NASA Made a Commercial Crew Video That It Is Afraid to Endorse (Update)
Keith’s 25 Feb note: Looks like NASA has adopted the adventure movie promo production approach – loud music that tells you to pay attention, quick edits, all for the new video Commercial Crew Program video “Taking America To New Heights”. This video only appears on the official NASA KSC YouTube channel. No mention is made anywhere else at NASA. Who is the intended audience for this? The public? Congress? Media? What did they spend on it? If they are going to spend time and money on this sort of stuff at HEOMD then, at a minimum, they should promote it to get their money’s worth.
This video makes heavy use of animations produced by a variety of commercial space contractors, with NASA’s logo on it with this curious caveat added to the video page: “If a recognizable person appears in this video, use for commercial purposes may infringe a right of privacy or publicity. It may not be used to state or imply the endorsement by NASA employees of a commercial product, process or service, or used in any other manner that might mislead. Accordingly, it is requested that if this video is used in advertising and other commercial promotion, layout and copy be submitted to NASA prior to release.”
This is just goofy. First NASA makes a video that goes out of its way to hammer home an overt endorsement of commercial space into your eyeballs and eardrums – and then they post a disclaimer that says that “It may not be used to state or imply the endorsement by NASA employees of a commercial product, process or service, or used in any other manner that might mislead.” Moreover, NASA won’t let the people/companies who actually created the source videos and imagery of their own products that were edited (with taxpayer dollars) to make this video – unless NASA says that they can. Am I missing something?
Keith’s 29 Feb update: The video was originally posted on the official NASA KSC YouTube page here. That video has now been deleted. But it is still online on a non-NASA YouTube page here. NASA also posted it here on NASA.gov. So why did KSC delete it (with its odd disclaimer) while NASA.gov added it online elsewhere? Oh yes, oddly, there is no mention whatsoever of this video at the official NASA Commercial Crew webpage.
I suspect that NASA is having problems with American lawyers. Hollywood gets ‘model releases’ signed by people appearing in a film. NASA is also restricted from advertising and endorsing products. The CCDev companies are being used in a similar way that NASA shows its various centers but the companies are not owned by the US Government.
I suspect that the lawyers only came in after the film was made.
After the lawyers read these things, someone with a little common sense should read them too.
To whoever made it – nice video.
Keith, I have nothing to do with the video…but perhaps the Commercial Crew Program Office at KSC felt it was safe legally to do one that showed companies – and only those companies – that have a signed Space Act Agreement with NASA, whether funded or not. As a quickie visual summation of the players it is better to use during a talk than say a single Powerpoint slide showing the same.
Dave, my dear friend, you have been inside the fence far too long. NASA cannot be for and against commerce at the same time.
Keith,
I think Dave’s message rings true. The only real “NASA,” as a single entity, is its official policies. But I think Dave is talking about the many people who work for NASA, each with his/her own opinions and feelings on the matter. Clearly, all of those people are not of one mind, so there is a mixture of “for” and “against” commercial, and probably for a large list of different reasons. Some portion of the NASA employees probably keep their opinions to themselves, but it doesn’t take too many to make the situation a major issue. I don’t work at NASA, so I have no first-hand knowledge, but it seems perfectly logical to me that there would be mixed feelings in a group of people that large. What troubles me is that this sounds like there’s a civil war brewing inside NASA, which will only make things less productive and worse for NASA as a whole and all of the individual people it employs.
I’m afraid that this situation will get worse before it gets better, to everyone’s detriment. What really p’s me off is that the route causes of this bad situation, I firmly believe, are from outside of NASA — the federal government, who are supposed to represent the welfare of the people, not start major conflicts within civil agencies.
If the population at large should decide that its government, particularly Congress, is setting new precedents in what defines acceptable behavior, then how long will it be before more internecine conflicts of this type spread through the country? This may seems overly dramatic, but it seems to me to be all too possible.
This is irresponsible and inexcusable, in my opinion. The people deserve better “representation.” Perhaps the United States Capitol should be renamed Payton Place.
Steve
Where’s SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket wasn’t included in this video? They shown Liberty rocket from ATK first smells like a snub on SpaceX!
