New Survey: Americans Support Space A Lot. Artemis: Not So Much
Keith’s note: According to a Pew Research Report released on Thursday, while Americans broadly support space – with some obvious enthusiasm – they are not all that sold on NASA’s Artemis Program to send humans back to the Moon – or on to Mars. According to the survey: “About seven-in-ten Americans say it is essential that the U.S. continue to be a world leader in space, while 30% say this is not an essential role for the country. Support for a U.S. leadership role in space is widely held across groups, including by majorities of Republicans and Democrats alike” and that “47% of Americans say they’ve done at least one of four space-related activities in the last year, including 26% who say they’ve looked at an image from a space telescope, such as the James Webb Space Telescope.” However “Just 12% of Americans say sending human astronauts to explore the moon should be a top priority for NASA, and only 11% say this about sending human astronauts to explore Mars. Larger shares think both of these things are not too important for NASA or that they should not be done (41% and 43%, respectively).” More at “Americans’ Views of Space: U.S. Role, NASA Priorities and Impact of Private Companies“
3 responses to “New Survey: Americans Support Space A Lot. Artemis: Not So Much”
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Keith, what I am pleased by in this survey is that so many people are aware of the potential threat from potentially hazardous asteroids, real dangers to home and hearth. What needs to be explained is how will science from, by, and of the Moon benefit humanity in many ways. First priority according to this survey: telescopes on and in orbit around the Moon to detect PHAs otherwise lost in the solar glare as viewed from the Earth and from spacecraft. The Chelyabinsk event was a total surprise because it approached Earth from near the direction of the Sun. As we know from total solar eclipses observed from Earth, the lunar limb is the best available occulter to block the incredibly bright solar disk and see fine details in the far dimmer solar corona. From lunar orbit we could view the corona and search for near-solar PHAs at cadences of hours to days, dependent on the orbit, or biweekly from the surface. Earth surface telescopes can only search for these near-solar PHAs at twilight looking toward the horizon through the atmosphere, which severely limits detection sensitivity. Beyond PHAs, and better space weather warnings from improved solar coronal observations, our knowledge of the universe from ground-based astronomy is limited by atmospheric seeing limits and by growing light pollution, now including the Skylink satellites. So perhaps the future of surface-based astronomy is on the Moon? And then of course the future of green energy from fusion power might depend on all that solar wind helium-3 implanted into the lunar surface. See my recent Cooper et al. free-access paper by googling “Frontiers LunaSOX” on some of these topics. Note my final comments in the paper that my working career, now ended in retirement while I continue to work on bucket science issues, began fifty-one years ago with the end of the Apollo program. And we’re only just now going there again! Tell all those survey folks that there could even be baseball on the Moon, whether White SOX or Red SOX or some other color. Everybody could hit a home run! And if the Chinese and Indians and whoever are going there too, good for them, they can serve great takeout food to the rest of us. And if you would like to see Mets #41 “Tom Terrific”, Tom Seaver, now pitching from heaven for the LunaSOX team, see https://spdf.gsfc.nasa.gov/research/lunasox/. I met Tom as seatmate on a long flight to California many years ago, and he inspired me to work on the topic and create “LunaSOX”. Credit to NASA and the talented artist Jay Friedlander of NASA Goddard for the LunaSOX banner at the website.
Can’t hardly blame the public for doubts about Artemis when so many quibbling people (most sounding like they work in the space industry) spend so much publicly-visible time trash-talking every blessed thing NASA does (with it’s 1/3 of one percent of US Fed budget.)
“Be leaders in space, but let somebody else land on the moon.” I’m not sure that education and outreach, however well-executed, can overcome the cognitive dissonance behind this. NASA and there backers should try, but success is not guaranteed.
Hopefully Starship and other private endeavors work out, so the future of humanity isn’t held back by self-contradicting opinion polls.