Slashdot Mirror
Inside the Pluto Public Relations Machine
An anonymous reader writes: They knew it was going to be huge, but even the communications team — which had spent months planning for the event — was surprised by the magical atmosphere and worldwide excitement surrounding NASA's New Horizons Pluto flyby. The communication needs were monumental and required good planning, a ton of teamwork and attention to detail. This is how they made it happen.
the magical atmosphere and worldwide excitement surrounding NASA's New Horizons Pluto flyby
It sad to know that a large section of the press would have been happy to ruin the moments the pictures came back (and shit on the public's excitement) by trashing one of the scientists, just because a women he was friends with made a shirt that pissed off a few ideologues. I'd love to hear what the Horizons PR team thought about that, when it happened to the ESA mission.
It's hard for me to remember the last time an unmanned NASA mission has gotten this much public attention. Maybe some of the high budget Mars missions, but I'd say that's questionable for the more recent ones. This really turned out to be not just a science windfall, but a PR windfall for NASA as well. New Horizons was a cheap mission (as far as space exploration goes), and it's exceeded everyone's expectations, revealing a young, geologically active world driven in manners never before seen, with formations never before seen. The fact that it came on the heels of the "Pluto Is Not A Planet" controversy drove what would already have been high public interest up to even higher levels. Then the fact that out of pure luck Pluto gave them a giant "heart" formation on their last high-res pre-flyby images to plaster all over the news was just icing on the cake.
NH director Alan Stern is also a very different character from Taylor, and one that I really like. He's been an incredibly passionate advocate for exploration and for open access to data as well as supporting youth interest in science. He's also been one of the leading voices against the IAU Pluto decision, analogizing it to the USGS declaring that there's only 8 rivers in the world in order to make the list easier for schoolkids to memorize. His view is that "cleared the neighborhood" is fundamentally flawed in numerous ways while hydrostatic equilibrium is a very meaningful dividing line, both from the public's perspective on what one naturally interprets to be a planet (the "Captain Kirk" test), and scientifically (it involves the destruction of primordial materials and the creation of altered materials and the release of energy). He takes it so far as to say that moons in hydrostatic equilibrium like Titan, Triton, Ganymede, Europa, etc deserve a title like "planetary moon" or similar - a recognition of "what they are" being at least as important as "where they are".
"This administration is so incompetent that they cover their tracks with bigger tracks." - Seth Meyers
It's hard for me to remember the last time an unmanned NASA mission has gotten this much public attention.
Much attention? That's not what I read.
If anything, I would call this a press fiasco. Those of us who were interested certainly watched and rejoiced, hell yeah, but overall? Plenty of people never ever heard of it.
This should have been big. Moon landing big. Rah rah superbowl / world cup big. But the PR team seems to have made such a lackluster job that people were drawn to the event despite of them, not because of them.
The follow-up doesn't seem much better. I can't even buy any NASA "I watched the Pluto flyby" pin or other merchandise. Or get notifications of new material as it comes in. Where are the scientists being interviewed in specials on TV? Where are the booklets? All I see from the PR department is this. An attempt to backpat each other. Possibly to look good on their resume, I guess. I wouldn't hire them.
indeed. At least they managed to create themselves an attaboy poster they can attach to their resume Which might be their main purpose right now, after the funds are spent and the job goes away.
I can't think of a single truly big thing that happened over the last decade or two that got worse PR than this. What little hype there was were created by others, and not even picked up and run with. Granted, they had a shoestring budget, but they cannot possibly look people in the face and declare the PR for this a success. The mission was awesome, but next time, NASA needs better PR people.
A quick sampling here at work in a tech company, and 5 out of 10 people were aware of the Pluto flyby having happened. These are engineers and the like.
Those are huge numbers for a space mission. You're calling 1600 people / 250 reporters covering a NASA press conference small? That's freaking insane. By contrast, people generally have more interest in human endeavours in space than robotic, but when NASA held their press conference to interview members of the Colombia crew live from space (which turned out to be the last chance before they died), only four reporters showed up. The "Martian microfossil" press conference had about two hundred.
Seriously, you think one in every 2000 people on Earth, from newborn Vietnamese infants to elderly Masai tribesman, logging onto NASA.gov to read about a relatively low budget mission to be a poor showing? How often does anyone go to NASA.gov? Look at how much the page views for their entire website spiked from NH. Tiny percentage of their budget, cut their distance to the top of the net rankings in half.
783000 people streamed bloody NASA press conferences. When does anything like that ever happen?
450 major papers had it on their *front page*. We're not talking blogspot.com, we're talking NYT, LA Times, etc. When was the last time you ever saw anything like that? Maybe the Columbia disaster?
This should have been "moon landing"-ish, are you out of your gourd? The Apollo Program as a whole consumed about 5% of a year's worth of the US GDP. New Horizons consumed 0,005%.
Maybe I'm reading you wrong. Maybe you're joking. I sure hope so...
"This administration is so incompetent that they cover their tracks with bigger tracks." - Seth Meyers
If you want to hold a massive press conference about space exploration, of course you have to planet.
Come on, that's not fair. NASA has SEVERAL functions:
1) Diverting government funds to employment programs in every major Congressional district
2) Employing the best engineers in the country to maintain a large scale deployment of campaign donations to Congress
3) Keeping the Russian space program afloat
4) Generating thousands of metric tonnes of vague promises that are far enough out to ensure no one ever calls them out for not delivering on them
5) Generating several gigawatt hours of PR each day
6) Paying a bunch of contractors to send up another fucking probe that will help advance the science of sending cool pics back to the media
See, PR is only one of the many things NASA does!
SJW's don't eliminate discrimination. They just expropriate it for themselves.
