Space Exploration: Attitudes toward the U.S. Space Program, AP
“There is not overwhelming enthusiasm for returning to the moon. In March, Vice President Mike Pence called for NASA to send astronauts to the moon within five years. Forty-two percent favor that idea, while 20% oppose and 38% neither favor nor oppose. Thirty-seven percent say sending astronauts to Mars should take precedence over going back to the moon, while 18% would rather have NASA send more astronauts to the moon. But 43% do not think either action should be a priority for the country. While about half of Americans would take the opportunity to orbit the Earth, most say they have no interest in traveling to the moon or Mars. Space travel has more appeal for younger adults.”
Back To The Moon – By Any Means Necessary, earlier post
“If Jim Bridenstine can craft the proverbial “elevator speech” that gets everyone, everywhere on board with Artemis – whether it is in the Halls of Congress or in a Walmart parking lot in ‘Flyover Country’ – then there will be no stopping NASA. Right now, PR slogans aside, the only clear reason we have is a directive from the White House with a delivery date that is equal to the length of a second term. Why isn’t all of America buzzing about going back to the Moon? If NASA and Jim Bridenstine can answer that question then they will be well along the path of understanding how to find that elusive “Why” that Artemis is currently lacking.”
Keith’s note: It seems that this poll is answering my question. A lack of overt enthusiasm for Artemis and returning to the Moon may well reflect what the country is thinking right now. That can change – but only if the proponents for space exploration – be they NASA employees – or just regular citizens – need to make a better case for doing things in space. Absent that the polls are going to continue to be showing mediocre support.
Artemis kind of got off to a rocky start, and has gotten bogged down in funding questions.
EDIT: I could probably just post my comment on the last piece on Artemis’ lack of public support. Public support is not critical to space program success and never was, it depends mostly on support by the President and especially Congress, etc, etc.
Most folks never heard of Artemis and her relationship to Apollo. For that matter, according to legend (IIRC), Artemis mistakenly killed Orion, whom she suspected had attacked one of her handmaidens. To make amends, she cast him into the sky as the constellation. Hmmm… Artemis shot Orion with an arrow. Wonder if she might have sic’d a falcon on him…or tickled him to death with a blue feather? (rolleyes).
How does this survey compare with the attitude of Americans pre- and post-Apollo 11? Most average citizens don’t see a “need” for this kind of exploration…unless, of course, some other country scares the pants off us…a la Sputnik I. This is one of the reasons for space advocacy groups doing their utmost to educate and promote the program with the general public…especially with kids! One aspect that is neglected is the advances and benefits to the general public brought about by the space program. NASA isn’t allowed to advertise or lobby for itself to the general public. But the spinoffs are right there on nasa.gov, IF people know about it. That is what groups such as the National Space Society, Planetary Society, Mars Society, et al, are doing, though we could probably be doing a lot more!
As far as people thinking we should forget the Moon and press on to Mars, they need to understand that the Moon is ABSOLUTELY NECESSARY to show us how to get astronauts safely to Mars, explore and return!
Ad Luna! Ad Ares! Ad Astra!
“educate and promote the program with the general public…especially with kids!”
10 years ago there was MoonFest at NASA Ames Research Center per 40th anniversary of Apollo 11 and promoting Constellation of return to the moon. They had everything: speakers such as Larry Krause, lots of various exhibits, activities for children to build landers, Ames Jazz Band plays music of songs with “moon” in the lyrics. Huge crowds. This year? it feels like Ames is being swallowed by Google.
Some folks here will recall the glory days of JPL Open House, back before we all let the terrorists terrorize us (sorry).
ANYway, I flew to Pasadena twice from Miami to attend the open house events in the 1990s; I was on a mission to visit each NASA center. Both open houses were incredibly well attended. Scientists were there demonstrating various projects: I recall a balutte being fully stretched out, and of course the Mars room, where rovers were being tested- nobody knew the best wheels yet for the rovers!
Models of the various spacecraft, too, were in the auditorium. Mostly lots and lots of people, crowding around the scientists and engineers like they were rock stars.
Which they are.
How to explain to those polled that returning to the Moon is the best first step for enabling everything else in a long term sustainable way? These polls are always formulated as either/or when the better smarter reality would be both/and.
Perhaps the media is unable to grasp multi-step multi-component endeavors since they don’t fit in headlines or sound bites.
