated story.

As a 15-year old...

[PompousClown]

...I can say that in my school, I have certainly observed a great deal of student apathy regarding just about everything that has to do with science. It's really a sad thing, because I suspect that this is largely due to our incredibly weak science department. The teachers are terrible. Either you're stuck with the stereotypical monotonous robot of an educator, spewing out terms and expecting the class to understand, or you've got some bipolar nutcase who is certain that we're all gonna die due to global warming. Although my current grade in my BSCS class isn't exactly stellar (79 average), out of all the students in my class I'm still probably the most interested in the subject. This, I would imagine, is because the school system hasn't beaten out my extreme curiosity which I have kept with me all my life. Every night, my dad would read to me from one of his favorite science fiction novels (Ender's game is one that I remember best). I would soak up programs on channels such as the Discovery Science Channel every chance that I got (I still do). And to top it all off, my father and I would frequently discuss the prospects and benefits of space exploration. This is what impacted me the most. Out of all my schooling, it was the extracurricular exploration and stimulation that made all the difference to me. I'm really lucky to have two great parents. I'd say that 40-50% of all the kids I know have parents who are divorced. More still have irresponsible parents to begin with. It's sad, but true.

Oh, I guess that the fact that I was homeschooled from grades 2 to 8 made a big difference aswell.

This is possibly insightful

[Flying pig]

I too am in the Space Exploration generation, and I too am indifferent to iPods.

And I'm not surprised. The members of our generation (in their teens in the 60s, I guess) who were interested in space flight were not exactly your average passive consumer. My brother worked for NASA, and I did work on, among other things, rad-hard real time computers. When I was an undergraduate at a university not far from Ely, your audio system did not count unless you had built it yourself, from components, and by components I mean tubes, transistors, and for real kudos turn your own vinyl turntable out of an alumin(i)um blank.

Nowadays our modern equivalent, when it isn't doing the same kind of thing, is writing its own audio decoders.

The difference between then and now is quite simple. There is a lot more rubbish about. The size of the recording industry was not so bloated in the sixties and the bandwidth was much smaller. People built their own turntables, for the most part, to listen to Mozart and Wagner and (Richard) Strauss and perhaps Berio and Ligeti as I recall, not pop music which was beneath contempt; it was, after all, the product of multiple remixings from tape and there was no depth to bring out. Now, the record industry is trying to extend copyright still further on stuff with a shelf life of hours, and this is, for the most part, what will get loaded into iPods.

My conclusion? The Space Exploration generation and the iPod generation are probably practically disjoint sets. Sheep and goats, in fact. Nothing to see here; move along.

Re:This is possibly insightful

[Omestes]

I'm younger than you, significantly (teen years in the 90's), am interested in iPods, AND space exploration. But I do think that geeks (either cobbling physical stuff, or programming) will be much more interested in space exploration regardless of age. When we talk about the average Joe, there is a good difference between the so-called "iPod generation" and people born anytime before the 80's, the nationalism associated with the Cold War. Space was a point of pride because we had to be there before the U.S.S.R. Now we've "been there, done that", and we can't see tangible gains in space exploration.

eople built their own turntables, for the most part, to listen to Mozart and Wagner and (Richard) Strauss and perhaps Berio and Ligeti as I recall, not pop music which was beneath contempt; it was, after all, the product of multiple remixings from tape and there was no depth to bring out.

I disagree, perhaps YOU were, but the 60's were the rise of pop, it was when music started following the form it does today with an actual "recording industry", my folks huge collection of LP and 45's refute your account, as does the rise of Elvis in the late 50's and the Beatles in the 60's, both of which could be seen as the birth of modern music.

Regardless, I don't see what people's choice in music have to do with it.

I think literacy might play a role though, and not only in taste of reading, but actually reading. As probably does level of education. Both of which we're abject failures at now, starting around when the "iPod generation" was in school. I grew up loving science classes, and reading old pulp Sci-Fi, and I am an aberrant in the real world. Most people my age would rather not read a book, much less care what a bunch of disattactched men in lab coats are rambling about in vaguely confusing terms. I'm sure their is a high level of correlation between level of education and elective literacy and interest in space travel.

Re:This is possibly insightful

[whitehatlurker]

I knew there was a reason why my MP3 player is a SANSA. It's not that I'm cheap, it's that I support space exploration.