Keith,
You call it “overt endorsement”. I’d call it 1min 10sec of in-your-face, high-speed inspiration. This hardware shows “the beef” and is the kind of vision and space action this country needs to see.
To see the spacecraft, the vehicles and all of the aerospace names that make it happen, tells a good story in seconds. Hats off to all of the aerospace and NASA video teams that made this. Good video, soundtrack, pacing, flow and timing. Get authorization to do a 15 minute video.
The current resolution is at 360p; need to take it up to 1080p. 2,000 You Tube views now. Should grow to 200,000 views. Space geeks, share this and make it go viral.
NASA cannot be for and against commerce at the same time.
Do you mean NASA should not be for and against commercial at the same time? NASA does this kind of for and against programs all the time…
So cancel SLS And Orion and write cots missions that support “commercial”.
Not compete with commercial.
I’m going to buy a fox to guard my hen house.
It is a thoughtless cut and paste piece that conflicts with the guidance and story NASA HQ put out with the FY 2013 budget.
Doug,
Interesting counter. Since Thomas Ray said the cut and paste piece could be done in a day on your laptop, why don’t you grab the FY2013 budget and produce a 1 minute video that shows the budget in a visual along the same quick summary lines this ‘thoughtless’ piece was done. If you did, do you think the FY2013 budget would fare better on You Tube viewer hits?
I dare you. Or is that too much work?
So the objective here is to garner YouTube hits, rather than to support the goals and points put out by NASA HQ?
Why don’t you try again after the tone?
SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket was not in this video. Why maker of this Video not include in this video? I saw ATK and Atlas V rocket in the video.
I saw the Dragon at about the thirty seconds’ mark, so they are giving some time to SpaceX.
This is a CCDev/Commercial Crew Project video. The Falcon 9, Cygnus and Taurus II/Antares are from its elder sister the COTS cargo launch project.
But Falcon 9 will be used to launch Dragon.
True, but the Falcon 9 will have to be purchased/rented under a later contract.
p.s. A reference back to the “successful COTS cargo project” in the film would have been appropriate.
Is NASA a totally monolithic organization? Could there not be people who are pushing for commercial against others that want the same ole same ole NASA?
Not only could be …but are. But at the moment, the ‘anti’-s’ are winning; on the last two months alone, pro commercial space folks at a couple of NASA centers have been literally fired, because they were pro-commercial space and being active about it internally. Go back over the past two years and there have been even more shunted to non-interesting jobs for the same reason. There is a huge pushback inside NASA – including some senior NASA folks at NASA HQ, as well as several Center DIrectors – who are actively pushing back against building an American commercial space industry, and they are succeeding in getting rid of the troublemakers. (The ‘troublemakers’ being those actually trying to carry out national policy). I felt strongly enough about it that I literally went to the NASA IG about one aspect of the pushback that was warping data getting to decision makers; he not only took no action, but wouldn’t tell me why he wouldn’t. We’re in need of deep internal reforms in NASA across the board, folks.
I had this idea after reading pauls x prize 50th human landing post.
Paul
your idea of an x prize to put astronauts on the moon in 2019 is great.
But consider this
What if the people of NASA watch wrote a lunar xprize to have a large rover on the moon on that date at one of the Apollo sites
Or better still start a lunar ice finding mission.
Don’t many of you know the google guys or others in business that we could present a lunar xprize plan too.
Don’t many of you know how to write it?
You want to get the public interested and kick NASA and congress in the backside.
Wellllll
Why not!!!!
What’s the worst case
We make the news trying to present it.
Best case we send a robot mission to the moon long before NASA ever will, get the publics attention embarress the current missions to no where, congress and NASA and get a voice.
Why not!!!!!
Spacex will have all we need at a cheap price any way so why not get them a mission and some money.
Elon did this showing THEM
Why can’t we?
NEWS FLASH
NASA WATCH bloggers get fed up with do nothing SPACE program and write an xprize to send a large rover to the moon for the the fiftieth birthday of first apollo moon landing. Their plan is designed to lay the ground work to start to create the robotic ability to harvest water/ fuel. Etc etc.
Whatever, you guys know what to write not me.
Anyway
Why nottttt????????
