Public Opinion About Space Exploration - Personal Desire To Explore Space

In June 1965 the Gallup Organization asked Americans if they would personally go to the Moon if given the chance. Only 13 percent said yes. (See Figure 9.15.) Thirty-four years later Gallup asked the same question and found that 27 percent of respondents would go to the Moon.

Enthusiasm was greater for riding aboard the space shuttle. Three Gallup polls conducted between 1986 and 2003 found consistently that 30–40 percent of those asked wanted to be a passenger on a space shuttle flight. As shown in Figure 9.16 the desire cooled only slightly over time.

TABLE 9.2
Public opinion poll on the identity of the first person to walk on the Moon, 1989 and 1999
DO YOU HAPPEN TO KNOW WHO WAS THE FIRST PERSON TO WALK ON THE MOON?

	99 Jul 13–14	89 Jul 6–9
Neil Armstrong	50%	39%
John Glenn	13
Alan Shepard	4
Buzz Aldrin	2
Other	3
No opinion	28	61**
	100%	100%
** Incorrect; don't know
SOURCE: Frank Newport, "Do you happen to know who was the first person to walk on the moon?," in Landing a Man on the Moon: The Public's View, The Gallup Organization, Princeton, NJ, July 20, 1999 [Online] http://www.gallup.com/poll/releases/pr990720.asp?Version=p [accessed January 12, 2004]

In March 1986 nearly 40 percent of the respondents wanted to ride aboard the space shuttle. This value is surprising, because the poll was conducted less than two months after the Challenger disaster, in which seven astronauts were killed. The 2003 poll occurred only a week after the Columbia shuttle was lost during reentry over the western United States. Again, seven astronauts died. Even in the face of that tragedy, 31 percent of respondents indicated a willingness to fly aboard a space shuttle sometime in the future.

In the 2003 poll the desire to take a shuttle flight varied greatly by gender and age. Figure 9.17 shows that 55 percent of all male respondents under the age of 50 were eager to take the trip. Men older than 50 were less enthusiastic; 31 percent of them expressed a desire to go. Women respondents were even cooler about the idea. Only 21 percent of women younger than 50 and 13 percent of women older than 50 were enthused about taking a space shuttle flight.