Huh? Last I checked, the policy was that everything gets released within a week's time, at least jpeg format (the raws will be release later). If you want complaints, take them to the ESA, which has a terrrible record concerning timely release of data.
"This administration is so incompetent that they cover their tracks with bigger tracks." - Seth Meyers
The adults are trying to have a conversation here.
You're 100% right and yet /. will flame you for saying anything bad about their precious messiah. Really slashdotters truly do worship science and scientists. I can't tell if it's pure narcissism (especially for those slashdotters that are themselves scientists and indulge in science worship) or just because we're losers that hope that science will save us... from ourselves.
And now they'll mod me down. Thus proving my point.
Why all the excitement? It isn't any more interesting than you typical asteroid flyby.
They need to upgrade their fiber link.
Yup, but a broken clock is right twice a day. For what it's worth the Horizon mission was very successful.
love is just extroverted narcissism
Seriously, you think one in every 2000 people on Earth, from newborn Vietnamese infants to elderly Masai tribesman, logging onto NASA.gov to read about a relatively low budget mission to be a poor showing?
Yes, I do. A relatively minor web site like littlethings.com has more than that many unique visitors per day . Heck, slashdot had more visitors in its heydays.
According to Google, there are 2.94 billion internet users. According to Nielsen, internet users on average visited 5.50 science related web pages per month (in 2010).
And NASA in total managed to capture 0.021% of those science related visits? Yes, I call that a PR failure. If Alice Bowman had had a wardrobe malfunction, it would have generated far more traffic.
It was a huge scientific happening. Likely the biggest one since the Voyager flybys of the gas and ice giants. It tells us so much we didn't know.
And most people haven't even heard of it. That's downright shameful.
Is worship really the right word to use? It seems to be chosen to mock unjustly.
Adoration is natural when one appreciates something. There seems to be the implication that this is wrong, or that the attention is undue.
Certainly you aren't obliged to participate yourself, and it is natural that if one express hostile opinions then there is a natural urge to sway or discredit that person.
There is no way to know your mind from the outside, but it really does seem that you've got an axe to grind here.
If you have a specific criticism then express it, please. if not then it might be better to question your own feelings, as should everyone from time to time.
md5sum
d41d8cd98f00b204e9800998ecf8427e
According to Fran Bagenal talk at Denver Astronomical Society. She could not present much new data in her talk. http://www.denverastro.org/das...
...to Uranus!
"First, the reporters later told us that they had never had such good access to scientists, and it made their jobs easier and their reports better. Second, this set up gave our communications team more time to solve problems, plan and react to news, and maintain stability at the center – instead of racing to fill reporter requests."
mfwright@batnet.com
Thank you for being deep and insightful, doublebackslash.
/. takes the side of NASA (and science/scientists in general) every time on every issue and treats it all like its some kind of democratic process. Then when anyone dares to question "what 99.99% of scientists say" they're modded into oblivion. A key example: climate change. Another one: systemd. Another one: leftist/socialist ideas of economics and social governance.
/. I see articles about how medical research can't be replicated, popular governmental regulations backfiring, public healthcare falling far short and far over budget, anyone who questions the "scientific consensus" being modded down (but not for any real reason), slashdotters getting shrill and calling for blood if anyone dares to cut funding to this or that program which would ultimately just give us more pictures of places that we'll never see etc.
My specific criticism is that it always seems like
I'm not necessarily opposed to coming to a consensus if that consensus is reached through a careful, rigorous, and tested and reproduced approach. But that never seems to be the case with the institution of science itself and scientists themselves. It's always assumed by the crowd that they "did the research" and did it correctly.
Yet almost every day on
At times I feel like one should be required to post a three-point essay with citations in order to mod others down lest dissenting opinions be trashed for no other reason than that they're speaking an unpopular opinion.
I guess really what I want is a good system to filter merely unpopular (and potentially golden) opinion from plain garden variety trolling, off-topic stupidity, and trash.
I'm not a profound fellow, though I wish I was, and I need clarity to think and to reason about a subject. I can't get that if dissent is squashed mercilessly. And I think a lot of babies are and have been thrown out with the bathwater so to speak.
Very successful at accomplishing absolutely nothing of any real value. Pictures are good for what? Feeling all warm and fuzzy and sciencey inside? Do they feed any hungry people? Cure any diseases? Give us some awesome and useful insight into how the universe works? Give anyone some shelter from the cold? NO! It's just some fucking jpegs and millions and millions of wasted dollars.
And, the fact that they Photoshopped Disney's Pluto into the Photoshopped image of the fake planet, also accounts for their budget excesses, as now they not only need to pay Adobe, they also need to pay royalties to Disney.
Between that and the "SEX" in the clouds in the latest image of the round Earth (which must be a lie, since Neil deGrasse Tyson now says the Earth is "pear-shaped" in an attempt to account for the extra land found in the southern regions -- it can't be both pear-shaped, and round in past images!), I am really surprised that NASA continues to fool millions.
I feel fantastic, and I'm still alive.
Its an aether link.
Starships were meant to fly, Hands up and touch the sky - Nicky Minaj
My specific criticism is that it always seems like /. takes the side of NASA (and science/scientists in general) every time on every issue and treats it all like its some kind of democratic process. Then when anyone dares to question "what 99.99% of scientists say" they're modded into oblivion. A key example: climate change. Another one: systemd. Another one: leftist/socialist ideas of economics and social governance.
In any discussion of climate changes there are plenty of people happy to go against the scientific consensus. Leftist/socialist ideas on anything are generally heavily outnumbered by right wing or "libertarian" posters.
But, yes, systemd does indeed seem to provoke a near 100% hatred here.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
Was it written by a precocious ten year old? It osunds like something from a school essay about One Direction.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it