Americans Want To Lead In Space But Earth Is More Important
Majority of Americans Believe It Is Essential That the U.S. Remain a Global Leader in Space, Pew Research
“Sixty years after the founding of NASA, most Americans say the U.S. should be at the forefront of global leadership in space exploration and believe that – even as private space companies emerge as increasingly important players – NASA’s role is still vital for U.S. space exploration. In a national survey of 2,541 U.S. adults conducted March 27-April 9, 2018, roughly seven-in-ten Americans (72%) say it is essential for the U.S. to continue to be a world leader in space exploration. Strong public support is widely shared across gender, generational, educational and political groups. Also, some 80% of Americans say the International Space Station has been a good investment for the country.”
“- Monitoring key parts of Earth’s climate system: 63% said it should be a top NASA priority; 25% said it should be an important but lower priority; and 11% said it is not too important or should not be done.
– Monitoring asteroids or other objects that could hit Earth: 62% top priority.
– Conducting basic scientific research to increase knowledge and understanding of space: 47% top priority.
– Developing technologies that could be adapted for other uses: 41% top priority.
– Conducting research on how space travel affects human health: 38% top priority.
– Searching for raw materials and natural resources for use on Earth: 34% top priority.
– Searching for life and planets that could support life: 31% top priority.
– Sending astronauts to Mars: 18% top priority, 45% important but lower priority, 37% not too important or should not be done.
– Sending astronauts to the moon: 13% top priority, 42% important but lower priority, 44% not too important or should not be done. “
Keith’s note: So, among those surveyed, observing and protecting Earth is NASA’s most important task while sending people to other worlds is the lowest ranked. So much for the assumptions of many space advocates.
We have raised a generation of brainwashed idiots.
Overall engagement with space exploration is pretty low, but they do seem supportive when asked. I’m not really surprised that the public doesn’t put much priority on either a Moon or Mars crewed mission – those tend to be popular with space enthusiasts, but they’re much harder to defend on any immediate national security, economic, or scientific grounds (although the public does think having people involved in space exploration is good).
It’s been said before, but ultimately public support isn’t what’s going to win more space funding and exploration. It’s getting the support of key congressfolk and strategic lobbying and placement of potential space funding that will sell it.
NASA cost estimates, based on Old Space proposals, are at the heart of that negativity. Let one Billionaire demonstrate that he can afford it without tax dollars and public attitudes would change in a heartbeat.
Meaning that folks want someone else to pay for and give them access to the Moon/Mars.
Nope, the public is just not into flags and footsteps. They will watch it on TV, but even support for Apollo was driven more by the Cold War with Russian than any desire to explore New Oceans. Human exploration and discovery has always been driven by a very small minority of the population.
No, it’s going to be by enabling private individuals to do it, as was the case with the Age of Discovery, the American Frontier and polar exploration prior to WWII.
Most of the explorers of the New World you read about got their paychecks from individuals and private companies, not the government. Even Christopher Columbus was financed by private banks in exchange for the potential economic benefits he would gain from the rights Spain gave him to exploit his discoveries. The Nina and Pinta were basically added to his fleet by what would be considered a tax credit program in today’s jargon.
Columbus got his financing because Atlantic trade and conquests had proven profitable enough to justify the costs, even if they were pushing into new territory (for them) in the Atlantic Ocean. We don’t have anything like that now, and the closest comparison to it would be the transcontinental railroads which . . . were also not profitable at the time, and only got built because of massive subsidies, land grants, and corruption.
The sale of indulgences in Extremadura, IIRC. There’s not a clear modern comparison to that now, unless we wanted to hold a lottery to finance space exploration (which actually wouldn’t be a bad idea).
What were the atlantic conquests before columbus?
Conquest of the Canary Islands, conquests along the west African coastline, slave-raiding along the North African and atlantic African coastline (although in fairness to Spain and Portugal, the Ottomans heavily slave-raided their coasts in the 16th century later on).
And do you know the history of those “Atlantic Conquests”? Hint – started with Prince Henry.
Wrong, the trading family that owned them also owned taxes to the crown, by providing the ships that debt was cleared. It had nothing to do with indulgences, those went to the church. Columbus later bought the Nina from them as he liked how it sailed.
