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Unfortunately all the national space agencies seem to suffer from this. Both NASA and ESA also seem to think that people are tuning in to watch the smarmy polit
by dotnet00 3y ago
Unfortunately all the national space agencies seem to suffer from this. Both NASA and ESA also seem to think that people are tuning in to watch the smarmy politician talk rather than the robot making its way to space/landing on another body.
Had the same issue with JWST for example.
- whoknowswhat11 3y agoThat was very memorable- grainy photos projected on a wall while nasa admin (old white guy) briefed Biden? Jwst had a pretty well planned out program for first images including events and it just got crushed.
- sva_ 3y agoI can imagine that this is a HN-bubble thing. Most people would probably get bored from just seeing some live footage.
- Philip-J-Fry 3y agoSpaceX livestreams didn't get super popular for having a politician on them. They got popular for showing exactly what's happening with enthusiastic presenters narrating it. Most people find speeches and politicians boring. They wanna see rockets flying, robots moving, etc.
- sph 3y agoThat is condescending nonsense. Pretty much everybody would prefer to see rocks from outer space than hearing politicians congratulating themselves and the unity of our country.
- worldsayshi 3y agoYeah it's more likely this is a case of wants of decision makers being prioritized over wants of the audience. This event is an avalanche of prestige. Of course politicians want to soak it up.
- sriku 3y agoNope. Same reaction from a wide variety of people including my wife who's not in tech and doesn't know what HN or YCombinator are. She was like "let the team speak already!"
- ismayilzadan 3y agoYou wife probably a highly educated person sharing similar views in life like you
- mcpackieh 3y agoSo what you're saying is you'd need to be an uneducated imbecile to prefer politicians speaking to live space footage. I think you're selling uneducated imbeciles short; surely even they prefer the space footage. Only the politicians doing the speaking prefer themselves.
- Eddygandr 3y agoSpaceX livestream much more mundane things with tens of thousands of viewers
- daveguy 3y ago10s of thousands. That has to be some kind of record.
- Eddygandr 3y agoNot at all! Although some of them will be people like me having it on the side monitor day dreaming while they write CRUD :)
- dotnet00 3y agoThe first launch of SpaceX's Crew Dragon with astronauts on-board holds the record for the most concurrent internet viewers on a stream tracked by NASA at 10 million. Of course if you drop the internet requirement, Apollo 11 still is by far the most live viewed at 600 million viewers.
- daveguy 3y agoThat makes sense for Apollo 11. I expect that one won't be beat until we land people on Mars. I figured SpaceX had some much bigger viewerships than 10's of thousands. (I've watched several myself.) That number must have been on the more (now) regular things like vertical landing the same rocket for the Nth time! Thank you for the update.
- pyeri 3y agoOn the other hand, political speeches on such occasions go down as most remembered historically. The infamous quote "One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind." was obviously said by some politician! (or at least with non-technical motives)
- flavius29663 3y agoAlso, "we're going to the moon not because it's easy, but because it's hard"
- ethbr1 3y agoThe full version of that section is more amusing but forgotten >> But why, some say, the moon? Why choose this as our goal? And they may as well ask: why climb the highest mountain? Why 35 years ago fly the Atlantic? Why does Rice play Texas? We choose to go to the moon {applause} We choose to go to the moon... {applause} We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard -- because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills -- because that challenge is one we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one we intend to win. (And the others too) (as spoken and delivered at Rice University in Houston, Texas, referencing the Rice-Texas American football rivalry, where Texas is a 10x larger university) https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=QXqlziZV63k&t=9m22s https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=QXqlziZV63k&t=9m22s https://www.jfklibrary.org/sites/default/files/archives/JFKPOF/040/JFKPOF-040-001/JFKPOF-040-001-p0032.jpg https://www.jfklibrary.org/sites/default/files/archives/JFKP... Congratulations to ISRO (and all of India) for doing not the thing that was easy, but the thing that was hard and valuable!
- dotnet00 3y agoThey want to go down in the history books the way JFK's "we choose to go to the Moon" did without experiencing the "mind-blowing" event afterwards that made the speech historical.
- granularity 3y agoHere's the actual story about that quote: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neil_Armstrong#First_Moon_walk https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neil_Armstrong#First_Moon_walk
- zapdrive 3y agoTo his credit, Narendra Modi has increased ISRO's budget a lot. Many years they have received more than promised! So he kind of deserves to rake in the limelight.
- DiggyJohnson 3y agoIt's also because these agencies are reliant of politicians and government institutions for funding. So there is a balance between "showing what the public actually cares about" and "keeping this guy happy so we can keep up funding / congressional support / etc."
- sirius87 3y agoI believe the chairman of the space agency also used the Prime Minister's mention of future projects to note it as confirmation that those projects will indeed happen i.e. be funded. That was pretty smart at @ 01:07:00 in the video. So it's good to see it work both ways.