From: tffreeba@indyvax.iupui.edu
Newsgroups: sci.space
Subject: SSF Deputy Dir. Interview
Date: 12 Dec 92 13:27:45 -0500

          This is a short piece on an interview I had with Martin Kress of
          NASA.  I am sorry if it is not very good but I whacked it out
          when I should have been studying for finals.
          Thomas Freebairn
          
          SPACE STATION SAVANT SAYS NASA'S SEMANTIC SIZZLE SUCKS
          (so o.k.  I'm a sucker for sports headlines.)
          
          Recently Martin Kress, newly installed deputy director of Space
          Station Freedom, was in Indianapolis to participate as a panelist
          in the NASA town meeting.  He gave an interview to the Indiana
          University - Purdue University newspaper before the meeting
          began.
          
          Kress sat in the university hotel lobby, his words competing with
          the early morning vacuuming of the staff and institutional Muzak. 
          Although he was living out of a suit case, many miles from home, 
          Kress was impeccably dressed and seemed perfectly relaxed.  
          
          While just beginning at his new post, Kress is no stranger to
          Washington or Capitol Hill.  Starting his career in Sen. Muskie's
          office, working on the Senate Budget Committee, he moved on to
          the Subcommittee on Science, Technology and Space.  Arriving at
          NASA in 1990 he was Assistant Administrator for Legislative
          Affairs before assuming the challenge of Space Station Freedom.
          
          "My beat has always been technology, budgets and policy," Kress
          said.  "Now my beat is technology, budgets, policy and running
          the damn thing."
          
          With all that time on the Hill, Kress knows all about the
          pitfalls the space station faces.  The Congressional budget cuts
          and the growing perception among scientists that Freedom will
          accomplish little, have not gone unnoticed.
          
          He believes that Space Station Freedom faces a three headed
          dragon.
          
          First is Congress and the budget.
          
          "When the Hill looks at an issue and they say, 'We have got to
          reduce the budget,' big is bad, by definition," Kress said. 
          "They go through and look for big things.  They don't look for
          projects that may cost $5 or $10 million and are totally
          ludicrous.  They go after the big ones."
          
          The second is a lack of clear vision in Congress on if they want
          to go with big science and technology initiatives or with smaller
          more focused applied programs.  Kress feels this tension is a
          debate that has yet to be articulated in the halls of power.
          
          Third is the lack of a scientific constituency for the space
          station.
          
          "The science community that is going to benefit most from the
          space station is a new and emerging one," Kress said. "There are
          probably only 300 people in the life science and microgravity
          research fields right now in the United States.  I'm competing
          with 10,000 planetary scientists and astrophysicists for NASA
          funds."
          
          Yet he feels when NASA starts to announce funding for research on
          Freedom the science community will start to produce defenders,
          and not just critics, of the station.
          
          "All of a sudden we will have a built in constituency," Kress
          predicted.
          
          While not shy about speaking about Space Station Freedom, Kress
          seemed equally eager to discuss the town meetings and what NASA
          wanted and needed to accomplish with them.  He began by
          explaining a change in the format for the meeting that afternoon.
          
          The Indianapolis meeting was the first that the panelists did not
          open with a prepared presentation.
          
          "We went out and told people that we wanted to listen and
          interact with them but at six o clock when the meetings ended
          there was this long line of people that wanted to ask questions,"
          Kress said. "The way the format was working, we were talking too
          much and not listening enough.
          
          "I used to teach and I can look out into the audience and see
          when the eyes start to drift."
          
          Indeed the need to keep the American public's eyes from drifting
          was a recurring theme as Kress spoke.  This need is a relatively
          new phenomena for NASA, according to Kress.
          
          "Until the Challenger accident and some of the events of the mid
          80s, we really didn't have to go out and market ourselves or our
          programs," Kress said.  "We _were_ the standard.  Now we must
          really go out and let the people know. 
          
          Yet he feels that NASA is not where it should be when it comes to
          communicating with the public.
          
          "We talk to millions and millions of people a year but for some
          reason we've not done a good enough job of telling the people
          what the value and the benefits are of the investment," Kress
          said.
          
           Some of the benefits he listed that were direct descendants of
          the space program were:
          - Cat-scans
          - MRIs
          - Fibulators
          - Computer miniaturization
          
          Some of the problems he sees with NASA communications are the
          over use of technical jargon and acronyms.
          
          "If you don't speak in common, simple English, who knows what
          you're saying," Kress said. "You can't say, 'I have a ASRM going
          to fly on a STS to launch the SSF.'  People look at you like,
          'Huh?'"
          
          Even before he started his new job at the Space Station project,
          Kress had begun his own campaign to lower the jargon volume. 
          Last year he spent time with the public affairs staff and asked
          them to come up with a handbook in _English_.
          
          "I know it sounds crazy, but you're dealing with engineers,
          scientists and technical people and you're starting to understand
          each other, but nobody else does.," Kress said.
          
          This is an uphill battle.  Kress is working on NASA liaison with
          the Clinton/Gore transition team and has found himself rewriting
          70 percent of the print material returned to him after he
          requested they be made less technical.
          
          Kress would like to see a little English brought to NASA's video
          feed, too.
          
          "When you watch a mission on NASA Select, I would really like to
          see a narrator who is not a scientist or an engineer to give a
          narrative in simple terms," Kress said.
          
          In conjunction with this, Kress wants there to be an educational
          component with every NASA mission.
          
          "Have a curriculum for one year based on the missions we are
          going to do and bring the science back home," Kress said.  "Let
          the kids understand what we are doing and why we are doing it."
          
          He hopes that the town meetings are the first step in better
          communications between NASA and the public that ultimately holds
          its purse strings.
          
          "People have to know what it is you are doing before they are
          going to support what you are doing," Kress said.
          
          #30#
          
          
          Non-Journalistic Asides {NJAs}: All the people I met from NASA
          wore great suits.  Is there a NASA tailor hidden away somewhere? 
          Special style kudos to Tyrone Taylor, NASA project manager for
          the town meetings.  As a grubby student journalist I found myself
          completely out-gunned on the sartorial flank. But, then again,
          that's been known to happen to me at the swine barn at the state
          fair.
          
          I liked Kress.  There was no lean forward and stare you in the
          eye, "Listen to me I'm a big shot" b.s.  He seemed very genuine. 
          Not bad for a Notre Dame graduate.   
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