“We used to look up at the sky and wonder at our place in the stars. Now we just look down, and worry about our place in the dirt.”
Cooper from Interstellar
One of my favorite quotes from that amazing movie.
“As I stand out here in the wonders of the unknown at Hadley, I sort of realize there’s a fundamental truth to our nature, Man must explore . . . and this is exploration at its greatest.”
-Dave Scott, from the Lunar Surface, July 31, 1971
Apollo 15
Great line….and a perfect illustration of why space policy should never be based mainly on the attitudes and opinions of the general public. Two reasons come to mind; first, most ‘civilians’ (for lack of a better term) just don’t know or think enough about space exploration to have a reasonably well informed opinion. Second, If Thoreau had it right and ‘most men live lives of quiet desperation’ then this is not exactly the mindset bound to encourage boldly going anywhere. Give me vision and leadership over popular opinion any day.
It is amazing that such a statistic/thought process exists without any corresponding goal setting or directed modification of human behavior or policy change – “Monitoring key parts of Earth’s climate system: 63% said it should be a top NASA priority” – Lets all just keep watching as the train hits the wall. It is similar with “Monitoring asteroids” – completely insufficient proposals, goals or behavior changes to act in advance to prevent future catastrophes.
And something seemingly few people have examined or are considering in future planning is that there will be another 100,000 million humans in just the U.S. alone by 2045 – that is one more person for every three here now. Given the population demographic change from 60 million retired to 90 million and few younger workers to support them by then I fully expect social security and other related programs to fail. Such a drain on resources, combined with several other social, educational, environmental and economic factors by then will kill any future chances or support for Mars or Moon or just about anything else.
India and china manage a billion people I believe America should be able to handle 400 mil.
Yes, and at a relative level of poverty in relation to the US. Yes, I believe the average standards of living will decrease world wide in the next 40 year as never seen before on Earth as populations reach 10 billion while resources are depleted and pollution exponentially expands. And no, our technology will not save us from ourselves. The probabilities and variables are out there for the observing for those not wearing rose colored glasses.
Because that’s clearly why only 33% think private companies are better than NASA at assuring future progress versus 65% for NASA – Read the study!
The good thing is that it’s irrelevant what the public thinks of private space firms, it’s what the investors think, and they make their decisions based on perceived future ROI.
The public supports space technologies that can lead to practical benefits like understanding climate change or preventing an asteroid impact. That doesn’t sound unreasonable to me. if we want human spaceflight to have greater public support, we need to show it has practical value that justifies the cost. We can do that by increasing its value (not so easy) or by reducing its cost (somewhat more promising).
First off it has to show it is inclusive and people have an actual shot at getting there. I will interested in the polls after commercial suborbital becomes operational and America creates 1000 new non nasa astronauts in just a few years where NASA has created a few hundred in 50 years.
I agree. My preferences differ, but I wouldn’t be horrified if NASA’s budget were shifted to match the distribution to match the relative proportion of “top priority” results.
For example, using the examples quoted by Keith, that’s:
23% Earth Science
23% Impactor watch (and response?)
17% Curiosity-driven science
15% Technology development
11% HSF: Human health in space
11% HSF: combined Moon/Mars
Like I said, not my mix, but it seems better than what we have now.
That’s where you have to be careful about money and public support. For something like watching for potential impactors, there’s only so much we can do. Beyond some point, it’s just throwing money at the problem without producing significantly better results. So someone needs to draw that line, explain it, and ask those 23% of the people what their second choice is. And the same thing applies in reverse. Someone needs to figure out how much we can do in terms of human missions to the Moon or Mars, at the available budget (not much, if done in a traditional NASA manner) and ask those 11% of the people if they want to increase NASA’s budget, cut something a whole bunch of other people care more about, or maybe put the money into their second choice. That sort of thing is one reason why a government agency’s policies and priorities don’t always match what the public might want.
Like I said, not my own preferred mix, and just a quick and dirty calc since “budget distribution” wasn’t he subject of the poll, but not as stupid/ignorant/horrible as other commenters have claimed.
Which is why I think a severe reduction is actually necessary. Not the usual space-advocate desire for a sharp increase. NASA needs to change how it works. It won’t do that until it is forced (and maybe not even then.)
