{"id":966,"date":"2006-12-29T10:28:14","date_gmt":"2006-12-29T10:28:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/scienceblogs.com\/principles\/2006\/12\/29\/kids-and-space\/"},"modified":"2006-12-29T10:28:14","modified_gmt":"2006-12-29T10:28:14","slug":"kids-and-space","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/2006\/12\/29\/kids-and-space\/","title":{"rendered":"Kids and Space"},"content":{"rendered":"

James Nicoll, one of my go-to sources for odd information about space related issues, is attempting to determine whether it’s true that space enthusiasm is for older people<\/a>. Unsurprisingly, given who he is and what he writes about, his comments have turned up lots of examples of people born after 1980 who are wild for space travel. I think the term is “selection bias.”<\/p>\n

My readership is probably somewhat less space-crazed than his, but I doubt you all would be a representative sample, either. If you’ve got opinions on the subject, though, go leave him a comment. Or leave one here.<\/p>\n

(Update:<\/strong> Janet offers another couple of counter-examples<\/a>.)<\/p>\n

Personally, I tend to agree with the pseudonymous commenter who said:<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

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People who were born back in the day grew up in an era when space travel seemed like it was a) achievable, and b) not utterly pointless. Now, of course, it seems a bit silly and retro, like tailfins on cars and anti-Communist scares. So people who are born in the ’80s will never have lived in an era when space travel was cool, and won’t have that holdover attitude stuck with them.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

I might not be quite that snarky about it, but I think that’s the basic mechanism. I’m old enough to remember when the Space Shuttle seemed like a good idea, and stayed home from school to watch the first launch, but manned space flight looks much less cool these days.<\/p>\n

As someone else points out, though, there’s probably a useful distinction to be made between opinions of manned space flight and opinions of unmanned missions and space telescopes and that sort of thing.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

James Nicoll, one of my go-to sources for odd information about space related issues, is attempting to determine whether it’s true that space enthusiasm is for older people. Unsurprisingly, given who he is and what he writes about, his comments have turned up lots of examples of people born after 1980 who are wild for… Continue reading Kids and Space<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"1","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-966","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-science","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/966","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=966"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/966\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=966"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=966"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=966"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}