Is NASA Advertising Allowed or Prohibited?

Hey PC media and society listen up " WE DON'T CARE ABOUT SIGNS!" We care about keeping jobs and Space exploration!

Damn the Politics!

I always thought NASA should be allowed to have TV commercials like the Army and Marines, etc.

I like the Army's (I think? Was it Air force?) commercial starting like a sci-fi flick and then flipping to "actual" shots. IIRC, they had ones like that both about space and Predator UAV's.

Seems like NASA could do something like that pretty easily - if they don't over cheese it to bad, they have a bad tendency to do that. Sometimes they just try to hard I think, or its some 60 year old grandma lady deciding what to put in that kids will think is cool. Somehow it always ends up being a terrible rap, or some hipster guy with Justin Beaver hair trying to make everything sound overly cool.

NASA PAO employees try to get new ideas off the ground, but PAO managers are too scared of mistakes to take any real risk, so those ideas often never go anywhere. Sad.

Where is it said that NASA cannot communicate its story? The original NASA Act demands it.

As Waste points out, a lot of NASA management fears being too 'in your face' with telling NASA's story, but that seems to be a problem with the NASA engineer's mentality. NASA needs some leaders who came with commercial backgrounds or out of other industries.

I find it comical (or perhaps tragic) that currently on the internal JSC website they are running an AAS talk by museum/Disney designer Bob Rogers that advocates opening up communications and advertising in telling and selling people about the space program. Bob has been using the same talk for about 10 years and some senior NASA managers have said they agree with him, but management has failed to follow any of his recommendations.

Key among Bob's ideas is to take some of the people who understand the story and how to communicate the story and put them in charge of telling the story. Bob was fired by the Constellation Program because an astronaut had a better idea. (We all see how far that got us).

You need only to look at the current NASA human space flight hierarchy and their actions (inaction) and see how little support or direction they provide. The management and make no mistake this includes Griffin, Cooke, Gerstenmaier, Coats, Hale, Hanley, Suffredini and the others had ample opportunity to do things intelligently and differently.

Not to be overly critical...but exactly what does NASA have to promote?

Obviously NASA has never succesfully communicated to you what it offers of value to the nation.

Space photography and imagery is inspirational. NASA plays an important role in astronomy, geography, history, robotics, and the sciences. There are astronomical satellites and probes, lunar and planetary probes, orbiters and landers, and earth observational satellites. NASA has played an important role in rocketry, hypersonic flight, commercial flight and general aviation. NASA has been instrumental in developing new imagery methods and technologies used in medicine and industry, computer enhancement methods and modeling, materials used in medicine, manufacturing, aviation, and sporting goods, and new environmental control and life support systems and processes. The International Space Station is the largest system ever placed and used in orbit, was assembled in orbit, and offers capabilities for enhancing the use of space in the future.

NASA is a knowledge creation organization. It has a lot to promote but has been doing a pretty poor job of it for decades.

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/editorial/outlook/7113038.html

"....just as the president has become so adept at blaming others for any failure while tap dancing to avoid taking responsibility for almost every problem, Bolden now takes the heat for saying a prime goal of the American space program is to gain influence with adversaries and friends....