Public opinion polls and perceptions of US human spaceflight

Attitudes towards the scientific search for extraterrestrial life among Swedish high school and university students

“…The focus on economy indicates that it might be important to explain how relatively little money is actually used in the search for extraterrestrial life. It has been shown that most Americans tend to overestimate NASA's share of the US national budget (Launius 2003; Cook et al 2011). We have no numbers regarding our respondents’ estimation of how much money is spent on the search for extraterrestrial life, but it might be a reasonable assumption that it is skewed in the same direction.…”

“…Most studies that explore public attitudes to space research do not include astrobiology (see e.g. Launius 2003; Cook et al 2011; Lee 2015). Some studies have been performed regarding students’ knowledge and understanding of facts, theories and concepts in astrobiology (e.g.…”

Separation of church and space: Religious influences on public support for U.S. space exploration policy

“…[42]); Jones, Yeoman, and Cockell [43], who analyzed school children; Joyce, Ferguson, and Weinstein [44], who studied teenagers and members of space advocacy groups; and Raitt et al [34], who studied worldwide "space expectations" in many countries but relied on an opportunistic rather than probability sample. Research that has relied on nationally representative samples, such as the biennial U.S. General Social Survey (GSS) [45], have typically presented descriptive analyses of public support over time and done little to analyze the individual determinants of public opinion [36,37,46].…”

Presidential Vision or Congressional Derision? Explaining Budgeting Outcomes for NASA, 1958–2008

“…Although public support for NASA has generally been strong (Launius 2003), the segment of the population "attentive" to space exploration issues is ten percent or less (Miller 1987). Public opinion therefore does not provide a genuine "constituency" of significant influence over members of the powerful authorizing and appropriating committees in Congress.…”