Online Public Relations Thoughts

 NASA has always been a savvy and creative agency of publicity.  Its primary mission in the 1960s and early 1970s was to reach the moon, a built-in publicity machine that turned into enduring PR when it brought the feat off.  It turns out more was happening on the space trips that is receiving attention now -- Moon Trees.  These are 50-year-old trees that came from a canister of seeds sent on Apollo 14 to highlight the contribution of smoke jumpers who parachute into the front lines of forest fires.  The container was supposed to form part of an experiment to see if a lack of gravity would affect the ability of the seeds to germinate.  It didn't.  Today, there are Moon Trees the world over from that journey.  Few remember the provenance of the trees, but NASA does, and it is part of the agency's enduring publicity.