Re:This is possibly insightful

[Kpau]

I'd actually argue that the indifference arises from a few decades of our "fearless leaders" in Congress and the White House being absolute spazzes, grinches, and zealot idiots when it comes to science and space exploration. After a while, indifference is the safest emotional response. "Going to Mars, eh?" yeah yeah, sure sure. "Moon Bases, eh?" pbffffft In my youth, I really sincerely planned on probably expiring somewhere near the Asteroid Belt (went to college in the mid 70s). I did work in NASA in the 80s... but after the Space Shuttle (the lamest camel ever constructed by strangled funds so each launch is a lot more amazing than Joe Sixpack realizes) and the ISS (so constrained by funds that it is basically a useless State Rest Stop in Space), I figure the first bases on the Moon will be an Indian/Japanese/Chinese venture and that my grandchildren will either have to immigrate to join in or go as lame American tourists. For anyone who whines about the expense: money spent on that "little adventure" in Iraq would have funded an amazing Solar System infrastructure. Hell, one day's expenditure in Human Services exceeds all the total research/science budget. Pardon me, I'm off to grumble and stew now...

Re:This is possibly insightful

[Tim Browse]

Regardless, I don't see what people's choice in music have to do with it.

It allows the OP to feel superior. Simple!

Re:This is possibly insightful

[MrAnnoyanceToYou]

BS.

I apologize for being a bit of a jerk here, but there are a few other things done by your generation which make Space Exploration not as big a deal to mine. (I'm slightly outside of the iPod age group) The world has changed extensively and definitively for a thousand reasons.

EX: I could eventually figure out how to build myself a radio. With enough time and patience I could assemble all the parts off of the internet. Then, I'd need to put together a workshop. Where? Oh, yeah, in my little studio apartment. (that's changed a bit) Population density's a little higher than it used to be, so I'm spending a much higher percentage of my income supporting myself. Hrm. So I have myself a radio that cost me extremely valuable time. It's about the size of a coffee cup, the first time. I've just spent fourty hours at least putting together something that I think is cool, but for about twice the money and a hundredth the effort, I can order an iPod and just collect the music.

Realistically, I will never be able to build myself anything with the level of functionality an iPod has. Even understanding exactly what all the components inside do is probably a level of knowledge and detail unattainable to the vast majority of the populace - even at Apple. I've known people at Intel who didn't know much more than their tiny little piece of a tiny subprocessor set in any detail.

Second, Space was a lot different in the sixties. The Golden Age of science fiction had just passed. Part of the dream had been that there were people, or plants, or SOMETHING on Venus. Now we're pretty damn sure that if there's life out there, we're not going to get to see it in our natural lifetimes unless we're one of the strange and isolated few picked to get frozen and never come back. How many of those would there be and how likely is it if you were willing you'd get to go?

Add to this that the problems being faced on Earth in modern cultures right now are all these extremely depressing, boring, entropy-and-politics-related ones, and you have a bad environment for anyone who has a brain to be thinking about space exploration as a career. The dreams of space exploration your generation had were wonderful, but the reality is that unless someone figures out FTL travel of some kind, we're stuck here. If we're stuck here, we have a whole mess of ugly problems to fix; the first two of which are energy generation and overpopulation. Space exploration would solve the second if the first went away, as long as that pesky relativity stuff just poofed. But space exploration now - as it is being used by the current administration - is just a red herring to keep eyes off of the fact that their record on science is one of polluting the good in the name of profit.

Which brings me, of course, to the problems which are actually BIGGER than the 'measley' problems caused by the laws of physics. The organizational ineffectiveness brought to life in the last fifty years is amazing. Bureaucracy has fluorished. And normally, people would be independent enough - they certainly have these urges, especially in America - to just watch bureaucracies die their slow deaths of ineptitude and be rebuilt. Unfortunately, computers have propped up inept companies and people by allowing them to take control over larger and larger groups of people. To the point where so many people are working for malfunctioning organizations that they are in control of necessary resources.

There are problems to be solved here first. Getting to Alpha Centauri and being able to build a colony there would be great. But that's icing on a cake that's rotting at the moment. So quit complaining about whipper snappers not caring about space. The smart ones are looking at the ground and saying, "Damn. Why'd you leave me all this to deal with?" And stuck wondering about where to find a lever to start fixing it.

maybe they're just sensible and rational

[oohshiny]

Young Americans have high levels of apathy about NASA's new vision of sending astronauts back to the moon by 2017 and eventually on to Mars, recent surveys show.

Good: sending astronauts to the moon or to Mars is a waste of money. What we should be doing is sending out a lot more robotic probes. If we don't waste our money on sending meatbags to Mars, we could have planetary rovers on every major solar system body within the next three decades, and we could have several interstellar spacecraft on their way by the end of the century. The data and images those probes would send back is what's exciting.

