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More evidence of the low public opinion of space funding

Some interesting, if not necessarily surprising, results regarding how the public ranks funding for civil space versus other programs: A Harris Interactive poll released last week asked people which programs they would cut first to reduce federal spending and close the budget deficit. On top, by a wide margin, was “space program”, with 51% of respondents selecting it as a program funding should be cut from. (Respondents were asked to pick two programs.) Space came out well ahead of welfare and defense, which tied for second at 28%. Space was first among Democrats and Independents by large margins, but in a statistical dead heat (44-43%) with welfare among Republicans.

This is not the first time that space has fared poorly in comparison with other federal programs in opinion polls: back in January “space exploration” ranked next to last in a survey of funding priorities by the University of Chicago, beating out only foreign aid. Unfortunately, the poll doesn’t ask respondents what fraction of the federal budget is consumed by each program. I suspect a lot of people would be surprised to find that zeroing out NASA would have only a small effect on the overall budget deficit—although that also says something about the size of the deficit…

18 comments to More evidence of the low public opinion of space funding

  • Y, they probably think that space takes 20% of the budget vs. 1%. If it had been asked as “how would you allocate money amongst these five programs”, you will get support for a multiple of NASA’s funding.

  • . If it had been asked as “how would you allocate money amongst these five programs”, you will get support for a multiple of NASA’s funding.

    Sam, first off it wasn’t five programs but rather ELEVEN from which they had to choose.

    Second, what basis do you have for actually saying that people would, given a differently worded question, double or triple NASA’s budget to roughly $30-45 billion? Do you have anything other than your gut wish that the common people actually support or care about the space program enough to support that?

    Another interesting way to survey the people would be to say “HOW MUCH money should (insert agency here) get each year?” and then provide a few specific #’s or a fill in the blank (e.g., $5 Billion, $10 Billion, $25 Billion, $50 Billion, or $______)

    I think the answer would very enlightening – but not in a way that the alt space crowd would hope for. IMHO.

  • kert

    it would probably do space development good if NASA funding was cut back to a few billion. they couldnt run any space trucking line with it, which would reproprortion their spending from 90%-10% useless/useful to something like 30%-70% hopefully ( of course you cant eliminate stupid spending, earmarks and so on from any govrenment branch thus the approximate 30% would still remain )
    They’d be actually forced to innovate in department on how to do stuff more cheaply. Maybe a new often wished-for NACA would grow out of it.

  • Shubber,
    Another interesting way to survey the people would be to say “HOW MUCH money should (insert agency here) get each year?” and then provide a few specific #’s or a fill in the blank (e.g., $5 Billion, $10 Billion, $25 Billion, $50 Billion, or $______)

    Yeah. There’s a lot of whining about how NASA gets “only” 0.6% of the federal budget each year. But when you think how much money that amounts to (~$16B per year), it’s a ton of money. The only way you’d get people saying to give NASA more money is when you compare it to the rest of the federal budget. It’d be interesting to see a survey where people were asked to give specific numbers for other major government agencies. I bet you nobody would say ~$500B per year for the DoD, $15B for NASA, or however many billion a year for entitlements. But alas.
    ~Jon

  • Mary Lynne Dittmar

    We (Dittmar Associates) conducted a survey in ’04 where we asked respondents whether they thought NASA funding should be increased, decreased, or remain the same. The initial answers to the question (it was asked twice) stacked up as follows: 35% “voted” to retain current funding; 35% indicated it should be decreased, and 30% indicated it should be increased – pretty much a dead heat. No information was provided about the actual allocation. Later in the survey, after discussion re: the VSE, science, etc., participants were asked what percentage of the budget NASA receives, and given several options (

  • Mary Lynne Dittmar

    …whoops – bottom line, most folks indicated they didn’t know what NASA received and the next most frequently selected option was 10-15%. Immediately following this question, people were asked again about NASA funding but this time provided the information about actual allocations;

  • Lurking Lurker

    The alt dot space community has become the alt dot please give me a handout nasa community. How is that different that Lockmart or Boeing or Northrup Grumman?

  • Christine

    Yeah. There’s a lot of whining about how NASA gets “only” 0.6% of the federal budget each year. But when you think how much money that amounts to (~$16B per year), it’s a ton of money.

    I’d much prefer we increase NASA’s portion of the federal budget without increasing spending.

  • bryan

    NASA should start an advertising campaign to show why NASA is important to commercialize space, fix the planet, and all other programs. Even with NASA TV, producers should be brought in to make it interesting for people to watch.

  • Nyvvyn Alyxx Rejman

    I am writing a Informative/persuasive speech discussing the pro and con view points of the Space Program for my high school speech class. I am 100% for the continuation of the space exploration, although sometimes i wonder if that money (although its not alot) should be spent on things more close to home. I have been doing research, and there is alot of reasons for and against it. But if you read between the lines, doesnt it seem like America is just trying to look better, and be the best? What are your thoughts?

  • Nyvvyn Alyxx Rejman

    And yes, NASA TV could use some spicing up, maybe a sitcom?

  • hellfire

    NASA should start an advertising campaign to show why NASA is important to commercialize space, fix the planet, and all other programs.

    You can do a lot of marketing for $16 billion.

  • […] month I noted a recent poll that showed how willing the public would be to cut NASA funding versus other federal p…, which appeared to be more evidence of just how low a priority the space program is in the eyes of […]

  • […] advocates, that space ranks pretty low on the list of priorities of the general public (and, thus, fairly high on the list of government programs they would be willing to cut). Another reminder of this came out earlier this month, when the Fairfax County (Virginia) Economic […]

  • Ch.Talat

    space budget should be reduced because millions of people are dying because of hunger.developed countries must increase there funds to help poor countries.poor countries do not have facilities of medicine,clean water,good education and even of justice.

  • YupNStuffs

    Yeah, people are starving. This is obviously a problem. But while it extremely likely this won’t happen in our lifetime, several mass extinctions have taken place because of comets and asteroids. I’m pretty sure if we don’t have the technology to destroy / deflect it when one finally does set its sights on Earth, the .6% of the federal governments budget we didn’t spend on that research might seem a little silly since the cost could literally be in the billions of lives. Not trying to be a fear monger but the % of the budget is so small it’s not exactly useful to cut their spending until the big spenders have been cleaned up.

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