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.

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.

[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."

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.