Volume 2, No. 17. September 13, 2002
Space
mettle
For telling NASA
engineers they should send a payload of sneakers with a very tall payload specialist
into outer space; for telling NASA’s mission planners to bring back more
from Mars than just rocks; and, most of all, for telling NASA’s story to
the general public, NASA is now telling Bob Rogers thank you. The National Aeronautics
and Space Administration yesterday bestowed one of its highest honors, the NASA
Public Service Medal, on the chairman and founder of BRC Imagination Arts.
“I was sure tickled,” Rogers said. “When this letter showed up
I thought they had sent it to the wrong Bob Rogers.” The letter came from
Roy Estes, recently retired director of the Stennis Space Center in Mississippi,
where the medal ceremony was to take place.
With a resume that includes work for Disney and Universal Studios, Rogers was
hired to create Space Center Houston, the visitor center for the Johnson Space
Center near Houston, Texas. Telling NASA’s story through visual and interactive
mediums was not as big a challenge as getting his employers to understand the
value of entertainment in getting that message across. “I’m telling
them that the public doesn’t see what NASA does the way the NASA engineers
and scientists see it,” Rogers said. “The public see it as an adventure
and want to share in that experience. A lot of NASA guys say, ‘We’re
good at what we do and enjoy it so put the money under the door and go away.’
A lot don’t want to explain it to anybody.”
With the success of Space Center Houston, BRC also produced the Apollo/Saturn
V Center at the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida, and is currently
working on conceptual designs for similar visitor interactive exhibits at Stennis
and NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California.
However, Rogers’ newest mission isn’t so much bringing space to the
general public, but taking the general public into space. In 1998 he was appointed
to the Mars Architecture Committee, a gathering of NASA engineers and scientists—and
one themed entertainment expert—to work on the master plan for exploration
of Mars. “Theoretically, I know something about public engagement and how
to fire the public imagination.” He also was appointed to NASA’s Mars
Exploration Program Analysis Group. “That is all about payloads and science.
Don’t ask me why I’m a member. They sit around discussing the process
by which they will decide the process for what they will do.”
Rogers, on the other hand, speaks a creative vocabulary foreign to the other
committee members. “They’re going, ‘He’s used the word cool
three times in the last sentence. Am I OK with this?’ At the same time,
these are the brightest people on the planet. They could study something and
get everything in a few minutes; smart, smart, smart people. They never fail
to understand what I’m telling them. They don’t always know what to
do with it.”
Like the time eight years ago he suggested a payload to NASA for which a private
company would cover all the costs, and with the proper payload specialist, the
public would watch the minutest detail of the mission. The payload: Nike shoes.
The specialist: Michael Jordan. “They said, ‘He’s too tall for
the space suit.’ But I said, ‘Great. Have him come in and try on the
suit with the press there observing how it doesn’t fit, then come back
in four weeks with a suit that does fit and the press will shoot him being fitted.
Two press events in four weeks.’ Then they said, ‘But he’s too
tall for the seats.’ I said, ‘Great. . .”
“I’m slowly nagging away at them. They all get it, but then they go
back to what they know.” Rogers also now has a prestigious medal showing
that NASA appreciates his nagging. “I’ve been to the Oscars twice
and had the wrong name in the envelope,” he said of comparing his NASA
medal with the host of other honors he’s earned in his career. “I’m
really touched by the medal. I never expected this. Some of my work I was paid
for, some I did for free because I was just interested. I’m touched. There
are a lot of other people who deserved this more than I do, but I’m happy
to go get it. I’m going to grab it quick before they change their minds.”
©2002, Minton Enterprises
LLC
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