Poll: Space Travel in the 21st Century: American Public Sees Benefits But Balks at Cost, Monmouth University
“This week marks the 53rd anniversary of John Glenn’s first manned orbital space flight. The Monmouth University Poll finds that most Americans feel the nation’s 1960s space program gave us long-lasting benefits and many say increased spending on the space program today would be a good investment. However, less than half the public supports spending billions of dollars specifically to send astronauts back to the moon or to other planets – a program that is currently in the works at NASA. Interestingly, this reluctance is similar to the public mood in the 1960s. A majority of Americans do support private space exploration, though. … The future of space travel may now lie in private ventures, which most Americans do support.”
Keith’s note: Interesting how this poll of actual regular American citizens shows them to be far less bubbly in their support of NASA’s human space flight programs than what the space advocacy crowd would have you think. I am not certain how well the overt “settlement” aspect of Rick Tumlinson’s recent closed space summit is going to resonate with popular sentiments when even the precursor missions are not supported by a majority of those polled. However, the commercial space aspect of this poll is interesting as are the societal benefits. Yet no one from Blue Origin, SpaceX, or Virgin Galactic – or the non-space public seems to have had any role in this closed door meeting. Or did they? I guess we’ll never know since nothing about this event’s participants is being released.
The study also notes “Just over 4-in-10 (42%) Americans are in favor of the U.S. government spending billions of dollars to send astronauts to places like the moon, Mars, and asteroids, while half (50%) oppose such an expenditure. There are no partisan differences in this opinion, although men (50%) are more supportive than women (36%) of funding this new program.” I wonder what the demographics were for Tumlinson’s space summit. If this conclave of the usual suspects followed old habits then the participants would have been overwhelmingly male and middle aged (and older).
If people get together with the aim of developing a broad-based policy (on any topic) for the entire country then they should, at a minimum, seek to pay some attention to the demographics of the group of people whom they purport to represent as well as what these people have to say on the topic. Moreover these would-be policy developers should seek to develop a policy that serves the real world interests of the population as a whole – not a policy that only serves the people who happen to be in the room arguing arcane philosophical and self-serving points.
If space advocates have all of the impact that they claim to have had over the past several decades then they need to share the blame for the dysfunctional way that this nation’s space policy (such that there is one) has been formulated and implemented. If the space advocates shun responsibility for this train weck then they are admitting that they actually have little or no impact after all. Either way, given how screwed up America’s space policy is, one would have to come to the conclusion that space advocates are part of the problem – not the solution.
– Pioneering Space National Summit Details Emerge
– Alliance for Space Development: Yawn – Yet Another Space Group, earlier post
– Space Advocates Work Together By Not Working Together, earlier post
– Move Along. This Is Not The Space Policy You’re Looking For., earlier post
– Yet Another Plan For Outer Space, earlier post
I have noticed in my own conversations that commercial space is often interpreted through the lens of “privatization”. As a result, the initial public reaction tends to be negative, particularly among enthusiastic supporters of space and science who are (on average) at least somewhat left of center. But even so I was surprised by the antipathy towards commercial space evident in this poll. 37% are opposed, which doesn’t sound that bad, until you realize that the question is phrased such that 37% believe that private entities should not be allowed to send humans into space. I was also disappointed to see the weak support for funding human exploration, but I would be interested to see the results if the phrase “billions of dollars” were replaced with “1% of the national budget”.
Yea. Polls are constructed in ways that sometimes generate answers that need some analysis. Space advocates need to spend a lot more time with the actual human beings who they claim to represent.
I can make a poll say anything I want. I can make the left or right love or hate anything.
Polls.
“Would you support spending billions in hard-earned tax dollars to hurl your fellow citizens into the uncaring blackness of space, in a dangerous attempt to overcome the gravity with which God, in His infinite wisdom, has bound us to our only home?”
you might as well ask, “if god had meant man to fly, wouldn’t he have given us wings”?
