Discovery Landing

Don't know about anybody else, but I'm following the Shuttle landing. I lived about 4 miles from NASA in 2003 when Columbia was lost and have many friends there still. Must say I have an anxious excitement. Watching a live feed right now from NASA.

I dont know about anybody else, but I think it's hugely twisted and kinda sick that no one generally gives a flying fuck about space shuttles coming and going until such time as there is the possibility of a horrific incident on re-entry, whereupon they'll cover it live for hours while hyping it up to the roof.

I agree on the media part, but there are those of us who follow and have followed every launch and landing from the beginning of the program.

I would be lying if I said I wasn't a little more nervous than normal this time around, but not because I am a media hype hound. The media makes me sick as well, especially when it comes to things like this.

The NASA website is saying the Discovery landing is delayed until tomorrow. . .

A lot of people give a lot more than a flying fuck. The problem is that the mass/corporate media have their demographics - and their demographics convince them that the vast majority of mouthwash buyers and paper-towel users don't give a flying fuck until there's drama involved - not just boring old, hard-for-an-undereducated-reporter-to-understand science or engineering.

In reality, there are hundreds of millions of people who care about things like the space program. But there are hundreds and hundreds of millions of people who care more about the latest bikini-blonde Alabama teenager who disappears from a tropical paradise.

Home sweet home for Discovery. Great job, & congrats to the crew, especially Commander Eileen Collins for making a perfect night landing.

*Breathes a sigh of relief.*

I know media-bashing is the hot fashion trend and people just love to jump on the bandwagon, but there's nothing here that hasn't been with us since the dawn of exploration. When Ogg the caveman discovered the next valley over, he got a hero's feast. When Oompa the second caveman explored the valley, he got a pat on the back. When Ollie the third caveman established a trade route to get useful flint out of the valley, he got a "what took you so long?"

Christopher Columbus was the first to sail to the new world. Remember who was second? Anybody? Can you name any of the hundreds or thousands of vessels that made the same crossing this year?

When space travel becomes so mundane that the mainstream media utterly ignores it, that's when people who love science and science fiction can smile. The explorers and the tragedies grab the headlines, but the future lets itself in quietly once the door is open.

Discovery is newsworthy because it demonstrates that the human will to explore can't be undone by a single tragedy. I don't know what news source you watch, read or listen to, but I heard reporters cheering, laughing and awed at this landing. I didn't see cynical vultures waiting for disaster so they could grab ratings: I saw people genuinely excited about this landing, and fervently hoping for everything to go according to plan.

Next shuttle? I wouldn't expect live network coverage. But... who cares? I can get video feed directly from NASA. The media is evolving to allow you to see what you want to see, not what a programming director guesses that the mass audience wants to see.

A free media is more essential to our liberties than guns and tanks. Never forget that. By all means, bash them when they fixate on some irrelevant celebrity tidbit and ignore the latest genocide... they deserve that bashing, and do a fair bit of it themselves. But don't call them to task for covering a story that a LOT of people, including us, WANT to see!

Forgive my disjointed ranting. It's too early to be composing screeds.

Great points, and I agree with you for the most part Arcadia.

I would point out though, that the hype surrounding Mr. Columbus took away credit for 100s of years from those outcast Norsemen who set sail for and reached the new world first.

That said, the press conference is on on the NASA TV channel, so I am going to go watch that.

At least they had longboats. Some of my ancestors had to WALK!

Actually, there was a time when corporate news emphasized the (admittedly subjective) "newsworthiness" of information and content over what might "sell" the product. That was true both in print and television journalism. Journalistic training was far better; you were encouraged to double-major in a field related to what you wanted to cover, for example, because it was believed you needed some expertise.

The quality of journalism, especially in the United States, has declined drastically over the last 25 years. Don't take my word for it: take a look at the literature generated on the academic, management, and third-party oversight levels.

So there's nothing really "fashionable" about media-bashing; the coverage of the space shuttle, compared to the coverage of the missing Alabama woman in Aruba, provides a handy symbol for the problem.

I won't dispute that, and I think the major culprit is the growing conglomoration of media outlets. But that's nothing new either. It was William Randolph Hearst that pioneered sensationalistic "yellow journalism" in the late 1800s.

Media mega-mergers fuel the trend today. But at the same time, new media is proving to be more nimble than the lumbering conglomorates. The proliferation of cable and the internet allows the targeting of audiences for what the corporate suits would dismiss as "niche" audiences... one of those niches being the people who hold out for high-quality, low-bias journalism.

We are finding more and more that programs and writing that challenges the audience to think are surpassing all expectations of the old-school "lowest common denominator" programming directors and editors. Combined with the proliferation of "alternative" news resources, I strongly suspect that journalism in the new millenium is headed for a renaissance.

Well, I think there's a valid reason for this. The typical shuttle mission had become, in most people's minds, routine. After the Challenger accident and the subsequent redesign of the SRB's, things had begun to settle back into that false sense of security when the Columbia was destroyed.

Suddenly, we were faced with the fact that, yes, space travel is still an inherently risky and dangerous endeavor, and not something to be thought of as "just another mission." Something as simple as a one-pound chunk of insulating foam spelled disaster for Columbia and her crew.

If mass media had existed in 1903, I am certain we would have seen extensive coverage of Orvile and Wilbur Wright's first tentative attempts at "slipping the surly bonds of earth," but nowadays American Airlines flight 682 from Dallas to Chicago wouldn't merit coverage. The only error committed here is allowing ourselves to have become complacent.

P2