Not exactly. The higher the budget, the more related goals can be thrown in. Multiple asteroid composition research, asteroid diverting research. And so on.
But as I said, this wasn’t the subject of the poll. My point is that if you did poll the supposedly stupid, ignorant, worthless public on their preferred distribution of NASA’s budget, I suspect you’d end up with better prioritisation than Congress and NASA HQ has been coming up with.
It’s interesting to see that people really want to understand and save life here on Earth instead of running off to friggin Mars as our salvation! Sorry Elon!
Consider the following gedankenexperiment. One is standing on the street corner of a very busy city intersection with a big bucket for passers by to contribute their “Jacksons and Franklin.” Holding a big sign saying “Contribute to our space program,” think about how much money one might actually collect through this exercise. If there are ~200M taxpayers, with the NASA budget at ~$20B, what fraction of the folks who pass by will drop in $100?
If some clown was parked at a corner with a bucket saying give me money for our space program, they would be lucky to get pocket change… from me anyway… I would need a bit more professionalism.
“Will reduce data for food”
Another way of looking at these results is to say that the public is skeptical about spending money on expensive programs but are fine with spending money on inexpensive programs. Also, who would be against monitoring potential threats especially when “monitoring KEY parts” presumably doesn’t cost anything near putting people on Mars?
It’s amazing they missed the two goals driving Elon Musk and Heff Bezos, and which the late Dr. Hawking argued as the reason for space, which is ensuring a future for humanity by making it a space faring species
For Elon Musk that is establishing settlememts on Mars while for Jeff Bezos it’s saving the Earth’s ecosystem by moving heavy industry to space. And building a Martian economy is much different than Apollo style missions that just send a few astronauts there.
So it appears even the folks doing this poll are out of touch with what is driving the Space Revolution.
BTW, I am not surprised the Moon and Mars did so poor. I published a paper at ASCE Earth and Space 2006 with even more dismal numbers. It also showed Planetary Defense and use of space resources were national space goals the public would strongly support.
You have an excellent point, and I am not being the least bit sarcastic about it. Well said.
There are several excellent points in this thread and I single out Michael Genest.
Mark my words – we are only a few years away from there being a 50/50 split on half of the public thinking Space Exploration is real and the other half thinking it’s fake, conjured up by special effects artists etc. That is because the Flat Earthers, religious extremists and conspiracy nuts are working 24/7, 365 days per year on the internet to undermine the truth about space exploration history AND the present.
And they have a low ‘education’ budget – even if the number of folk doing this is few – they are relentless and likely doing it for free. How would an education outreach budget of many millions of dollars even HOPE to compete with relentless sickos willing to do it for virtually free and with a patient, ideological zeal?! This is why we must support Commercial Space and NASA, ESA Etc efforts with all our might. Or at least; with all our ‘copious free time’…
I’ll yield the floor to Neil DeGrasse Tyson for my response;
https://youtu.be/CbIZU8cQWXc
Seems like this generation can be inspired by NASA’s scientific prowess without the drama of human space flight. Perhaps their intuition is that scientific space exploration is more efficient (cost and otherwise) using robotic systems than astronauts. We do not have to go as far as Mars. Here on Earth, most of the ocean exploration is done using probes and remote sensors, not divers. Humans have an unsettling tendency of dying in harsh environments.
We have to develop better human space flight capabilities, but this has to be decoupled from scientific exploration. I am not particularly concerned about the future of human space flight. Elon and others are working on it…
G.
Regardless of what you think (agree/disagree) (approve/disapprove) of the results, I think the vast majority of the public is very, very ignorant on many levels about Space Exploration, Space Policy, etc.
For example, I’d be very interested in a study or poll that asks “Joe Public” what percentage of the US Budget they believe is spent by NASA. My prediction is that the results would show that the public thinks NASA receives FAR MORE money as a percentage than they actually do.
Also, and this is just anecdotal, a sample of online comments about news events related to space (thinking most recently of the Tesla launched atop the Falcon Heavy), you see a lot of negative comments about humans “polluting space, just like we’ve polluted the Earth”. A nonsensical comment on its face. The word “pollution” simply does not mean the same thing on Earth as it does in space.
