Ah, now I understand your point; forgive me for misinterpreting you. On the whole, I think the number of people who can do the “rocket science” is a fraction of the population, no matter how you decide to divide the population (age, race, sex, etc). It doesn’t mean, however, that the number of people who are at least interested, and thus can influence government to fund us, can’t be increased.

To comment about some of the previous statements made on this post: I’m not suggesting that NASA fire it’s PAO office; I’m also not suggesting that NASA hire some huge, trendy marketing firm (though I think having something along those lines implemented internally would definitely be a good thing).

Mr. Mealling suggesting having NASA be more open and accessible to the work we do. That’s a great idea, but in most cases, access must be controlled or denied for the safety of the public as well as the operational and mechanical security of the various projects. In most cases, the only public access to these projects is the information and science they produce after the fact.

Good! Keep it up. On the whole, I’ve found Gen Y a pleasant bunch of kids (I can say that as a grumpy old Xer) to work with. They’re a lot more optimistic than I was at their age, even if I don’t always appreciate the same cultural habits/interests.

Again, my concern wasn’t about the Gen Yers within the space community now. My question is, “Before NASA goes off and tries to reach the rest of your generation, is it worthwhile? How many others among that 70-million-strong cohort can actually do the aerospace engineering (“rocket science”)?

I think your argument is a valid one. We have to prove ourselves worthy of a seat at NASA’s communication table, but I also think you have to remember one thing: the same people who control access also gave us our jobs. Therefore, they must think we have, at the very least, the ability to make positive contributions, and I would agree. I’ve seen many members of Gen-Y given leadership opportunities at NASA very early in their careers, so I think we’re living up to, and exceeding, many expectations thus far; and those people are not limited to the authors of this page. Everyday, I work with people my age (27) and younger who routinely make positive impacts on their group and NASA as a whole.

When we go to places there is too much emphasis on “Was or is there life” and not enough on “let’s look all around as much of this planet as we can as fast as we can with both camera eyes and ears (microphones) and feeds everyone can see live to see if we find something cool we weren’t expecting”

The issue of life is obviously very important to some people lost in an old debate about religion versus science but frankly not to most people.
If we find life and it’s a bacteria – guess what – it won’t impress people! And guess what? most will think we brought it on the spacecraft at this point!

However if you find an incredible spot to watch a europeon (as in moon not europe) sunset and you have a live mic capturing the sounds of the icy winds that will make a helluava lot more people interested in seeing more of that place with new probes and trips.

THE people who are PAYING for the trips want tourism – the science experiments get funded by the free ride the tourisim provides. People NEVER wanted to go to the moon to study the rocks. They wanted to see what it LOOKED like and the rockhounds got a free trip paid for by the public tourists. NEVER FORGET THAT.
NEVER FORGET THE APPEAL OF WEBCAM AND VIRTUAL REALITY VIA TELEPRESENCE. THAT’S WHAT PEOPLE WANT!

Also I am tired of sending probes to planets without microscopes if you are looking for signs of life.
I have begun to believe scientists really don’t want a final answer on whether or not there is life on mars. If they did they would send a damn microscope and absolutely positively look to see if their are bugs in the soil or not.

The viking landers did secondary tests which determined there could be life way back int he 1970′s. why weren’t we sure then? becuase they didn’t have any microscops hooked to a video feed which could have shown us if microbes were creating the respone or some rock reaction!

The latest rovers have found there was water on mars so there could have been life.

Yet I was amazed when I called JPL 2 years ago and found that even on the next mars lander we STILL will not be able to look at a bit of soil and really see it microscopically to see if anything moves if we heat it up!
ANOTHER WASTED TRIP AT THE COST OF BILLIONS to SEND A TRUCK TO DO WHAT THE ROVERS ALREADY DID!

COME ON!
STOP STALLING!

Find life or not and then spend our money building fast traveling aircraft or balloons with live COLOR cameras in stereoscopic vision that REALLY LET US EXPLORE THE DAMN PLANET.
STOP FEEDING IT TO US PEICEMEAL TO GIVE YOURSELVES CAREER LONGEVITY!

Lastly – it is pretty hard to get excited about things that we have already done.
Do I want to spend a bunch of money to go back to the moon with some people when I already saw that happen once? NO. DO I want to see a fast little rover or orbiting rocket feeding me closeups of the moon it goes over everyday so I can explore a whole new world – hell yes.
DO I want to see more people floating in a tin can in orbit NO. No wyou put some real people up there and let them show us what life in space is really like and I might be interested and you would get better real science with 6 college kids of both sexes living in space than you would with a bunch of trained astronauts who are told not to do anything that might offend someone.

we want to see sex in space, real life in space, real views form space, a live camera looking down at the world in hdtv that we can pull up anytime. we want cameras on the mice in space and we want to know there names just like meerkat manor.
We want SOMETHING NEW!

The problem is we have 50 and 60 year old people setting nasa goals who have old goals that were impressive we getting to space was the achievement.
now that we are there we need goals beyond getting there and more goals about doing interesting and fun things WE CAN ALL DIRECTLY PARTICIPATE IN WHEN THE SPACECRAFT ARE THERE.