I just read the latest NASA Strategic Communications Framework presentation (courtesy of NASAWatch.com). Although strategic planning usually bores me, I find these presentations fascinating. They're really helpful in exploring both public opinion and NASA's direction.

What really struck me the last time I read NASA's communications presentation was just how little my generation (defined as 18- to 24-year-olds) feels that NASA is relevant to their lives and how little they know about the specifics of what NASA does. NASA has near universal "brand recognition," which helps, but the large majority doesn't truly know what NASA does. Because of this, they don't feel that NASA is relevant to them, and they don't care to support NASA financially (or worse, think that it's a waste of money). Part of my motivation for expanding this blog into a website for students was to built up the excitement and inform my generation.

The most surprising thing to me reading this latest presentation was the personal relevance and economic benefits. Interviewees were asked to rate how relevant NASA is to them and to the economy, both before and after being informed of specific technologies that NASA has helped develop. The initial response was that NASA was only relevant to 54% them and only 41% thought NASA made a large contribution to the economy. But after being informed of technologies that NASA has helped develop – smoke detectors, advanced breast cancer imaging, heart defibrillators, weather satellites, remote-controlled robots, global positioning (GPS), cordless tools, satellite ratio, and DirecTV – a whopping 94% of responders thought NASA was relevant to them and 75% thought NASA made a large contribution to the economy.

It really hurts NASA that the public is not informed. Because NASA doesn't advertise, the public gets the majority of their information from the media, which over-publicizes scandals and very often gets technical facts wrong. One great thing NASA is planning to do, according to the presentation, is make their website user-oriented, allowing users to sign in, modify their portals, contribute content, and offer their opinions. But the first step is getting people to actually log onto www.nasa.gov in the first place.

After reading reports like this, the first thing I want to do is walk down the street and tell everyone I meet how great NASA is, but that's not realistic. Instead, I will offer this website to students in the hope that I may help more people discover their interests in physics. I do want to add NASA-specific content at some point, but I'm not yet sure how that would fit in.