Which fact hardly serves to dismiss all polls.
No – it just means depending if you are in agreement with me will determine how much you put stock into the said poll.
Actually, wrong again. Polling is a well-understood science (by some, at least). Those searching for meaningful answers will know how to frame questions; one technique among many involves creating versions of the same question used on alternative respondents. Dismissing polling in general simply because some are poorly written or obviously slanted is silly. Professional polling is the only accurate way to gauge opinion.
Stating any percentage or even any # of billions of dollars doesn’t help much unless two things (1) the amount spent on space is compared with the amount spent on other things, whether government expenditures r people expenditures. (2) people understand that the money is not be launched into space, to the moon or landed on Mars; all of the money is spent here on earth.
I suggest stating as a percentage precisely because it serves as a comparison to money spent on other things, and also because I think there is a widespread misperception that we actually spend a significant fraction of the federal budget on NASA.
Right-o. On the other hand, I’ve asked friends/acquaintances about the size of the federal budget. Not a damn clue. They tend to outsize programs they disfavor: foreign aid and ‘welfare’ take huge hits far outweighing actual expenditures. Try it yourself.
This is a simple fact that makes accurate polling on space preferences even more difficult.
Human space exploration is simply never going to get super high poll numbers. It never has and never will. If the year we actually put a human on the Moon was the _only_ year support went over 50%, that tells you something.
But it’s not like that means we should never explore space. NASA will still get its billions and there will always be a strong set of supporters. However, instead of grand schemes that rely on funding that will never come, just work within the box space has been given. If it takes a while to get somewhere, then so be it. It’s not like Mars and the Moon are going anywhere. But don’t waste the momentum through “get rich” schemes that are doomed to fail. I mean, seriously, does it really matter in the grand scheme of space exploration if we get to Mars in 2035 or 2040 or 2045? (Other than I might be dead by 2045 and will miss out on all the fun. 🙂 Slow and steady wins the race.
It would also help that we stop acting like everyone loves space and if they don’t love space they are a Luddite. A large number of people simply see no use in it. That doesn’t make them stupid. It just means they have different priorities. Telling them all about Spinoffs and things like that are really meaningless. If we can’t justify HSF for HSF’s sake then we should question why we are doing HSF.
NASA seems to like “gimmicks” in the hope that they will elicit support.
If there is value in human space flight, then it should be taught; the public should be educated. The hype, in the long term, does not help. Orion was not taking us to Mars. Mars is decades away and Orion is teaching us nothing about how to get there.
NASA is simply misleading the public which leads to unrealized expectations.
ISS is big. It offers a lot of capability. Its relatively a simple vehicle that flies in a fairly benign environment by comparison with launch or reentry. Compare the environment to what an automobile must face in terms of temperature extremes or vibration, a Detroit auto engineer once told me. ISS offers great opportunities to learn how to live and work in space. But are we bringing home earth shattering new knowledge? Not yet. Unless NASA and we educate the public about the potential, few are getting on board to fly experiments. So when they try to tell the story of wondrous science, they are doing a disservice. If they say its great scientific results the public wants then to know just what was learned and there has not been that much.
Unrealized expectations.
I think this is because the depth of thought that goes into these “advertising campaigns” is so shallow; probably to be expected when you have shallow managers, marketers and public affairs. I don’t see too many deep thinkers in NASA or ISS management; none in the media world. No one who knows how to think and educate. How do they choose these people?
How can they be ‘deep thinkers’ when they keep getting slapped down by congress?
Space will be settled in the manner of the Old West gold rushes. Enabling tech in place, thousands will want to find gold in the asteroids. Or other rare metals.
Outfitters will spring up on orbit, fitting prospectors at outrageous prices just like California and Alaska.
And sooner than we think, not soon enough for me.
I would love to think so. Alas the future is likely to be multi-national and corporate. (Failing a glorious Revolution :). I suggest “Heavy Time” by C.J. Cherryh. Or “Scavengers in Space” by Alan E Nourse. Naturally the latter would be preferable!
