Polls and Public Support For Space
Public opinion polls and perceptions of US human spaceight, Roger Lanius (2003)
“A belief exists in the United States about public support for NASA’s human spaceight activities. Many hold that NASA and the cause of the human exploration of space enjoyed outstanding public support and condence in the 1960s during the era of Apollo and that public support waned in the post- Apollo era, only to sink to quite low depths in the decade of the 1990s. These beliefs are predicated on anecdotal evidence that should not be discounted, but empirical evidence gleaned from public opinion polling data suggests that some of these conceptions are totally incorrect and others are either incomplete or more nuanced than previously believed. This article explores the evolution of public support for space exploration since the 1960s. Using polling data from a variety of sources it presents trends over time and offers comments on the meaning of public perceptions for the evolution of space policy and the development of space exploration in the United States.”
Recent Space Poll: The Public is Not Always in Synch With Space Advocates, earlier post
I find that most of the public is not educated about space. They do not know what NASA is doing. They don’t know what NASA’s plans are (this might be too much to expect of the public because I don’t think NASA knows what its plans are). Therefore the public doesn’t know how much is being spent, how it has increased or decreased, and whether its worthwhile expenditure.
NASA has turned its back on education-in human space flight the Station has never done a good job and it appears to have gotten much worse in the last year with the termination of a lot of their long operating programs. During Shuttle the public had some familiarity mainly because of the spectacle of fiery launches; by comparison Station is very much out of sight and out of mind.
In the last couple of years NASA has cut funding for education way back-which was really surprising given Bolden’s supposed interest (but then Bolden mainly just goes along with whatever others propose-he has never been much of a leader, unlike someone like, for instance O’Keefe who definitely put some money where his mouth was. A big cut back in education, from the paltry amount they had been spending means that there is very little effort being made; my gues sis that once you get past funding the NASA bureaucracy little or nothing is going into educational programs. Until NASA starts educating the public, and that includes the hundred million students in the US, all of whom become taxpayers within about a decade, about the value NASA gives back to the country, nobody even knows what is valuable or not.
Alexis Madrigal at The Atlantic had a piece along those lines from three years ago. There wasn’t really majority support for it aside from a few brief periods, and once Apollo 11 landed even those evaporated.
It’s almost rather fascinating how unlikely it was, dependent so heavily on Kennedy’s desire to show up the Russians in the space race. I can easily think of counterfactuals where that doesn’t happen, and the manned space program presumably peters out at some point in the 1970s (when the military finally discounts using manned spacecraft for military operations in Earth orbit).
Interesting study, thanks for posting it. It is a shame that the data are so heterogeneous, as it is very difficult to draw firm conclusions. The answers to such polls depend very sensitively to precisely how the questions are worded. It would be wonderful if we had something like the Mars Generation Survey of 2013, done at regular intervals, ideally every year or even every five years:
http://www.exploremars.org/…
That report was valuable for collecting demographic, economic, educational, political, and other information about the respondents, so it was possible to get a better feeling about people’s thinking. It was sponsored by Boeing (if I recall), which makes one worry about its biases, but it seems to have been done by a competent independent outfit, so I hope it was meaningful. But it is just a single data point in time, and we really need more than that. This is something the Planetary Society and/or the NSS could really contribute to if they could just focus on doing a good, unbiased job over a period of time.
I have always been impressed by how excited and enthusiastic ordinary folks are about the space program, and I actually came from McFarland CA (as in the movie, McFarland USA”, this year), so I’ve known a lot of “real people”, as some might say. 🙂 They are very excited, and want to know all about it, in my experience.
But of course I am too biased myself to be able to take too much certainty from it. Some of our billionaire enthusiasts, like Musk, Bezos, & Branson, (not to mention Stephen Hawking) would do well to support and fund the kind of regular, well-crafted surveys we need. And then get Nate Silver to analyze the results. Then maybe we could make the case more effectively, to explain why human space exploration is so important. I am convinced the arguments for exploration and settlement are deeply valid and based on instincts that are widely shared; I just wish we had more solid grounds to stand on to make the case to the political powers.
Definitely an interesting study, and cements some things for me that I probably wasn’t sure about.
Keith: The paper spells his name “Launius” actually.