Many Americans think NASA returning to the moon is a waste of time and it should prioritize asteroid hunting instead, a poll shows::Americans like NASA, but don’t support their funding going towards moon missions, according to new polls.
A majority of Americans have little to no education in the areas of science that NASA researches and develops for.
That’s like saying the sourdough breadbakers think that the Atlanta Braves should hit fewer homeruns and focus more on defense.
I’m glad that science isn’t a democracy.
However, I’m not so glad about NASA having to follow the current US Congress’ whims all the time.
Many Americans are anti-intellectual science deniers.
I do not hold in high esteem opinions based on woo-woo.
We should have NASA’s priorities determined by poll results from bar trivia machines.
Yes but most Americans think asteroid hunting requires a rifle.
Hey that’s not fair. They just think that all asteroids would be safer if all asteroids had rifles.
If you want to hunt asteroids, go to the moon.
You read that right. What “many Americans” aren’t thinking about is that we are at the bottom of a very big gravity well here on Earth. Launching anything into space, like an asteroid destroyer, takes enormous energy to accomplish.
If instead we could launch from the moon, we’d be able to get bigger things into space faster and cheaper and more often. But to do this we need a base and a way to manufacture fuel. The raw materials are there, but we don’t have any of the infrastructure built.
Eventually we HAVE to get to a point where we are mining, refueling, and building off-Earth. The only thing we should be launching from Earth is people.
The moon is our first stop on this evolutionary path.
Most americans don’t understand this, sadly
Happily, though, NASA isn’t run by internet poll 👍
It is ultimately run by elected representatives though. Popular opinions matter
I remember a TED talk that sold me on big science: For every dollar we spent on the moon shots, we made fourteen.
The thing is, going to the moon involved doing a lot of development, and this time we’re going to the moon better and are going to do more things.
At some point we’ll want to put a colony up there, and will need still more development to make it work.
A lot of the technology that we use today was developed thanks to the space race. In fact, when the USSR was taking its victory laps for Sputnik, Eisenhower freaked out, signed the National Aeronautics and Space Act and then extended a grant to Fairchild Semiconductor which started the digital revolution in Silicon Valley, eventually propelling us into the cyberpunk dystopia of smart refrigerators and zombie bot-nets that we know today.
Business Insider is a shady source.
How come?
How come?
Just give them more money and do both
This is the obvious answer.
Americans thought it was a waste to go the first time too.
Only 33% of Americans supported trying to land on the moon according to a Gallup Poll from 1961 https://www.newspapers.com/image/118394464/?clipping_id=128550438&fcfToken=eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJmcmVlLXZpZXctaWQiOjExODM5NDQ2NCwiaWF0IjoxNjkwNDAwNzAzLCJleHAiOjE2OTA0ODcxMDN9.MEY6lxes8ZstjM9mggg5zOxedJFf2RCbBklHOKFcw9w
It didnt have support over 50% until a few weeks before launch.
More detail here https://newsletter.pessimistsarchive.org/p/the-moon-landing-was-opposed-by-majority
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this may be an asinine fear based on my rudimentary knowledge, but I hope they never drill the moon, because human greed can’t be contained and some dumb ass will just see $$$ signs like some looney toons cartoon shit in their eyes and want to mine the whole thing up. Then there goes a ton of shit that we depend on the moons gravity for. Pretty similar to the rick and morty episode about pluto except the moon instead of our own planet.
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I wonder how much of this is politics. NASA is too popular to threaten to shut it down, but you can publicly condemn $otherParty is wasting money on program X
I guess it’s expected since showing the innovations and returns that could come from a project like this is hard.
