Would you go to the moon? Board an alien spacecraft? What nearly 80 years of polls say about US attitudes on space
By Ariel Edwards-Levy, CNN
(CNN) — Americans’ opinion of space exploration is pretty high.
In an Ipsos poll conducted last week just after the launch of Artemis II, US adults say, 62% to 34%, that the benefits of NASA sending people into space are worth the costs, with nearly identical levels of support among both parties.
Even amid dismal ratings for the US government overall, views of NASA remain relatively starry-eyed. The agency gets an 80% favorability rating in Ipsos’ survey. And, in contrast to opinions of many other agencies, opinions of the space program are relatively unpolarized.
That stands out because views about the country’s space program haven’t always been so positive. In polls taken shortly after Americans first landed on the moon in 1969, less than half the public thought the costs were justified – 39% in a 1970 Harris poll, and 41% in an NBC/AP survey fielded nine years later. But in the years since, Gallup has found, views of the space program’s merits have charted a steady upwards trajectory, reaching a record 64% when they last asked around the moon landing’s 50th anniversary.
One polling caveat here: Unlike the space programs they’re asking about, survey questions don’t exist in a vacuum. Polling that’s focused more on costs can tell a different story. In a 2003 CNN/USA Today/Gallup survey, support for launching a new program to send astronauts to the moon was 22 points lower if the phrase “spending billions of dollars” was mentioned in the question.
Public opinion polling, much like America’s space program, came of age during the mid-20th century, meaning that we have plenty of data of Americans’ views of space throughout the years. A few other findings from those surveys, courtesy of the polling archives at Cornell University’s Roper Center, are below.
The public was initially dubious about the chances of a moon landing
Asked by Gallup in 1949 whether “men in rockets will be able to reach the moon” within the next 50 years, just 15% said yes. About five years later, confidence in the men in rockets’ prospects had more than doubled to 38%. And by 1957, asked to guess at a timeline for reaching the moon, around 40% expected it to happen in the next quarter-century or so, although 14% still gave answers that were reported by the pollsters as falling into the category of “never, silly.”
Most Americans are just fine down here, thanks
Americans’ early skepticism about space flight was even stronger when they were asked if they might like to go along. In a Gallup poll conducted near the start of 1955, just 9% said they’d like to go along on the first rocket ship to the moon if asked, and two years later, just 5% said they’d volunteer to be the first one up in a spacecraft.
In more recent years, interest in experiencing space travel has increased, although it still often falls short of a majority. In a 1999 CBS News poll, 21% said both that they expected “vacation cruises in outer space” to be a feature of the 21st century and that they would like to go. (The same percentage, 21%, told CNN/Time pollsters in 2000 that they’d board a spacecraft if asked by “beings from another planet.”)
In a 2019 AP-NORC poll, about half of Americans said they’d take a chance to orbit the Earth, with 41% saying they’d travel to the moon and 31% that they’d take a trip to Mars. And a 2021 Marist poll found that 45% would go to space, with substantial gaps by age and gender. Men and people younger than 45 displayed far more enthusiasm for the idea.
The moon landing leaves a deep impact
Asked in the autumn of 1969 to name the most outstanding thing to happen anywhere in the world that year, 49% of Americans mentioned the moon landing. That was roughly four times as high as the mentions of any other topic. In a retrospective survey two decades later, Gallup found that more than 8 in 10 of Americans who were at least 5 years old during the moon landing said they’d watched it on TV at the time.
Appreciation for that milestone hasn’t faded. In a 1999 Pew survey, the space program topped Americans’ list of the country’s greatest achievements that century, and in a 2019 Pew poll, 83% said that NASA’s space exploration program had proved to be a good thing for society. Per a CBS/SSRS poll in 2019, 45% of Americans said there hadn’t yet been any other national accomplishment that gave them as much pride in the US as the moon landing, with 71% favoring “sending astronauts to explore the moon again.”
What’s next? Watch this space
Back in 1969, Gallup asked Americans what they expected the future to look like in 1990. Some 18% expected 1990 to include mankind “living on the moon.” For context, 70% expected a cure for cancer, and 10% expected an end to all civilization.
Americans’ ideas for space exploration have long gone beyond the moon. Asked in a 1987 USA Today poll what goal they would set “as man’s next great achievement in space” if they were running the space program, just 4% suggested a return to the moon or the building of a moon colony. Another 23% wanted to focus on sending people to live in a space station, with 9% wanting to reach another planet and 1% suggesting, somewhat ambitiously, inventing time travel.
In the 2019 AP-NORC poll, Americans said, 37% to 18%, that sending astronauts to Mars should be a bigger priority than returning to the moon.
Polls are now looking ahead to the 2070s. By that time, most Americans expect that space tourism will become routine, according to Pew Research. A not insignificant 44% are expecting the US military to “fight against other nations in space,” with fewer holding out hope for interplanetary colonies.
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