Getting tired of watching old NASA do very little while spending tons of money.
Is it possible to name some names? I would sure like my congressional representatives to be made aware of this. From my understanding that would be an illegal firing. Maybe if the commercial supporters shined a little bit more of a public light on this it might gain a little more attention.
Wouldn’t the bottom line be that higher ranking officials in NASA know with congressional member butters their bread? Commercial is going to get rid of literally billions per year in pork that gets divided up each year. So NASA is not going to upset their congressional representives pork parade by advocating for commercialized NASA and the elimination of the pork train to nowhere.
Name the Names campaign.
I suspect the video was produced to try and mitigate the idea that without Shuttle we have no human spaceflight program and that fifty years after the beginning of human space flight the US no longer has the capabilties it had in 1962. It makes for a good story, but the fact is in 1962 we could place a man in orbit and today we no longer can. The foolishness that is the space program today is that we gave up the tremendous capabilities we had with no replacement in hand. The stupidity that is the nation’s human space flight program management today is that you heard no one from NASA speak up and say that shutting down Shuttle prior to having a replacement in hand was dumb.
Fact is, all the commercial concepts are great ideas and maybe in the future some or all will come to pass. Hopefully the sooner the better. Hopefully they will be safe and provide the needed services. Hopefully the commercial world will be able to scale up to safe production standards. By the way, based on my recent discussions with people working the commercial programs this is a major hurdle. Producing the capsules on an assembly line basis won’t be quite as easy as producing a single capsule for a first test flight over many years.
Unfortunately, all of hese are just concepts. None of these exist today. Unfortunately it looks like none will be available for quite a few years. Unfortunately none really are a replacement for Shuttle.
1) The Shuttle is gone. Get over it.
2) SpaceX already has a cargo version of Dragon that it will be full-up demoing this year. Add better life support and an escape system and it’s here a lot sooner than “quite a few years.”
3) Boeing’s capsule could be here within 3. But Boeing wants a monetary guarantee; SpaceX will do a manned capsule regardless of the money they get through CCDev
4) Dream Chaser – Who knows? If the rumors about the private-funded/operated Shuttle are true, I suspect you may see that investment money go to Sierra Nevada if they don’t get CCDev money.
5) Blue Origin may or may not be real. Jeff Bezos should stop acting like he has a secret lair and a fluffy cat to pet and put his cards on the table.
Keith, I love how this goes into your pet peeves! Specifically how one agency might not be talking/coordinating with headquarters. There’s a conflict in messaging….
At the NASA budget rollout with the complementary video, Bolden talks about “American manufacturers producing American made vehicles to take our
American and other partner astronauts to low earth orbit. I am very
bullish on the American industry.” And Garver says “Instead of outsourcing our space program overseas, we intend to
insource our space program and have Americans continuing to explore the
space frontier.”
Putting aside the fact the Atlas V uses an imported Russian RD-180 engine to get off the ground for a moment *cough*cough*, there are TWO projects listed in the portfolio currently being carried by unfunded Space Act Agreements – ATK/ArianeSpace Liberty and the Excalibur/Almaz Capsule.
LIberty has an ArianeSpace second stage made by the Europeans. So, roughly speaking, Liberty is close to 50% foreign made.
And then we get to the Excalibur Almaz fiasco, a company that says on its website it is “a private, international space
exploration company formed in 2005 and based in the British Isles in
Isle of Man.” More recently, the management has claimed it is REALLY based in Houston; there’s a Houston office, of course, but there’s more Isle of Man history on the books by far.
Almaz is recycled Soviet/Russian hardware, with the majority of the knowledge base of the hardware in Russia. Look at the leadership on the site, and you’ve got two Cosmonauts and two non-US lawyers, plus a bunch of U.S. front-people trying to sell this to NASA.
How does Charlie sells Liberty and Excalibur Alamaz as truly “American” solutions?
Agreed. No one really thought this thing out. Then again, this is NASA, and they never do.
Guys, hate to burst your bubble, but this production could have been done on my laptop in a day with little cost. So forget the “huge expenditure”, it was more like an “in-house” promotional video for a sales conference or such. Look on YouTube for thousands of examples. It just mashes together stock pieces to show things can be done differently in the future, that the age of government controlled access to space is coming to an end, just like government controlled access of the Internet faded in the 90’s(Come to think of it, Heaven help us all!).