Re:maybe they're just sensible and rational

[pod_sixer_jay]

And for your next vacation would you rather go to Hawaii, or merely receive a nice color picture of Hawaii?

Humans go to exotic and remote places themselves not because they merely wish to collect data from it, but because it is in the nature of our species to explore in person. A manned presence is not merely a necessary prerequisite to the acquisition of data; it is an end unto itself. The conquest of Mt. Everest, for example, had nothing to do with seeing what was on the top of the mountain. It was about pride in the accomplishment. NASA sent a handful of unmanned probes to the Moon that went largely unnoticed by the public. But when Neil Armstrong stepped onto the lunar surface, the entire Earth stopped to watch. To what do we owe that difference?

There are different kinds of space science. No one mode of exploration suffices. Those who study stellar radiation, for example, have no need actually to be there in person. In fact, unmanned probes do far better at collecting the kind of data best suited to that kind of science. But planetary science cannot be satisfied with mere telepresence. Planetary geologists need to be there. Sure, they'll do the best they can with the technology available at any given moment, but ask a planetary geologist whether he can do his job better through a little robot, or actually there in person.

The Soviets in the late 1960s and early 1970s explored the Moon remotely and with unmanned sample-return missions while the Americans sent human astronauts during the same period -- albeit likely at considerably greater cost. The Soviets got one badly placed retroreflector, a handful of grainy telemetered photographs of random terrain, and about ten ounces of undifferentiated lunar dust.

Apollo, in contrast, got a set of precisely-aligned retroreflectors and precisely-placed scientific instruments. Astronauts took 20,000 high-resolution photographs of terrain they selected according to on-site observation. They brought back 800 pounds of lunar surface material chosen according to geological significance, photographed in situ, core-sampled, and carefully-documented. The quality of the Apollo data is simply orders of magnitude greater than any achieved through unmanned technology -- all because there were trained humans there doing the science in person.

We meatbags have high-resolution color stereoscopic vision with a broad dynamic range, better than anything we can currently put into a spacecraft. We have highly capable means of locomotion that adapts to a variety of terrain and can achieve safe speeds up to several meters per second on planetary surfaces. We have a pair of manipulators easily better than anything we can currently deploy in space. And all this is controlled by an on-site computer capable of storing and applying PhD-level expertise as well as displaying helpful exploratory qualities such as curiosity and intuition. The computer is highly-adaptable and well integrated with the sensory apparatus. Even if manned exploration were only about data collection, meatbags are still much better at some useful forms of it than our little six-wheeled proxies.

How to fix

[Danathar]

Require Science Fiction reading in HS...lots of it.

Get off your high horses

[Overzeetop]

I see a lot of posts about how we have far more important things to worry about than space exploration - wars, poverty, famine, global warming, disease - and that we should ignore space and fix these problems first. I've got bad news for you folk - they ain't gonna get fixed if we drop the space program.

Now, being an ex-NASA guy, I feel fully justified in saying that the Administration is not a bastion of efficiency or efficient use of science dollars for science sake. Manned spaceflight will probably never be as cost effective as robotic exploration or remote sensing. Still, it can be a very valuable resource for the inspiration of younger generations to go into science and engineering. Both of those fields are critical to advancement against the world's ills of poverty, famine, globla warming, and disease. Since science doesn't pay as well as non-productive professions like accountancy, law, and real estate sales, we need some way to inspire the next generation to do something other than make enough disposable income to buy the latest iPod. NASA fuels both interest and the work they do has far reaching impact for science (and not just pens that write upside down and expensive mattresses).

What we do need is a real mission and real results. Without that, the popultation is going to see NASA for what it currently is: a rudderless agency spending lots of money to do very little real science. Sadly, with the pork included in its budget, NASA will never garner the excitement and focus it has had in the past. Plus with the contractor mentality it will never have the in-house expertise keep and propogate the corporate knowledge that allows for efficent and consistent advances in aeronautic science.

Right now the NASA beurocracy and the year-to-year funding methodology by congress has doomed the agency to its current fate - mundane and uninspired. I would love to see a rebirth of the agency, but I'm not holding my breath.

Re:Are there any good reason to care?

[Dunbal]

and there is no immediate payoff to being in space.

      There isn't?

      http://www.sti.nasa.gov/tto/shuttle.htm And these are just in the past 15 years or so...

Low Risk = Less Interesting

[mitchell_pgh]

If you compare our rather lower risk missions of the 90s/00s to the rather high risk missions of the 60s/70s, it's no surprise that it's less interesting.

