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NASA Trailer To Be Shown Before Star Trek: Into Darkness
Tired of seeing ads for cars and soda before the films you watch at the theater? Well, a successful crowdfunding campaign at Indiegogo will see a trimmed down version of NASA's 'We Are Explorers' video aired before showings of the upcoming Star Trek: Into Darkness in theaters all over the country. "Most people recognize space as a key expression of our character. They know our space programs as a globally recognized brand of ingenuity. The recently landed Mars Curiosity Rover was the latest reminder that space systems are the crown jewels of our scientific and technical prowess. Less known is the indispensable value space systems bring to our everyday lives. Space provides irreplaceable capabilities for defense, public health, finance, medicine, energy, agriculture, transportation, development and countless other fields. Investments in space programs are precisely about improving and protecting life on Earth. ... By funding this campaign, we can remind students and the general public that our nation's space agency is working hard on the next era of exploration." The campaign's funding goal was reached in just six days — their stretch goal will increase the number of theaters for the clip from 59 screens to 750. The movie comes out on May 17th.
Wider exposure to science cannot be a bad thing.
Keep on knockin'
https://robbiecrash.me
It's not like you have to convince the average Star Trek fan that NASA should get some sensible funding.
But given the quality of the more recent Star Trek movies, this might just be the best thing they'll see that evening.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
I've seen a lot of better trailers for NASA than this one. Also, why is Kirk holding a gun in the movie poster??
...submitter works at Lockheed.
Fsck "our nation's" space agency; there's nothing "our" about it—the government just took my money and wasted it on a commercial.
I don't trust bureaucrats to allocate my capital properly, and this ridiculous propaganda campaign is proof of the validity of this distrust. The fundamental principle of Capitalism is that capital is best allocated by those who accumulated said capital in the first place; the bureaucrat has no idea what he's doing.
The entire thing basically looks like the intro of Star Trek: Enterprise. Minus the singing.
Also, practically minus the "future". All that trailer does is show things NASA "used to do".
Making the ST: E intro far more inspirational.
On the other hand, "We are explorers" is not really the motto that syncs with Jar Jar's Trek - which is about lens flares, explosions, running, shooting and apparently tits in space.
Not that there's anything wrong with tits in space, it's just that when talking about "exploration of celestial spheres" our goal should be set a little farther than a pair of double Ds.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
the GNDN conduit of the real world
The last movie turned out to be a lie.
It was called star trek and it had some characters with the same name in and a few things in common.
But it wasn't star trek, the universe wasn't the same one.
I don't imagine many people will be conned again
I'd see the point if this was old trek, but it's lens-flare bieber trek. Not NFN at all.
Just think how much more awesomer this would have been if made by the IRS. Cheaper too - they already have a Star Trek set and costumes.
The curiosity rover's "7 minutes of terror" is way better: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h2I8AoB1xgU
Still gives me goosebumps watching it.
TFA cites younger people as being the target audience. As a young person who also happens to know quite a few other young people this seems strange. In general, young people tend to understand the importance of NASA and space programs in general - we all know all know the associated trivia such as where ballpoint pens and Teflon came from. We all know the importance of science - we are all (unless you are in the Bible Belt of the USA) taught it in school and we are all aware of what science can do for us.
It seems to me that the people who actually need to be targeted are the middle aged and older people who are in control of the votes and money needed to revitalise the space programs. Luckily, there is some penetration of Star Trek into these age groups.
Look at all that light pollution - this is why most of you have never seen a starry sky. It's truly amazing and infinite times more inspiring than crap from Hollywood.
We all know that BLACKS aren't explorers. I wonder why NASA uses the term "We" to try to make out that all races are the same, and are all equally participating in space exploration? LOL
I've been worried lately that to enough of my colleagues know about NASA or understand how prestigious it would look on their resume. Money well spent.
p.s. If you don't know, NASA is the government-funded space agency in the USA.
.. I wish there was a "This video was funded by public donations" under the NASA ad at the end. I can see a lot of people in the theatre being needlessly jaded by the idea that their tax dollars were spent advertising a government agency, when that isn't the case here.
In Start Trek's one world government run by the army, seemingly
Irrelevant space agency that needs to get abandoned in the cold-war era where it belongs.. (FIRE SALE)
seriously though, even in Star Trek it was a privately run thing with a really interested scientist trying to create a warp engine (and that's how it will happen)
people working at nasa are just doing their job, they don't care what they're doing as long as they get a frigging paycheck at the end of the month (jaded old workers)
Problem is War is more profitable and more desirable to human kind. We prefer to kill each other in the name of god, peace, and love.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
users. BSD/OS (i always bring my In our group
What excites me more than shuttle missions are satellites and probes NASA has been sending out all these years.
MRO and to a lesser extent MSL are worth 20 round trip human mars missions as far as I'm concerned. New telescopes like JWST are likely to be as priceless as HST and WMAP have proven to be.
