Marketing NASA

The primary reason for NASA's mistakes were that they felt pressure to produce results in order to maintain their funding. This pressure comes from the Department of Defense, the President, the congress and finally from the American tax payer.

The average American is not very interested in space travel. Most Americans feel like we're spending too much money in Iraq. They think we ought to be rebuilding New Orleans, paying off the national debt, fixing public schools the list goes on and on. So when it comes time to spend money on space travel most people think why are we doing this again?

That's where a solid ad campaign comes in. NASA needs to take some of the a few million out of it's multi billion dollar budget and put it into a national ad campaign. This may seem like a waste to them but the truth is a successful campaign will pay them back 10 fold.

The focus of the campaign should be looking at what great inventions have come about because of the space program. A couple of simple examples would be Tang, and the space pen. More important inventions would include modern airplanes. Equally as important as what has been done in the past is what will come about in the future. For example airplanes are being developed that will enter the earth's orbit and a flight of 17 hours from Los Angeles to Australia will now take less than two hours. None of this would be possible without without the space program. NASA needs a tagline to remind people what they've done and what they will do. Some like NASA part of our past and shaping our future.

Another part of the campaign should be aimed at children. After all children are the future astronauts and tax payers. They should be producing or sponsoring cartoons about space.

The main idea is to show that money spent on the space exploration is money well spent. Once this happens and NASA has regained the publics interest and support they won't be so concerned about losing their funding. Which means employees won't be so worried about losing their jobs and that will result in greater productivity and less accidents.