"Next week, while we’re all watching NBC, a nuclear-powered, MINI-Cooper-sized super rover will land on Mars. We accurately guided this monster from 200 million miles away (that’s 7.6 million marathons). It requires better accuracy than an Olympic golfer teeing off in London and hitting a hole-in-one in Auckland, New Zealand. It will use a laser to blast rocks, a chemical nose to sniff out the potential for life, and hundreds of other feats of near-magic. Will these discoveries lead us down a path to confirming life on other planets? Wouldn’t that be a good story that might make people care about science? But telling us this story means more than just the composition of the rocks (sorry, Mars geologists). It’s about the team that makes it happen.

No one producing an Olympic teaser asks, “What’s the importance of 100 meters?” No, they tell us about the athletes who dedicate their lives to running the race, because dedication and triumph are what make a human running 100 meters interesting. If NBC can get us all misty-eyed about 100 meters, imagine what NASA could do with 200 million miles.

The Mars race is about human survival and understanding our place in a vast and terrifyingly beautiful universe. And the stories of its athletes (mathletes?) should be world-class, because they accomplish near-impossible tasks on a cosmic scale — the hardest sport you could ever compete in. It requires dedication and doggedness that only the most passionate people in the universe could deliver. Unfortunately, this drama plays out behind closed doors. We won’t have insights into the sacrifice, scandal, discovery, divorce, hardship, and drama that it takes to work for a decade delivering a one-ton super rover to another planet. It’s the biggest irony that the most junior engineer at NASA is fearless in the face of trying to send a robot to Mars, but the career bureaucrats are afraid to tell that engineer’s story of failure or success.

NASA will say that they’re doing the best they can and stretching their education and outreach budgets to the max. But if they hope to stay in business, they need to tell us how they’re pushing the limits of humanity with over-the-top, risky-ass missions that will answer questions about who we are as a species on this planet."

-

Andrew Kessler, The Huffington Post. Why You Should Be More Interested in Mars Than the Olympics.

Kessler, who spent ninety days inside NASA to write Martian Summer: Robot Arms, Cowboy Spacemen and My 90 Days with the Phoenix Mars Mission, believes the agency is “so frightened of failure that they’re willing to sacrifice their greatest asset: the ability to inspire.” In other words, they no longer tell a good story.

Know who could help? Kick ass science journalists.

Sidenote: AAAS Kavli Science Journalism Awards applications are due tomorrow.

(via futurejournalismproject)

Reblog every day of the week. 

(via jtotheizzoe)

Source: futurejournalismproject
  1. smdy reblogged this from reagan-was-a-horrible-president
  2. emilykatherinethefirst reblogged this from anteco
  3. jimikissedthesky reblogged this from jtotheizzoe
  4. sameoldantics reblogged this from fuckingmultiverse
  5. superneutrality reblogged this from tooraloora
  6. escalator-wit reblogged this from jtotheizzoe
  7. lifeincommas reblogged this from elizabethactual and added:
    So much this. So, so much this.
  8. elizabethactual reblogged this from oykevalt and added:
    THIS. When science fiction isn’t fiction.
  9. salientverses reblogged this from progressivehumanity
  10. lydiaolydia reblogged this from emtgeek
  11. iamboredsoimadethis reblogged this from avocadoandeggs
  12. fuckingmultiverse reblogged this from scienceandorfiction
  13. scienceandorfiction reblogged this from astrofissionchips
  14. thenamesfirewangfire reblogged this from brycej222
  15. b1iu reblogged this from jtotheizzoe
  16. brycej222 reblogged this from astrofissionchips
  17. mementomorieris reblogged this from astrofissionchips
  18. astrofissionchips reblogged this from oplik
  19. kwaj reblogged this from octopirock
  20. tadoritsukuhibi reblogged this from paganlovefest
  21. namosays reblogged this from jtotheizzoe
  22. dakinishir reblogged this from tinaalsgirl
  23. suzielynn1587 reblogged this from pawlmart
  24. pawlmart reblogged this from brasspistol
  25. octopirock reblogged this from brasspistol
  26. brasspistol reblogged this from canisfamiliaris
  27. simmerdown reblogged this from cosmodolphin
  28. piplup-commander reblogged this from tooraloora
  29. crimsondude reblogged this from futurejournalismproject
  30. six6caliber reblogged this from paganlovefest