A meaningful goal for NASA

[Elspode]

Originally posted by Skunks
As long as I can remember (not long), there hasn't been much NASA-public interaction

I must respectfully disagree with this notion. There is more public information about the space program, and more easily available, than ever before. NASA maintains email lists about a myriad of topics, virtually every non-secret aspect of both manned and unmanned space exploration is available on the Web, and to top it off, you can watch the (almost) daily feed of briefings, interviews, multimedia, etc. on cable TV (if your distributor carries it...mine does).

As someone who has followed the space program pretty faithfully for almost 40 years, I can say unequivocally that NASA has *never* done a better job than they are doing now of getting info out to the public. Hell, I've even sent emails to project directors and gotten personal replies. These people are very, very accessible.