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Bad and good news about public support for space

The University of Chicago’s National Opinion Research Center released the latest in its series of studies on public support for government spending today. (The full report is available here.) The report, which comes out every two years, is based on opinion polling where people are asked whether current spending for a wide array of government programs is too little, too much, or about right. (Respondents apparently aren’t gauged on the accuracy of their knowledge of current spending, and previous studies have suggested that a significant fraction of the public overestimates the fraction of the federal budget spent on NASA, for example.) Each program is scored by taking the percentage value who answered “too little” and subtracting from it the percentage value who answered “too much”. (For example, if 60% answered “too little” and 40% “too much”, the program would get a score of +20.) The higher the score, the (presumed) higher priority among the public for government funding of it.

The bad news: “space exploration” did very poorly, with a score in the 2006 study of -22.7: 14.7% of respondents answered “too little” and 37.4% answered “too much”. Space exploration finishes 21st out of 22 programs in the survey, with only foreign aid doing worse, with a score -53.8. Education and health top the list, with scores of +68.7 and +66.4, respectively.

The good news: public opinion of space funding has continued to improve. The 1993 version of the survey gave space a score of -44.5, the lowest since the mid-1970s. Since then, space’s score has held steady or improved. The -22.7 in this survey is the highest since a -21.6 in 1989; a score of -16.8 in 1988 is the only other higher score. Space has traditionally ranked near the bottom of the survey (but never in last place; foreign aid has ranked last in every survey dating back to 1973). “Supporting scientific research”, a category added only in 2002, got a score of +31.5 (43.6% too little, 12.1% too much), good enough for 12th place.

5 comments to Bad and good news about public support for space

  • LetsGetReal

    Very interesting. I’m sure that the NASA spin machine will interpret the high level of support for education, health and research as an endorsement of the Vision and NASA’s current direction.

  • Adrasteia

    No doubt. They may even (just speculating here) try to spin the pro-VSE support as pro-ESAS.

  • Ken Murphy

    What’s interesting is that people don’t seem to connect ‘scientific research’ and ‘education’ with space. Even though they’ve been inseperably entwined in NASA’s mission since the beginning.

    I’m scared for NASA Academy, mentioned in a recent Space Review article, because it is such a brilliant effing program and exactly what NASA does need to be doing more of, as it cultivates young researchers and shows them a chunk of the NASA network. We got to see GSFC, HQ, WFC, Langley, KFC, and JSC in 2002, and the Academy was at Senate (GSFC) and House (Ames) hearings as well. Rep. Lampson left the podium to chat with the kids in the back of the room -during- the proceedings. Admin. O’Keefe held them up to the committees as an example of where NASA does have some programs to do exactly what the Congress-critters were talking about. (okay, I’m a bit proud of that bit of handiwork) Some of them are NASA’s leaders 15-20 years down the road.

    While it may or may not really be NASA’s job to educate the general public about space, it is NASA’s job to cultivate some of the brightest minds in the country as future employed researchers and leaders. I’m not sure NASA realizes that, though.

    And these were some really brilliant youngsters (early to late 20s, generally) working on some amazing cutting edge projects. I know because my Program Support project was a compilation and distillation of all the DDF projects for the GSFC Tech Xfer office. Great stuff like Lidar back before it was popular. They got to see and work on some of the coolest equipment.

    Sigh.

  • > Respondents apparently aren’t gauged on the accuracy of their knowledge
    > of current spending, and previous studies have suggested that a significant
    > fraction of the public overestimates the fraction of the federal budget
    > spent on NASA, for example.

    And, so? I doubt the average American could tell you, off the top of their head, what percentage of the Federal budget goes to *any* Federal agency.

    If you ask the average man on the street what percentage of the Federal budget goes to DoD, he will probably guess around 50%. I hear news reports all the time that claim the Federal budget is “dominated by” and deficits “driven by” military spending. In reality, military spending accounts for just 17% of the FY07 budget. (The media often inflates the figure by comparing it to “discretionary spending” rather than total spending.)

    So, even if NASA is harmed by the perception that it gets more money than it does, it’s probably harmed no more than DoD (and, perhaps, a lot of other agencies).

  • Edward Wright

    The problem with this poll and the reporting of it is that they fail to distinguish between space exploration, space exploration funding, and NASA funding.

    The poll asks no questions about “public support for space.” Whatever that means. Space itself is not a government activity but a physical region. How do you support or oppose that?

    Pollsters apparently asked two questions, about “space exploration” and “the space exploration program” but merged the results because the answers were (not surprisingly) very similar. It would have been more interesting if they asked separate questions about NASA, DoD, and FAA-AST. It’s likely, although not certain, that most people were thinking only about NASA when they answered the question.

    Nor is it true that “space exploration did very poorly.” People were not asked about space exploration per se; they were asked about government *funding* for space exploration. There’s no data to show whether respondents support or oppose space exploration. There’s only data to show that they think the government is spending too much money on space exploration.

    We know that other polls show widespread support for space exploration, especially if people are offered the chance to explore space themselves. So, I think a more accurate conclusion would be that the American public continues to support space exploration but believes the way the government does it costs too much.

    In my opinion, that is very good news for space exploration.