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

[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.

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.

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.

[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.

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.

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.

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?

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

[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!

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: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.

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.