Also, I believe the image of NASA has changed from that of a cutting edge government sponsored organization to a lumbering money pit. We really need to "fight" someone if we want public support... even if it's more PR than anything.

Re:well, except...

[Moofie]

"and get orders of magnitude more scientific data"

Yet, if we send people to Mars, we get a whole new planet to live on and explore, forever.

I'll vote for sending people to Mars, thanks. Scientific data and photographs are cool and all, but actual real meatbags on other planets is way, way, way, infinitely, indescribably, ineffably, superbly more exciting.

Why bother with exploring space if we're not going to go there?

That's just me, though.

Re:well, except...

[oohshiny]

Yet, if we send people to Mars, we get a whole new planet to live on and explore, forever.

A manned mission to Mars and settling Mars are two entirely different propositions; even if we managed to pull of dozens of manned landings on Mars, we'd still be far away from any sort of settlement.

Why bother with exploring space if we're not going to go there?

Who said anything about "not going there"? Eventually, we will settle on Mars. But for now, we're talking about near-term strategy for space exploration, and robotic spacecraft are not only the fastest way for gathering scientific data, they are also the fastest way towards a real manned space program.

If we're going to go ahead with a manned trip to Mars, the project will likely get killed before it ever gets executed, and manned space exploration will be held back by at least half a century.

Re:well, except...

[Moofie]

"A manned mission to Mars and settling Mars are two entirely different propositions;"

Why? Why not have the first mission designed integrally with the ideal of establishing a long-term presence? I agree with you 100%: Flags and footprints is a waste of time and money. Even if the first Mars-tronauts aren't colonists, I think they should absolutely be setting up the colonists' house.

"the project will likely get killed before it ever gets executed"

Oh, agreed. Depending on Congress for anything that requires foresight and vision and daring is a losing proposition.

In part, I agree with you. The best thing NASA might be able to do in the near term is shoot robots around. But, I don't agree that that should be the end of human space exploration: It's only the beginning.

Re:Because the current manned space program is bor

[pod_sixer_jay]

If you want to send people someplace they haven't been before, or establish a permanent manned presence on the Moon, you need technology that is more durable and reliable than what we have now. And that is exactly the kind of technology that is being developed for and tested on the ISS. It's not exciting work, but it has to be done. It's absolutely crucial for the next phase of manned space exploration.

Apollo was designed and built under the pressure of a race to the Moon. As such it took liberties and employed shortcuts that are not acceptable now, especially since NASA is under increased scrutiny over safety. Apollo used technology that was very expensive, had a limited shelf life, relied on consumable resources, and ignored certain problems such as periodic solar radiation. These are perfectly defensible design choices for short-term scouting missions. Cutting those corners allowed Apollo to be developed relatively quickly. But the same strategy won't work now. We need renewable resources and much longer-lived spacecraft. We need better defenses against the environmental hazards. And since it's not a race this time, we can afford to take our time and research problems deliberately.

NASA has no mandate to do fancy things every four or five years to keep the taxpayers entertained. In fact, NASA -- like any public institution -- can only spend its money on what the taxpayer-voted budget allows from year to year. And until recently the public has simply not granted funds to NASA to extend its manned programs to anything beyond the shuttle and the ISS. Unfortunately this is not a case where the public can sit idly by and wait for NASA to impress them. The way it works is that the public has to pass its pre-existing excitement on to NASA in the form of a mandate and a big check.

Re:well, except...

[b0s0z0ku]

And I, for one, would volunteer to send you there!

Thanks! We need more competent navigators and drive system engineers. Please send me your resume - do you have experience in hydroponic agriculture as well? It ought to be an interesting trip.

-b.

Re:Who cares what they want?

[An Onerous Coward]

You're right. It's not like it was when you were a young person, and all young people were politically active, and respectful of their elders, and didn't play their music so damned loud. It's not real music, just noise. It all sounds the same. No moral backbone in the lot of 'em, nosiree.

You want to see college-aged kids get more involved in politics? Simple: allow election-day voter registration. The younger you are the more likely you are to be bouncing from apartment to apartment, and the more difficult it is to keep your voter registration up to date. Make that one, simple change, and I guarantee you that we'd close a few percentage points of the gap (which stood at 52% to 64% as of 2004).

Notice that the gap between young and old voters is 12%, far less than the difference between the U.S. average and the average in hedonistic, irresponsible, decadent narco-socialist states like Denmark (which averages in the 85-88% participation rate). So if you want to justify your !moralFiber => lowParticipation thesis, you've got a big hill to climb. I think a better thesis would be that people who believe in their government are more likely to participate in the voting process. Transparency International's Corruption Perceptions Index rates Denmark at 9.5 and the U.S. at 7.3. What does a 2.2 point difference actually mean? Well, it's about the same difference as exists between the U.S. and Oman, Jordan, and the Czech Republic.

