Space Exploration and Presidential Debates: Stand And Be Counted
Editor’s 14 Jan note: If you are wondering why the presidential candidates don’t spend more time talking about space exploration, here’s your chance to try and change that situation and toss questions at them. Go to this link at Politico.com and submit a question to the Democratic and Republican candidates for the CNN/Politico/LA Times debates at the end of the month. Imagine what would happen if they had a thousand questions from SpaceRef readers submitted … Send in a question. Send in more than one question.
Editor’s 15 Jan a.m. update: You’ve been busy! Lots of space questions have been submitted and are now up for voting. Several questions seem to be heading to the top of the pack. New ones appear all the time. Look at what you have done already – imagine what will happen if you all keep at this every day and get others to vote until the debates on 30 and 31 January!
Editor’s 15 Jan p.m. update: Well something is certainly in the wind. As of Tuesday evening, space-themed questions appeared 3 or 4 times in the most popular questions for both parties. A space question was #1 among the Democratic questions and #2 for the Republican questions. See screen grab. The best I can tell, based on how this website works, the smartest thing to do is to submit a good, general – but to the point – question and then vote for these questions multiple times a day (you get one vote per question per IP address) every time you see a new one. Keep at it folks!
Space Supporters Hit the CNN Presidential Debate Website Hard, Wired
“This is clearly not random chance. NASA Watch, a private website, ran a note about the website two days ago and it appears the readers (and likely the reader’s friends, families, and associates) took this idea and ran with it. Some of the questions are embarrassingly long or heavy handed — but some of them do a great job of asking the candidates about where they stand on humanity’s future in space. If people keep submitting questions and voting, I bet there will be a space related question in each debate.”
Editor’s 17 Jan a.m. update: Space questions continue to do well. There are still 2 weeks until the actual debates- so the trick now is to keep the momentum going. Vote for space questions, keep submitting your own, and try and focus on a single, clear question and avoid long speeches on one narrow topic, etc.
Meanwhile there is another debate where CNN is looking for your input:
Wolf Blitzer: What would you ask the Democrats in South Carolina?, CNN Politics.com
“I am going to be hosting a Democratic presidential debate on Monday, January 21, in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina”
