Yes, But Will the People Support Us? - Engaging Our Customers in the Mars Exploration Adventure

Mell, Humboldt Jr. C.
Ph.D., NASA Johnson Space Center, Exploration Office, Mail Code EX, Houston, TX 77058
mailto:humboldt.c.mandell1@jsc.nasa.gov

In: Proceedings of The Founding Convention of the Mars Society, edited by Zubrin, RM, and Zubrin, M. Univelt, Incorporated. (1998)

Despite
the results of a number of polls, the extent of public support for a human
mission to Mars is largely unknown. What would the American people want NASA to
do if they were fully informed of what can be done? The NASA Strategic Plan
demands a better understanding of what our customers, the citizens, expect us to
do. The Administration has called for a new “Dialog with America” to involve
the nation more fully in the determination of what their government does in all
of its agencies.

To
address these issues, NASA has formed a Customer Engagement group, which is actively
seeking ways to better communicate with the people, to inform them of what is
possible, and to engage them as customers and stakeholders in an organized
campaign to promote human Mars exploration. A first step is to find out what an
enlightened electorate would want NASA to do.

There
have always been polls to measure public attitudes, but, for many reasons, they
have had little influence in the casting of public policy in space. A primary
reason is that they draw information from an uninformed population.

But
there is now new technology for measuring public attitudes, in this case,
public support for space exploration. The new methods involve the sampled
population actively in the deliberation process. The Deliberative Poll which
has been proven in the United States and the United Kingdom, will tell us what
an enlightened population would want NASA to do. Deliberative Polls are
expensive, and new funding mechanisms have been developed, including a new
Foundation for Space Exploration.

The
skills required to address these issues do not all exist within NASA. To that
end, new partnerships are already being developed with non-traditional sources.
The academic community is expected to play a major role.

Keywords

Political Action