In 2004, we dropped our bongs, put our baseball caps on backwards, and crawled out of our parents' basements to do our civic duty in record numbers. Result? Our contribution was easily outweighed by the "dudes shouldn't marry dudes, and terrorists are targeting our local bowling alley" demographic. We've inherited all your generation's lifestyle expectations, an economy that cannot sustain them, and a national debt that enriched your generation while impoverishing ours. We've seen the biggest groundswell of voter anger in over a decade (2006) translate into a 94% incumbency rate (a mere 26 out of 435 incumbents lost their seats). We've seen our generation go off to sweat and bleed and die in Iraq to protect the interests of a handful of privileged businessmen (invariably from your generation, not ours). We are expected to have higher educations than any previous generation, but we are given less support in pursuit of it (higher tuition, slashing of student grants and student loans, etc.) So if we see our government as indifferent or even hostile to our generation and our interests, and utterly resistant to positive change, can you really blame us?

Ah, that felt good.

Re:The time lines are way toooo long.

[pod_sixer_jay]

Apollo took 10 years because the goal was to do it in 10 years, and that meant doing things quickly but not necessarily sustainably. The spacecraft and launch vehicles malfunctioned routinely; not always in a way that meant scrubbing the mission, but certainly in ways that made us think, "Do we really want to do it this way forever?"

Technology is not a homogeneous thing, nor is it interchangeable. The intervening 40 years of "technical development" is significant only if it is relevant. We hung up the specific moon landing tools in 1972 and generally haven't had any occasion to look at them again. Aerospace technology is not forever valid and forever practical. Once the industry stops doing something for about five years, it generally has lost the ability to do it again no matter how much propositional knowledge remains. You forget how to build it, and you move on to new methods and standards anyway.

And that all begs the question whether we want to do it the same way again. Apollo had specific, limited goals and was to be done as quickly as possible. The new missions have different objectives and different constraints. Past engineering solutions, no matter how much or little of them we know, simply won't work unmodified.

Wishful thinking aside, there simply is no magic button we can push and get a moon-capable manned space system in 5 years. That's just unrealistic. There is no "off the shelf" technology for sending humans back to the moon. There never was. That said, you'll notice we are developing new manned moon technology using the vocabulary of the manned launch vehicles we have been using for the past 20 years -- the human-rated ATK SRB design and the human-rated ET/SSME cluster.

Re:Choices in music

[Weedlekin]

"In the 60s, the majority of the population got music from the radio and from juke boxes."

This simply isn't true. I was born in England in 1960, and did not come from a wealthy family: both my parents worked, we lived in a rented flat, and I remember them saving for well over a year to buy a small refrigerator, yet we had a record player and a fair number of records, and so did just about everyone else I knew (all of whom lived in council houses with two working parents and low incomes). Such devices were invariably mono with auto-changer turntables of dubious quality, and many were doubtless bought second-hand (as was ours), but they were pretty common, and their owners must have had at least some records, because the devices were useless without them.

NB: second-hand singles were available very cheaply because of the high turnover from juke-boxes, which tended to be supplied with new material on a regular basis, so the older stuff got turfed out to make space for it, and the companies that owned them tended to end up with large numbers of records they had no use for, and thus virtually gave away. You could tell they'd come from juke boxes because their middles had been punched out (although being four or five years old meant that I didn't know this at the time), but new "clip-on" middles could be bought very cheaply, so this wasn't a problem (most players in any case had adapters, but the replacement middles meant that records could be stacked on the auto-changer, which was good for parties). LPs (later called "albums") weren't used in juke-boxes though, so they were much more costly, and therefore a lot rarer among the low-income groups that I knew and mixed with.

Re:Because the current manned space program is bor

[joshv]

Look, designing a lunar base in not outside of our current engineering capabilities. I also have no idea what building a zero-G space station has to do with designing a 1/6 G habitat on large-ish moon you can burrow into.

Certainly we have to build to higher tolerances these days. But we know what those tolerances are, and we are building nothing, doing nothing, but going in circles in low earth orbit running experiments drempt up by school children.

The space station serves no purpose. None. There is no new science being conducted there, and the platform has no utility for staging other missions or building space craft in orbit.

NASA, you want excitement? Establish a permanent international colony on the moon. You'll never get more positive press than when the first baby is born on the moon.