PFC-TUT and Media

The most important thing in the project from the viewpoint of European Space Agency was to get publicity. Eventhough the word "Outreach" was not so clear for us in the beginning we understood this.
One can say that we learned a lot about media and journalists during the project. More negative sides than positive. It is anyway good experience for the future and with these media appearings we can best pay ESA for sponsoring the flights.
Our experiment was not the most popular compared to for example the Oulu group experiment with the behaviour of fishes. That experiment was easy to understand for the journalists and also funny.
Our journalist in the flight was Marko Pekkola from Tähdet ja avaruus -magazine, whom Mikko already knew from the national astronomical organisation Ursa. From each country at least one journalist had the possibility to get on the flight. From Finland there was also another journalist from the commercial TV-channel 3.

We have also held and plan to have presentations at our university and other places about the project.

In media we have been appearing as follows:

Ten o'clock news 24th October 2000: The reporter who was on the flight, Tarja Salumäki, interviewed us about one minute right after the flight. We were quite astounished when despite of her promise she put us at the end of the news as the usual humorous news report. All the relevant facts about our experiment were cut off and the only comment remaining was Kimmo's joke about the behaviour of the tassel in our hats during the weightlessness. If the whole interview had been shown, the tassel would have been a nice ending, but now alone that comment gave a very unprofessional picture about us and got us very angry. Well... about Salumäki we must also tell that she didn't understand that on what part of the parabola the weightlessness is produced and she reported it wrongly. I hope that this taught ESA that the commercial TV channels usually are not the best ones from scientific point of view eventhough they get maybe more viewers.

Studia Media 8th November 2000: Weightless StudentsOur university's digital magazine made a nice article about us. We got to read it trough before the publication and got to do some minor changes to it. The story is found here.

Aamulehti 12th November 2000: Getting to know the sweetness and vomitting misery of weightlessness . Aamulehti, the largest newspaper of Tampere area was very interested in doing a story about as right after the trip. We also got our own text about "Simulating weightlessness by parabolic flights" as appendix and with it got some scientific viewpoint too to the article. The most funny thing in this was that the journalist Pekka Verno wrote as follows: "The reporter of MTV3 was also on the flight and she threw up all the time." We did not say the thing like that, but we certainly were not sorry for this comment. We also got to tell about the injustice of the news when they cut our comments away. The largest error in this article was that they said that the price of 27 thousand marks per person had to be paid when that was our whole budget of the project.

Anturi 15.11.2000: Our boys in weightlessness In this article we got to thank our supervisor, professor Kuokkala. One of the minor headlines was "One third has to use the bag", this side of the flight was very popular for all the journalists. After all, nobody was in full strength in that flight we think.

Tähdet ja avaruus -magazine 7/2000: Weightlessness: ZERO GRAVITY! The national astronomy organisation Ursa's magazine was very beautiful with large color pictures and lots of detailed description. The photograph taken by Kimmo of the A300 ZERO-G plane in the morning sun got also to the magazine and gave us some financial support. The article was very informative eventhough there were some minor mistakes. Also many comments from the Finnish people on the flights. Very likely one of the most popular articles of that magazine.

Radiantti 4/2000: Pickings from the trip diary This magazine of the Tampere astronomy association was summarised by Mikko from our diary. Many photos with it and OK as an article.

TTKK & Co 1/2001: Students got to a parabolic flight. The Tampere University & Co magazine published almost the same article that was earlier in Anturi. Our sponsors and co-operators should maybe have been told more about in the article, but anyway a nice overview about the project.

Pohjalainen 26th August 2001: Student from Vaasa got almost to space. The Pohjalainen daily newspaper with some 33 thousand of circulation did a small article about Mikko related to his presentation at the local astronomy club. The article was of the same style as other ones, mainly the feelings from the flight, but anyway quite nice.

Conclusions:

In the beginning we wanted to make at least one scientific and technical raport, but we didn't (yet) get any article with that viewpoint.

We didn't get our sponsors well visible in others than the article in Anturi eventhough in the picture in Aamulehti the BestLinux advertisement was very well perceptible. We hope that this CD does its part in expressing our gratitude for financial support.

No groups from Finland will fly in the next Student Parabolic Flight Campaign in Summer 2001. We were a bit disappointed for this. Maybe we did tell too much in the articles about the project size and the time that we put in it. The truth is that the best way to advertise the PFC project is to tell about the experiences: microgravity sensation and the feelings about the weightlessness.