Even astronauts play golf. They also fish and surf, and they like a little romance now and then.
That's the gist of a marketing campaign being put together in Florida's Space Coast that encompasses the Kennedy Space Center at Cape Canaveral. Magazine and newspaper advertisements will showcase spacesuit-clad models lining up putts, spotting wildlife and clinking champagne glasses.
The campaign is a departure from decades of ads that focused on the Kennedy Space Center, the launch site for hundreds of space missions throughout the years, including the latest shuttle, Discovery, which is due to return Aug. 8. It underscores how the region is reducing its economic reliance on the shuttles, a program President George W. Bush wants to mothball by 2010.
Space is playing a smaller role in the tourism industry. Cape Canaveral drew about 25 percent of all tourists to the area before the Challenger exploded in January 1986. Since then, Port Canaveral has emerged as the second busiest cruise-ship port in the world behind Miami.
The campaign breaks from marketing that centered on the shuttle program's hub.
Bloomberg, August 5, 2005 |
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Golfing 'Spacemen' Pitch Florida's Post-Shuttle Tourism Future
By: Pete Kendall, August 5, 2005 |
The aftereffects of the stock market rally may get the shuttle back in orbit. But the shuttle’s next run will be its shortest yet. As the bear market wears on, disdain for NASA"s "risk-taking" culture and a public obsession with more earthly matters will probably ground it for a long time.
The Elliott Wave Financial Forecast, October 2003 |
EWFF's forecast calling for an eventual grounding of the space shuttle came true in February 2004 as the U.S. administration announced that the shuttle program would end by 2010. More mission are still planned for the next few years, but after the “most systems go” launch of July 26 in which the same kind of debris that led to the destruction of Columbia in February 2003 was shown flaking off the space craft on lift-off, few are counting on many more shuttle flights. Today’s clip shows that even Cape Canaveral chamber of commerce types are diversifying. Apparently, however, they are unaware of the socionomic forces behind their success over the years. If they were, they wouldn’t be banking on the luxury cruise line industry, which promises to be another focal point for the bear market. |
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Additional References
EWFF, October 2003
NASA announced last month that the shuttle will fly again in 2004. Surveys show support for the space program is “broad but not deep.” Even this moderate support is likely to wane, however. Recent headlines suggest that it may have started already, as an independent report has found that the program is “Full of Flaws,” and some members of U.S. Congress are suggesting that “space flight be curtailed.” This relates to one of the consequences of a bear market catalogued in The Wave Principle of Human Social Behavior. A falling trend quenches the desire for science and scientific exploration. Science fiction writers have already spotted the emergence of this trend in the “present depressing state of the field.” “Incredibly, young people no longer find the real future exciting,” said one author at the latest World Science Fiction awards. “They no longer find science admirable. They no longer instinctively lust to go to space.” The aftereffects of the stock market rally may get the shuttle back in orbit. But the shuttle’s next run will be its shortest yet. As the bear market wears on, disdain for NASA’s “risk-taking” culture and a public obsession with more earthly matters will probably ground it for a long time. |
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