Americans Still Support NASA

http://www.floridatoday.com/columbia...ory2A9473A.htm

"Americans still support NASA -
Accidents an acceptable risk, poll finds"
Gannett News Service
Aug 18, 7:26 PM

WASHINGTON -- Americans love their space program, especially after
tragedy strikes, according to a USA TODAY-CNN-Gallup Poll.

Six months after shuttle Columbia broke apart during re-entry, support
to increase NASA's budget is as high as it has been since the Challenger
disaster in 1986, the poll found. People also said that some deadly
accidents were "an acceptable price to pay" for space travel.

But the poll results and interviews with space historians reveal a
troublesome undercurrent: The public's affection for space exploration
isn't very deep. Those polled placed a low priority on spaceflight,
compared to federal spending on defense and health care. That leaves
NASA vulnerable when the economy turns bad or political tides run
against its interests.

The depth of public support could prove crucial in the coming months.
Next week, the board investigating the cause of the Columbia disaster is
set to release its findings. Its report is expected to sharply criticize
NASA and call for improving safety in the shuttle program. Reaction to
the report by members of Congress and their constituents will play a
critical role in whether NASA will get the resources it needs.

Pollsters interviewed 1,003 people Aug. 4-6. The poll is accurate to
within 3 percentage points. It found:

Only 17 percent of people said spending on the space program should be
cut. That's less than half of the 41 percent who wanted spending cuts in
1993. The level is the lowest since 1989, just months after shuttle
flights resumed following the Challenger explosion.

The number of people who favor increasing NASA funding, 24 percent, is
the highest since 1989. About half of those polled said they prefer
current funding levels, the highest since 1986.

The public accepts some risk that astronauts will die. Only 17 percent
considered any shuttle accidents "unacceptable." Slightly fewer than
half, 43 percent, said they would accept one accident every 100 flights;
32 percent said they would accept an accident every 50 missions or more.
Two shuttles have crashed in 113 flights.

"Support goes up when there's a crisis," says Roger Launius, chairman of
the space history division at the Smithsonian National Air and Space
Museum. A similar surge in support occurred in the years after
Challenger.

But Launius and others think the public's feelings about space are
fickle.

When asked if they would shave money from the space budget to fund other
programs, people overwhelmingly favored defense and health care. Only
welfare fared more poorly than NASA funding.

NASA's budget was cut during the 1990s, with even steeper cuts to the
shuttle program. Most people polled were unaware of those cuts. Only 29
percent of people thought NASA's budget had shrunk during the past 10
years compared to the overall federal budget. Nearly twice as many
people, 56 percent, thought the budget had remained the same or
increased.

[end of article]

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