It is simply cheaper and more productive to push technology without having to worry about earthly things like human safety.
My only problem with the video other than being slightly cheezy is the video is all rockets and no science.
"Tired of seeing ads for cars and soda before the films you watch at the theater?"
A long time ago. I stopped paying $10 to then watch a commercial.. but I'm old fashion that way.
What's the point of showing a NASA promotional video before a Star Trek movie? Everyone who watches that movie is already a fan of space exploration. The video should be shown in front of something completely different, like The Great Gatsby.
I would have sponsored the funding campaign on Indiegogo if that had been their goal. Instead, it's just preaching to the choir. What a waste.
And the men who hold high places must be the ones who start
To mold a new reality... closer to the heart
for corporations suckling on the government teat: "Created by the Aerospace Industries Association (AIA) of America" Want to know more?
play area Try not Trouble. It hand...don't are a few ggod [gay-5ex-access.com]?
Is this some kind of Nerd Test? The movie is called "Star Trek Into Darkness" (no colon).
-- Don't Tase me, bro!
Star Trek is the greatest advertisement for NASA our culture has produced. Maybe they should consider putting this before the next Larry The Cable Guy movie.
... instead of a semi-close local small town play actor's.
This is all about NASA making a scientifically correct movie how to fly some astronouts to mars and back. They will use real life models of rockets and gear. And it will cost the budget of NASA a lot. THey might even make it *** an international co-production ***. Minimal CGI, and not those fake moon-landing minitures and errors like a waving flag.
It will be premiered on the news, and not in some MPAA controlled screen.
I saw that NASA trailer! It showcases NASA's new goal of getting a human back into space by the year 2100. :-)
If NASA was as good as doing things in space as they are at the propaganda, then we'd be doing great. Sure, they do a number of things in space that are remarkable, but the logistics and infrastructure for serious space activities just aren't there.
For example, they're kicking around the idea of a Europa ice drill. Why only one such mission? There are plenty of other icy Moon and asteroids out there. The same drill could be used on Saturn's moon Enceladus (which has similar liquid water activities). It could be used on Ceres, the largest asteroid which also happens to have a ice layer. It could be used on all of the other major Jovian moons. It could with modification be used on Phobos (a moon of Mars) or some Trojan asteroids of Jupiter.
Same issue with Mars spacecraft. All the rovers are one-off. They never sent another wave of MERs (Mars Exploration Rover) or MSLs (Mars Science Laboratory).
They never say, "Oh, this is a really cool tool. Let's use it more than one time." Manned space is even worse off with ridiculously priced space stations and terrible launch vehicle development efforts. It's all about securing government funding for all the special interests in the right congressional districts.
This is the lack of ambition and economic awareness that will cripple NASA until they (and the US in general) change how they do things.
By Grabthar's Hammer ... what a space program.
Does anyone else still prefer the 1975 red typographic "worm" logo NASA used to use? I would have loved to see that in white against a black background at the very end of this trailer. Maybe it's just a generational thing; most movies trailers can't resist throwing in their titles in Bank Gothic near the end.
Shit. Didn't think it would. Was not expecting it to go that way.
I miss who we were as a nation. Life is hard and knowing we are getting after it like that is inspiring in the best of ways.
Funding and continuity of mission as dictated by Congress is needed for what you describe, and that's been lacking since well before the end of the Apollo program. NASA has struggled just to manage to do what they're doing now.
Congratulations! You managed to inflate the intelligence of yourself and your peers while simultaneously denegrating and stigmatizing others. You earned bonus points for slamming the bible belt. Perhaps, if we had a visionary, charismatic leader like yourself, we could shed our problems and achieve uptopia.
Young people are not what you say. MTV. QED.
Why couldn't they have used the amazing Carl Sagan video?
I agree with you in general. However I would say that Europa is the outstanding target candidate, because there is significant evidence of melt-through (e.g. Conamara Chaos, other 'chaos' formations). This suggestive of a reasonably thin (10km) crust and potential for cycling of materials through the crust.
I do not want your cheap brainburning drugs. They are useless for work. And I am a working man today.
All I can say is: WOW. Seeing that video is the kind of thing that inspired me to want to be an astronaut in the first place. I went to Space Camp twice, won the Right Stuff award one time... but my less-than 20/20 vision conspired against me.
-Z
In my opinion it could have been far more convincing. It is not just an "optional" desire to explore the reason we should fund NASA. It is the moral and logical imperative in order to survive as species. For the survival of intelligent species on earth. Larry Niven's line comes to mind: The dinosaurs are extinct because they did not have a space program. We need more telescopes around the earth and Venus to look for incoming small and large objects that can hit earth. And then we need to devise ways to intercept and avoid them. This argument does not make space exploration an optional luxury, but a critical necessity.
