CNN And Space

This morning, CNN interviewed Charles Bolden, NASA administrator. Bolden said he expects U. S. astronauts to be flying into space aboard commercial American spacecraft by 2014 or 2015. CNN also provided live coverage of Atlantis docking with ISS.

The network further featured an interview with Myles O'Brien. O'Brien was CNN's science and space correspondent for years-- until CNN disbanded its science and space unit. O'Brien suggested that since most television journalists have educational backgrounds in history, political science, or some other social science they don't understand space projects and the physical sciences, so they don't, as a group, see the value of space exploration. That partly explains, he said, why coverage of space has declined over the decades since Apollo-- though he also pointed out that public interest in space seemed to have peaked with the safe return of Apollo 11.

In the years ahead, O'Brien said the excitement in space will be in the commercial space arena. We will see how CNN and the other televison networks cover that.