The Future of Space Exploration: What Americans Think
31-July-2023
The United States has a long history of leadership in space exploration. However, the world is changing, and new countries are emerging as strong contenders in this category. This has led to increased competition in space, and some Americans are concerned that the United States is no longer the leader in space.
Despite these concerns, a majority of Americans still believe that it is essential for the United States to continue to be a leader in space exploration. They believe that space exploration is important for scientific discovery, national security, and economic development.
In addition to competition from other countries, the United States is also facing challenges from the private sector. In recent years, private companies have begun to play a larger role in space exploration. These companies are often able to develop and launch spacecraft more quickly and cheaply than government agencies.
The survey shows that most Americans believe that NASA has a critical role to play in space exploration, even as private space companies become more involved in this field. The survey found that 65% of Americans believe that it is essential for NASA to continue to be involved in space exploration, while only 32% believe that private companies will ensure enough progress is made in space exploration without NASA’s involvement.
The Majority of Americans (55%) expect that people will routinely travel in space as tourists by the year 2073. However, Americans are not enthusiastic about traveling to space themselves, with only 35% saying they would be interested in orbiting Earth in a spacecraft. The share of Americans who think space tourism will become routine over the next 50 years has increased by 5 percentage points since 2018. This suggests that there is growing public support for space tourism, even if most people do not want to go themselves.
Americans are less likely to believe in other futuristic possibilities in space, such as colonizing other planets or mining asteroids. However, a significant number of Americans (44%) think that the United States will definitely or probably fight against other nations in space in the next 50 years.
Also, 40% of Americans believe that intelligent life will definitely or probably be discovered on another planet over the next 50 years. However, 58% of Americans do not expect this to happen.
In an older survey, 65% of Americans said their best guess was that intelligent life does exist on other planets. This suggests that while many Americans believe that intelligent life may exist elsewhere in the universe, they are not as confident that it will be discovered in the near future.
When asked about NASA’s priorities, Americans believe that monitoring asteroids and other objects that could potentially hit the Earth and monitoring key parts of the Earth’s climate system are the most important priorities.
60% of Americans believe that monitoring asteroids that could hit the Earth is a top priority for NASA, while 30% believe that it is an important, but lower, priority. Only 9% of Americans believe that monitoring asteroids is not too important or should not be done.
50% of Americans believe that monitoring key parts of the Earth’s climate system is a top priority for NASA. This is followed by sending humans to the moon or Mars (30%), searching for other planets that could support life (22%), and conducting basic research (18%).
Source: Pew Research Center
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