I'd prefer a commercial ad pitch from SpaceX rather than one from NASA, which looks more like a pitch for taxpayer dollars.
SpaceX has accomplished so much in the last 11 years since its founding, that by the time the next 11 years are over, they will have relegated NASA to a backseat role.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ujX6CuRELFE
First, by using the NASA video, they will fail the same way NASA always fails... by NOT telling the audience what it needs to know and does not already know: That NASA only gets a fraction of a percent of the federal budget. Every time the public is polled on this stuff they think most government money goes to: the military, foreign aid, "waste, fraud and abuse", and the space program. The truth is that we spend more than ten times as much every year in interest on the national debt as we spend on NASA
Second, By airing at Star Trek showings, they are reaching out to people who already like "space stuff"... but most of them are into the wrong type of space; too many of them want to know when we will have warp drives and phasers and sex with aliens while not enough are interested in the hardest part of spaceflight (the 100 miles between the ground the black airless void, both going up and coming back down). For many Trekkies/Trekkers a "real" space program is boring and most will never act to support it. They'll not make a phone call to, send a snailmail to, or kick some bucks to a politician who supports NASA unless that politician already supports other things he/she likes; in other words: even for most SciFi people, NASA is a lower priority than just about everything else including social policies (like abortion, gay marriage, etc) personal economics (like student loan policy) superficial things (like how "cool" a politician seems) and even non-political things that take their time (like a Taco Bell run, or going out to a movie...)
Third, an outside group running an ad in some movie theaters cannot overcome one basic fact: NASA is now so incapable/inept/pointless/incompetent that it cannot even put a monkey on a sub-orbital flight (something it could do back in the 1950's). NASA made attempt after attempt after attempt to design a replacement for the Space Shuttle over the past couple decades and failed on every try... it became too dependent upon a defense industry that had shrunk and consolidated post-cold-war to the point where we now have several big firms that each is essentially a monopoly in the area of defense it has focused on. Anything the taxpayer buys from these firms is now nearly guaranteed to be behind schedule, over cost, and bug-riddled (they simply lack competition and they KNOW that their customer, the government, also knows they lack a competitor to turn to). As a solution, many herald Space-X... which is nice, but they too are learning to live on government money and if they do not work VERY hard to resist the urge they will gradually morph into another big lazy corrupt defense contractor. When Space-X goes public there will be lots of exciting news stories and a big public IPO... but they they will have a board, and their investors will demand increasing profits by any means..... geeks should remember there was a day when the board at a place called Apple thought that the place needed to be run by a sugar-water salesman instead of one of its founders. This sort of pressure can override even the best intentions of a CEO.
Here, in the spring of 2013, if congress told NASA to either put an American in space on an American rocket by the end of the year or be de-funded and disbanded, Charlie Bolden would start issuing layoff notices and turning-off the lights; the agency lacks a "can-do" spirit. Some other administrator in the same spot might order his agency to focus on helping Space-X man-rate the Dragon/Falcon in the available time, but that would mean reducing paperwork and regulations (regulations that were not there to block NASA from putting two government astronauts aboard the very first space shuttle launch). It's partly an attitude thing; NASA employs far too many non-technical government employees who have nothing to do with spaceflight (or aviation) who are comfortable and want to keep getting paychecks, but real action (like putting people into space) is risky and if such actions go bad can lead to job-loss for managers and bureaucrats.... in such an environment "can-do" attitudes are dangerous and disruptive.
A robot might crash on Mars.... TERROR!!!! ... Oh, the HUMANITY!!!!!!..... Robots are destroyed every day in factories all over the world.
That whole "7 minutes of terror" thing was about the fears that a bunch of [a] over-paid government employees, and [b] researchers and grad students (with future research papers and grants on the line) might lose the gravy train that they were counting on for the next few years of their careers. If a guy/gal is planning to make his/her house payments for the next two years from a paycheck provided in exchange for operating a rover, and the rover is destroyed, then he/she is out of work... that's the only "terror" involved and that person does not care about the "terror" that any of the taxpayers who pay his/her salary face on every April 15th.
In a SANE world, the people exploring Mars would finally grow some brains and would build a series of much cheaper identical rovers and plan to send each to explore different areas of Mars as launch vehicles could be afforded... If any particular rover "crashed-and-burned", the next rover in line would use the next launcher available to re-attempt that mission; no jobs would hinge on landing and then operating one unique, extremely expensive, specialized hunk of hardware that is so expensive the exercise can only be re-attempted at several year intervals. Oh, and those newly-sane people would send the rovers to places people on Earth might actually be interested in... like the jaw-dropping volcanoes, canyons and other such places (like the mountains that some morons think are alien faces) that people know are there. Good geology can be done in such places while still entertaining and inspiring the public. The current crop of people who design, build, and operate robotic explorers are absolutely CLUELESS about public relations and inspiring the public.... then they lament the lack of greater public support.