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Poll Shows Four in 10 Americans Favor Spending Extra Money On a Mission to Mars
By Daniel Sorid
Staff Writer
posted: 12:14 pm ET
25 July 2000
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As NASA deliberates on how best to proceed with its Mars exploration program in light of two high profile failures, four in 10 Americans want NASA to start spending extra money on a mission to send humans to Mars, a new Space Seventy-two percent of Americans want some kind of Mars-exploration program, a new SPACE.com/Harris Interactive Poll has found. According to the poll, 43 percent of the American public wants NASA to work toward a mission to send humans to Mars and 30 percent believe NASA should receive additional funding to complete such a mission. Thirteen percent said NASA should divert funds from other NASA programs. As NASA deliberates on how best to proceed with a program to explore the Red Planet in light of two high-profile failures, only 8 percent want Mars exploration to play no role in NASA's activities. A sizable minority of Americans, 30 percent, said NASA's current Mars-exploration program should include only robotic craft. The poll, which was conducted online, surveyed 2,353 people that are a part of the Harris Interactive online database. The figures were weighted by age, region, gender and race to represent the U.S. The poll has a 2-percent margin of error, according to Harris. Half of Americans would be interested in traveling to Mars, the poll found. The vast majority of the country -- 84 percent -- believes that space exploration is either very important or somewhat important to society.Only 11 percent of Americans believe NASA is doing an "excellent" job running the U.S. space program. Fifty-four percent believe NASA is doing a good job, while 31 percent say it is doing a fair job. Four percent said NASA is doing a poor job.
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