There was an interesting discussion in 2012 at Rice University conference hosted by George Abbey at which it was pointed out that repeated polls over more than 50 years have indicated that, with the exception of a short time around the Apollo 11 moon landing, the American public has never been too enthused about space flight and that they seem to have little understanding of what is being spent on space, where its being spent, or for what reason its being spent. Current space enthusiast and NASA focus seems to be on social media. Social media is hit or miss and most of it, like 3 minute YouTube videos does not engage long enough to get information across. John Logsdon suggested at the conference that perhaps NASA and space enthusiasts ought to focus on how to educate the US public. NASA has been failing dramatically, particularly on ISS. The current NASA effort seems to be to sell ISS on the basis of its science experiments. I’v wondered why, since there has been little real valuable science done on ISS.
Logsdon makes an excellent point.
I think a key educational point to be made is how tiny a part of the budget space is. Polls have shown that the public has believed that NASA received 20% of the Federal budget, not the actual 1/2%.
Unfortunately, the majority of the public are clueless and have little interest in anything regarding space related happenings unless they catch something exploding on the news.
True. It is the same for anything that is technical and requires a lot of training and education to understand its significance. Fortunately the government has not adopt polices of scientific research and space exploration based on public opinion, but on recommendations from expert panels usually organized by the highly capable NRC or the Nation Academy of Sciences.
The National Academy of Sciences is paid to do studies that arrive at conclusions that they know Congress wishes them to reach.
One of the recent NAS reports in conjunction with the Next Generation Science Standards is that schools ought to be teaching about the findings and value of space exploration. This is a perfect entré for NASA to get space into schools and in front of a serious fraction of the populace. NASA instead goes with tweets and gimmicks.
or anything else, really.
Was the public in synch with NACA when they helped the airplane industry?
An excellent question. And was the public in support of using them new-fangled aeroplanes to deliver mail? Survey says: “Yes!”
However, until the Department of Homeland Security was established in the wake of 9-11, the US Coast Guard was [art of the Department of the Treasury. Because the Treasury had other priorities, USCG was shortchanged every year. Their ships were in disrepair. 375 foot destroyer class cutters were adrift at sea when engines failed to function. Helicopters and crew flew only every other week when there was no money for fuel. So it is very possible to have an organizational entity in place that cannot function properly because of lack of funding.
Is this different from NASA today?
As we have seen there are different procurement methods available. Orion versus Dragon is a good comparison. They have similar purposes, similar designs. Orion has taken ten years and $12-15 billion, and a real complete Orion will still not fly for another several years; with crew not for another 6 or 7 years. For something like 1/20th the money (its a bit tough to tell the exact amount since there are unmanned Dragons and manned Dragons, and since Falcon is a part of the process), several real, functional, operational Dragon have flown and a manned flight may be 18 months away. One process sure seems a lot more expeditious than the other.
How much development of totally new stuff does the Coast Guard do? They don’t do exploration. Coast Guard is all operations I’d guess so they have predictable needs and can plan better. These seem pretty different. I understand what you mean though.
This is why government shouldn’t matter when it comes to space exploration. If four out of ten people watched a particular T.V. show, that would mean that it was a big hit. 4 out of 10 is more than enough to support anything of a commercial flavor, but it is a lost vote on anything government.
Of course, some 8 out of 10 folks use a satellite in geo-sync orbit to watch something on TV. Most of those same folks use GPS enabled devices. That makes them all space advocates, or at least space-product advocates…but they are the “show me first” type who, if others of their type had had their way 50 or 60 years ago, would still be adjusting their rabbit ears and looking for a pay phone to call someone for directions.
But again…preaching to the choir. 😉
It’ll take us better informed 4 out of 10 folks to pull the other 6 out of 10, kicking and screaming if necessary, into a better world.