Other
Scientific paper
Jan 2002
adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2002iaf..confe.299l&link_type=abstract
IAF abstracts, 34th COSPAR Scientific Assembly, The Second World Space Congress, held 10-19 October, 2002 in Houston, TX, USA.,
Other
Scientific paper
There is a belief that exists in the United States about public support for NASA's activities. The belief is almost universally held that NASA enjoyed outstanding public support and confidence 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 suggest that some of these conceptions are totally incorrect and others either incomplete or more nuanced than previously believed. This paper presents an analysis of public opinion polling data in the United States from throughout the history of the space age. Analyzing these polls allows the plotting of trends over a long period of time. This study reveals several interesting insights about the evolution of spaceflight. For example, most people believe that Project Apollo was enormously popular, but the polls do not support this contention. Consistently throughout the 1960s a majority of Americans did not believe Apollo was worth the cost, with the one exception to this being a poll taken at the time of the Apollo 11 lunar landing in July 1969. And consistently throughout the decade 45-60 percent of Americans believed that the government was spending too much on space. Clearly, this data does not support a contention that most people approved of Apollo and thought it important to explore space. The decision to proceed with Apollo was not made because it was enormously popular with the public, despite general acquiescence, but for hard-edged political reasons. There are many other observations emerging from this review. Some of them are contradictory to the general findings discussed above about support for Apollo. They include the following: - The American public has long held generally positive attitudes toward the space program, but is not - Over the history of the space age, an average of more than 60 percent of those polled rated the job done - Most Americans have shown support for space exploration and view it as important over the years, but - Most are also in favor of NASA as an organization, but are relatively unfamiliar with the majority of - These polls also suggest historically close relationships between public perceptions of NASA and - These images from popular culture, coupled with real-world accomplishments in spaceflight, work The paper will include numerous charts showing trends over time and offer comments on the meaning of public perceptions fort he evolution of space policy and the development of space exploration in the United States since the 1950s.
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