Americans support NASA but not return to moon
On Dec. 14, 1972, Gene Cernan stepped into the Apollo 17 Lunar Module to return to Earth. He was the last man to walk on the moon. If it were up to most Americans, it would stay that way.
8% of Americans say a manned moon mission should be a top priority for NASA.
Ipsos poll commissioned by C-SPAN
A new Ipsos poll commissioned by CSPAN for the 50th anniversary of the historic Apollo 11 moon landing shows that only 8% of Americans say a manned moon mission should be a top priority for NASA.
“Our general mentality as American people is been there, done that, got the T-shirt, what are we doing that for?” said former NASA administrator and current Syracuse University professor Sean O’Keefe. “But what if Lewis and Clark had said, ‘We’re going to go West one time, and then we’re going to quit, because we’ve done that’?”
Eighteen percent say a manned Mars mission should be a priority for NASA. The agency’s plans call for using the moon as a stepping stone to the Red Planet.
In March, the Trump administration charged NASA with the goal of returning Americans to the moon in five years. According to the poll, 52% of Americans say space exploration should focus on satellite monitoring of the Earth to understand environmental changes, and 32% say space exploration should focus on improving national security.
“NASA doesn’t set its goals after all; it does what the political leadership asks it to do and funds it to do,” said John Logsdon, a space policy expert at George Washington University.
Mark Kirasich, program manager of Orion, the NASA capsule being built to send humans to the moon, said, “I think when people think about what these lunar missions will do, the fact that we will inspire the next generation of engineers, and scientists and medical doctors, the kind of technology that we have to invent and how that feeds back in the economy and makes our country stronger, I think these things really add up to something that’s really important that people will appreciate, if not today, as we get into it.”
Support for a manned moon mission wasn’t very high during the Apollo era either. A Gallop poll in 1965 found that 39% of Americans said the United States should do everything possible, regardless of cost, to be the first nation on the moon.
It wasn’t until 30 years after Apollo 11, in 1999, that 55% of the public said the benefits of space exploration outweighed the billions in cost.
The new Ipsos poll found that 31% of Americans say the benefits of space exploration exceed the cost. Forty-one percent say the benefits and the costs are about equal.
NASA is moving ahead with its moon mission, dubbed Artemis after the twin sister of Apollo. Its goal is to send the first woman and the next man to the moon by 2024.