So, when I combine these observations with poll results like we see above, all I can do is shrug and say: “Let Elon, Jeff, Richard and the other billionaires lead the way.”
And that is exactly the attitude that explains why NASA, and Washington is out of touch. “The folks outside the Beltway are ignorant barbarians, we just need to educate them and they will understand…” No, they understand perfectly well, they just have different priorities than the denizens of the Beltway.
Well, it certainly wasn’t stated well. But I think there are some things where it might be a matter of education. If someone thinks 0.5% of the federal budget (or 3% of the non-defense discretionary budget) is too much, that’s a policy question. Saying people outside the beltway need to be “educated” about that isn’t a good way for a government agency to think.
But if someone thinks NASA’s budget if 5% of the federal budget, not 0.5%, telling the otherwise doesn’t strike me as a problem. Or, if they don’t know what NASA’s spending all that money on, telling them doesn’t sound like a problem.
The same is true of orbital debris issues (or whatever “polluting space” means), or why NASA hasn’t invented a warp drive, or whatever. Making the facts available to the public, so they can make informed opinions, is one thing. Lobbying them or dismissing those opinions is very different.
Well, I’m not sure calling folks “ignorant” is the best approach, but I’ve talked to more than one person who couldn’t quite recall if it was the moon or mars that men had landed on. And these were not unintelligent folks. Just had different priorities…
Do they know about George Washington, Christopher Columbus, the Civil Wars? Then they should know about Apollo 11. Otherwise its obvious they were not paying attention in school.
Sadly history doesn’t seem to be taught very well in school anymore. I had to create a business history class just to teach students about the American entrepreneurial tradition and how American entrepreneurs made the modern world.
I’m not sure the public perception of the amount of money is as important as the public perception of whether the money is being spent productively. The public perception of the value of space based observations that protect the Earth’s environment is fairly high. The public perception that human exploration is of practical value is fairly low. Of course this depends on what one views as “exploration”, but for scientific observations of space and objects within the solar system robotics has proven pretty effective.
More important to me is the public perception of space tourism; although not a majority, a very respectable 42% of people are interested in going, in a recent Pew poll. Again, the technologies critical to the future of human spaceflight are those that reduce its cost and make space accessible to ordinary people.
http://www.pewresearch.org/…
The observation of the ignorance is not meant as an insult. It’s just factual. The media is almost as clueless as the public at large so why expect the public to understand any better?
Maybe something more impressive than what’s happened in the last decade will turn public opinion .. or not. Or maybe man was never meant to leave the planet and the “unwashed masses” are correct after all. I don’t believe that but…
All I’m saying is that if you think they ARE wrong but the only way to change things is to sway public opinion so congress and the executive branch will lead the way is going to work, I suggest the last 50 years have told us in loud voice: don’t hold your breath.
The it’s up to people of means who didn’t get the memo to make it happen.
Finding direction via the polls of the day’s popular opinion is no form of goal setting and is far from Leadership.Leadership requires some balls – Set some goals, then LEAD, FOLLOW, OR GET THE HELL OUT OF THE WAY! !
It sounds to me like half the NASA budget is going to a NASA organization that is misnamed but the name reflects their direction, and they are apparently going in the wrong direction. According to this poll, the American people care less about exploration than they do about utilization, but ‘Exploration and Operations’ has decided they want to do exploration at the expense of shutting down utilization operations such as on ISS. The exploration thrust came out of the derangement that followed the Columbia disaster. Maybe NASA needs to rethink what they are supposed to be doing?
The goal, which was laid out by the top NASA managers of the 1960s, ought to be to develop cost effective, efficient transportation from Earth to orbit and into cis-lunar space, for whatever purposes. If you cannot do it quickly, efficiently, cost effectively, frequently, nothing else makes sense. “Exploration” is a joke. NASA ‘leadership’ has gone off half cocked for the last 15 years since Columbia; in fact really even before that when they failed to make any effort to improve upon Shuttle. Everyone, NASA managers, contractors, are interested in making dollars and in no way interested in opening space to humanity or the economy.
The current LOP-G, Orion direction is inexcusable-absolutely useless;’ of no value or purpose at all. A big booster would be a good idea if it were built on an assembly line and flown frequently. That is NOT SLS. My money is on Musk.