In Space, No One Can Hear You Groan
Well, it appears our fine public servants at NASA have been hard at work in the CGI labs, creating a promotional video for the future theme park they intend to build on the Moon.
I'll leave aside for the moment my total disbelief that a meaningful sustainable lunar base will be built by NASA in my lifetime due to a whole range of economic issues which have been written about in previous entries.
Instead, I'd simply like to point out a couple of things:
First, to the geniuses at NASA who created this little promo trailer, trying to cash in on the hype of Hollywood: sorry, but the Transformers movie has a much cooler trailer. Oh, and I really think that if anyone is going to make a trailer of a space base, NASA would at least get it right and not include SOUND EFFECTS. For the love of God people, you do realise that space is a vacuum, right?
Second, to the general public out there that get sucked in by these sort of promotional vapor ware extravaganzas. Google "VentureStar". You'll see some really cool promo videos of the supposed successor to the Space Shuttle.
Computer simulations are easy.
Space is hard.
posted by Shubber Ali at 2:00 AM
5 Comments:
Very Battlestar Galacticaey of them.
100% with y'all on this one. This kind of thing drives me nuts because it's expensive to make and of questionable functional value. It's poor marketing, but probably the best that the rocket scientists at NASA can do, or at least envision.
Then again, the corporate world does this kind of stuff as well.
what's sad is it's poor CGI.
Good Drama, but, the effects look like a
High school kid did the models.
Jesus, you could go to Foundation imaging
and get way better CGI, or go to any pro shop.
The backgrounds were obviously from a pro library, but the motion models were just lame.
And i don't think the public is excited about
going to the moon again.
They have a been there done that mindset.
I would disagree, Anonymous, from what I've seen when I talk to the public. A lot of folks really aren't interested in Mars, but the Moon mindset I see is more one of "Tell me why we should be going back to the Moon", as in "Please inform me". That's when I whip out the genuine fake Moon rocks and start doing just that...
If you look at the polling Mars usually trails the Moon by a fair amount, even amongst youngsters. That might be why there were more Moon questions in 'Kids to Space' than on any other topic.
The public wants to be excited about something, they just don't know yet that it's our Moon.
Then again, the corporate world does this kind of stuff as well.
murphydyne, I would posit that the difference between a corporate PR video and a NASA PR video is that the corporation is only beholden to the shareholders, and has to be profitable in the long run or go bankrupt.... whilst NASA (or any other govt organisation) is beholden to the TAXPAYERS - and using tax dollars to create PR videos to sell the public on giving more tax dollars to make a program go is a bit conflicted...
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