NASA May Sell Corporate Naming Rights For Rockets, Spacecraft (al.com)

schwit1 shares a report from Alabama Local News: NASA's administrator Jim Bridenstine has directed the space agency to look at boosting its brand by selling naming rights to rockets and spacecraft and allowing its astronauts to appear in commercials and on cereal boxes, as if they were celebrity athletes. While officials stress that nothing has been decided, the idea could mark a giant cultural leap for the taxpayer-funded government agency and could run into ethics regulations that prevent government officials from using public office for private gain.

"Is it possible for NASA to offset some of its costs by selling the naming rights to its spacecraft, or the naming rights to its rockets," Bridenstine said. "I'm telling you there is interest in that right now. The question is: Is it possible? The answer is: I don't know, but we want somebody to give us advice on whether it is." He also said he wanted astronauts to be not only more accessible to journalists but even to participate in marketing opportunities to boost their brands - and that of the space agency. "I'd like to see kids growing up, instead of maybe wanting to be like a professional sports star, I'd like to see them grow up wanting to be a NASA astronaut, or a NASA scientist," he said. "I'd like to see, maybe one day, NASA astronauts on the cover of a cereal box, embedded into the American culture."

Comments

Commercials

[bickerdyke]

"I'd like to see kids growing up, instead of maybe wanting to be like a professional sports star, I'd like to see them grow up wanting to be a NASA astronaut, or a NASA scientist,"

Me too.

But if that happens because someone is appearing in commercials instead of news, then something is wrong on a much more fundamental level.

Re:Commercials

[sad_]

And more to point, we had that in the past, we kids were inspired by astronauts and knew their names, were amazed by the space ships, satellites and the visits to other planets. Somehow this all died and nobody cares anymore, except us, geeks & nerds.

What happened? Certainly being more like a sport star isn't the answer, because they weren't sport-star-like back then.
On the other hand, i still sometimes see this amazement in people in some cases, for example when the first spacex rockets landed or when we visited a comet.