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NASA looking to win over yawning youth

By ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published December 28, 2006

CAPE CANAVERAL - Even though he goes to college in the shadow of the Kennedy Space Center, Adam Humphries can't name any of the astronauts who just returned home on space shuttle Discovery.

And he has no idea why they paid a visit to the international space station.

"It's not something that everybody is really into," said Humphries, 18, a student at Brevard Community College, less than 10 miles from the space center. "It's not interesting anymore. There's nothing new that everybody can catch onto."

NASA's imagemakers are taking a hard look at how to win over Humphries' generation - media-saturated teens and 20-somethings growing up on YouTube and Google and indifferent to manned space flight.

Recent surveys show young Americans have high levels of apathy about NASA's new vision of sending astronauts back to the moon by 2017 and eventually on to Mars.

"If you're going to do a space exploration program that lasts 40 years, if you just do the math, those are the guys that are going to carry the tax burden," said Mary Lynne Dittmar, president of a Houston company that surveyed young people about the space program.

The space shuttle program is slated to end in 2010 after construction of the international space station is completed with 13 more shuttle flights.

When the shuttles are retired, they will be replaced by the Orion spacecraft, which NASA hopes takes humans back to the moon and then on to Mars.

NASA Administrator Michael Griffin thinks ventures to the moon and Mars will excite young people more than the current shuttle trips to low-Earth orbit.

"If we make it clear that the focus of the United States space program for the foreseeable future will be out there, will be beyond what we do now, I think you won't have any problem at all reacquiring the interest of young people," Griffin said.

Others recommend developing a junior astronaut training corps similar to the ROTC, marketing through podcasts or ring tones, and offering zero-gravity flights to winners of contests like the Little League World Series.

New mission

At an October workshop attended by 80 NASA message spinners, these tactics were encouraged to renew interest in NASA among teens and 20-somethings:

- New forms of communication, such as podcasts and YouTube

- Enlisting support from celebrities, such as actors David Duchovny of X-Files and Patrick Stewart of Star Trek: The Next Generation

- Forming partnerships with media such as MTV or sports events such as the Olympics and NASCAR

- Developing brand placement in movies

[Last modified December 27, 2006, 23:08:58]