It is a thoughtless…piece that conflicts with the
guidance…[of] NASA HQ…NASA cannot be for and against commerce at the same time…
My guess is that the NASA ‘leadership’ (at many levels), is not for or against and not sure whether they are or aren’t. People working in the commercial area are for it. People who are working the space exploration and operations are more for Orion, which makes them less for commercial, since they see the two as opposing one another.
If this is a “commerical partners” video, then why is there real footage of the (canceled) Ares I test launch at 48 sec into the video????
I agree they wasted several seconds on Ares I test launch, when they could have included SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket instead.
At least now i have something to send to my friends who ask what the heck is going on now that shuttle is ended and we have a space station we can’t get to and no plan for getting into space again (their impressions). After i tell them to blame congress.
You can actually blame ATK for bribing congress. There is a reason why the US has no large high performance hydrocarbon engines (although spacex has plans) and it has nothing to do with “government inefficiency”.
Several folks have mentioned either the RD-180 engines on the Atlas-V or Excalibur-Almaz’s Russian roots. In this new era of commercial space flight, actually started under Griffin, maybe the Russian engineering philosophy of “don’t let perfection be the enemy of good-enough” is preferable to NASA’s ?
Huh? You assume NASA has a standardized philosophy. Arguably, there are four—
1) What NASA HQ wants, based upon the current administration and available budget given by congress.
2) What the centers want, based upon protecting themselves.
3) What individual Congressmen and Senators with seniority dictate, based upon how they want to protect jobs in their home state.
4) What Congress as a whole forces an Administration to work with based upon budget.
Like I said, maybe the Russian engineering/design method + American manufacturing techniques (after all, the Russian are having their problems!) would be best.
Just watched for the first time. I think the comments by NASA are just to say that they aren’t favoring any one particular project more than another. But they also want to show off everything going on. But let me repeat, no favoritism!
Commercial is the way NASA has always done.They hire contractors.They put phony money in by the contractors.This is just in house work.Contractors have always done some work on their on.They should try something new and do it themselves.They can put off work on Mars&Moon vehicles,use these people.They get paid the same no matter what they do.So no cost.Go Green.They have enough material to make to make a crewed spacecraft and the launchers.They do not need to go to the $500 hammer store.Daddy on Rocket City Rednecks said he was a machinists for NASA.They could recall him or if they have any left use them.They have many half finished projects to salvage or modify.Put an adapter on the X38 CRV and go up and down.They have a half finished one at JSC.As SpaceX has proven making boosters and building your own engines is easy.Roll a tank and weld it.Add engines and electronics.How much would the raw metal cost?They might be able to get those 20 Soyuz engines cheap,that are thrown away each launch.They have facilities for everything.From designing,building testing,flying.They are getting cut.They need to cut costs.This would.This would make everyone happy.They think NASA should and does DIY.Congress says they want this.Some will have to chose between subsidizing private companies and getting work for the centers.Give these private companies some competition.NASA was doing Reaganism before Reagan.That is probably where he got the idea of privatizing everything.
What soured me on commercial was when I saw the burned side of Dragon.Plasma should be kept on heatshield.NASA and SpaceX said at the after mission news conference that there were no problems.NASA is required,by contract to clear what they say by these private companies.SpaceX turned the capsule so the burned side was not visible.None of their images show it.The image came from somewhere.Maybe the Mall display.It is still dishonest.
I would suggest you take a look at the Apollo command modules after reentry as well as most Soyuz return vehicles. You will notice charring on one side of all those capsules as well. It is clearly not dishonest. Don’t try to paint your lack of knowledge as dishonesty by a company or an agency. Spacex’s capsule returned as planned. Charring happens to all capsule based designs.
When the video appears over at NASA.gov, the legalease disappeared and is now replaced with a more straightforward scorecard of current funded and unfunded CCDev participants.
Be interesting to see what happens at the House hearing March 7 on NASA’s FY 2013 budget request.
The video has ended up on NASA’s Commercial Space Transportation webpage.
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