I’ve seen polls which said, “on a scale of one to ten, how important is X”, so they aren’t all either/or propositions. But you almost seem to be saying that the questions should be phrased in the right way, so people will give the right answer. That’s really not how a good poll should be conducted. They aren’t a tool for educating the public; only a tiny fraction of the public are asked. They are supposed to find out what people think, without letting the opinions of the poll taker influence the result. There really isn’t a “right” answer.
But that’s not what I’m saying.
I admittedly do not know how this poll was formulated but the reporting is certainly pidgeon-holing the results into an either/or set of separate independent choices, and that is problematic.
A proper poll would proceed in several stages, beignning with a small sample exposing questions variously phrased in an effort to get the best data once the actual poll is conducted.
It’s an expensive proposition, as I learned in grad school when the research data that informed my thesis was thrown out by my committee because I’d skipped a step, thereby skewing data.
Fun times.
I see what you mean. But modern media coverage is almost always binary. Nice, simple stories, questions with yes/no answers, people who are either good or bad, etc. Saying it’s complicated, and trying to explain it, is out of fashion.
Glad to see that they have finally included a question about planetary defense, and I am not surprised it scored higher than any other goal at 68%. The same would have been true if they asked about SBSP. Those are the things the public would actually like to see NASA do.
On a different part of NASA, there are also things people would like them to do. Immediately after Cassini orbital insertion, some of us went out to a bar in Pasadena. We ran into a JPL intern and her roommate (who was completely outside the field of anything NASA does.) The roommate was not very interested in Cassini or anything about planetary science. But she was pretty emphatic about being from Thailand and _definitely_ wanting NASA to do something to speed up those 13 hour flights to visit her family.
I suspect weather satellites would also be a popular thing people want NASA doing, except they probably take them for granted.
Yes, one of President Kennedy’s five space goals, along with comsats, that was so successful that the average person doesn’t think twice about it anymore. As I like to remind folks two amazing things happened on July 20, 1969. The first, landing humans on the Moon, was long predicted by science fiction. The second, enabling nearly a billion viewers around the world to see it live on TV, was not.
Really, in reviewing the numbers from this poll the “Artemis Generation” is really no different than earlier ones in terms of the results. Support for space exploration has always been weak who are focus on other things going on.
These poll results are pretty similar to those taken at the time of Apollo in the mid-1960s. Generally only 30-40% of the public supported significant expenditures on human space flight in the 1960s. Right at the time of Apollo 11, when ‘moon fever’ hit a crescendo, the number favoring a continuing program almost got to about 50%. Remember, even John Kennedy himself said just a couple weeks before is death that we should not be spending so much money on space-it wasn’t that important, and he was not that interested in it-the only reason was to prove that democratic capitalism was better than socialist communism. Maybe we won that battle? Listening to some Democrats today I am not sure. The question remains, why are we really doing this and what does the taxpayer get out of it over the long term?
We- space nerds- are a bunch of babies whining because nobody loves us.
So what? Take just about anything done by the feds and you will find a constituency complaining about public support. Just ask the botanists over in Agriculture, as an instance, or the guys engaged at the various state extension offices.
Keep your head down, be smart, do a good job. Words to live by.
And every now and then show something from Hubble 🙂
We need to accept that the taxpaying public largely sees human exploration as an expensive and dangerous endeavour with limited ROI.
Sure, they understand that some vague “benefits” accrue from research conducted on ISS, and it makes them feel good to live in a society capable of feats such as ISS, so they’re fine with continuing to fund the status quo for now.
But when you try to sell them a bold new step like Artemis, a lot of them just think it’s going to be an expensive spectacle with no discernible impact on their community. So of course they say “meh” in these polls.
This is why it’s very important to get costs down, rather than focusing entirely on trying to wow the public – quite simply, a lot of them won’t be wowed except for a few weeks after the first landing. Even during Apollo, after the first crew got back, the rest of the moon landings started to feel routine, and the public lost interest, and obviously the program lost enough momentum that it was cancelled with no real plans for an equivalent replacement.
So if we can’t rely on the general public supporting ambitious funding indefinitely, we need to make it so that we don’t require such ambitious funding. Commercial crew is the necessary first step, but we really need e.g. Bigelow space hotels or orbital tourists on SpaceX and Blue Origin rockets, to become mainstream before we will really begin the next age of exploration. Once space becomes accessible to mere millionaires, instead of only the top 0.0001% of humanity, we will start to expand exponentially.