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Poll: Despite Accident, Support for NASA Still High
By Leonard David
Senior Space Writer
posted: 08:00 am ET
18 February 2003
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COLUMBIA TRAGEDY: GALLUP POLL SNAPSHOTS PUBLIC REACTION A public poll carried out a week after the Columbia disaster finds widespread backing in America for the NASA program. Support for NASA shuttle flight remains firm, the poll indicates, with three in four citizens wanting the space agency's funding level to be maintained or increased. Support for NASA funding was found to be somewhat higher than what was measured 3 years ago. A slim majority of Americans favor a continued focus on human rather than robotic missions. The poll also shows that about three in ten Americans would themselves like to take a space shuttle flight sometime in the future, slightly fewer than wanted to be a shuttle passenger 12 years ago. The Gallup Organization of Princeton, New Jersey carried out the poll in concert with CNN and USA Today, with the results released February 17. Human versus robotic missions "After the crash of the shuttle Columbia, many critics argued that the NASA space program was wasting money and lives by focusing on manned flight, when unmanned missions were more cost-effective and did not put human lives in danger," noted David Moore of the Gallup News Service. "But this argument has not been widely discussed in the news, and for the most part, Americans lean more to what NASA has been doing. By 52% to 37%, Americans prefer NASA's focus on manned rather than unmanned missions, not much changed from a [Gallup poll] reading in November 1998," Moore reported. Other poll results show a public wanting NASA to stay the course. - Twenty-five percent of Americans would like funding for the U.S. space program increased and another 49% would like it maintained at current levels. About one in four Americans (24%) prefer decreased spending, including 7% who say spending should be ended altogether.
- Women tend to be less supportive of NASA's piloted space missions, than are men. While men support increasing over decreasing spending for NASA by 31% to 21%, women take the opposite tack by 28% to 19%. For both groups, about half say spending should remain the same.
Why do women prefer automated over human space missions? According to the Gallup poll, the difference is due primarily to older women, among whom a majority support unpiloted over human missions. Majorities of younger women and of both younger and older men opt for the human missions. Public space travel With the tragic end to Columbia in their mind, those citizens polled were asked about future space passenger flight. - About three in ten Americans would like to take a space shuttle flight at some time in the future. This number is just slightly below the 34% who expressed this desire in 1991, and the 38% who said that shortly following the 1986 Challenger explosion. Men are much more likely than women to want such an adventure, as are younger more than older people.
- Both younger and older men are more likely to say they want to take a flight than are the comparable groups of women. But clearly, as people get older, the appeal of space flight diminishes -- despite the fact that former Senator John Glenn flew on a shuttle flight in 1998 at age 77.
The latest Gallup results are based on telephone interviews with 1,000 national adults, aged 18 and older, conducted Feb. 7-9, shortly after the Columbia catastrophe. For results based on the total sample of national adults, Gallup officials said, one can say with 95% confidence that the margin of sampling error is 3 percentage points. In addition to sampling error, question wording and practical difficulties in conducting surveys can introduce error or bias into the findings of public opinion polls.
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