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AP-NORC poll: Asteroid watch more urgent than Mars trip
Americans prefer a space program that focuses on potential asteroid impacts, scientific research and using robots to explore the cosmos over sending humans back to the moon or on to Mars, a poll shows.
The poll by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research, released Thursday, one month before the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing, lists asteroid and comet monitoring as the No. 1 desired objective for the U.S. space program. About two-thirds of Americans call that very or extremely important, and about a combined 9 in 10 say it's at least moderately important.
The poll comes as the White House pushes to get astronauts back on the moon, but only about a quarter of Americans said moon or Mars exploration by astronauts should be among the space program's highest priorities. About another third called each of those moderately important.
"More than 80% say the United States is not leading the world in space exploration."
(Score: 2) by takyon on Monday June 24 2019, @04:00AM
Everything will look like fat pork when compared to BFR launches. 100+ tons to the surface with refueling.
We are watching a slow motion train wreck with SLS and LOP-G. Public interest and knowledge of the situation is low, so space Congressmen can throw money into whatever they want (note that the AP survey asks about going to the Moon, but doesn't ask anything about a lunar "gateway").
Any manned exploration done in the early-mid 2020s is just an attempt to grab funding for the pork rocket before BFR is flying regularly. It's no wonder that SLS has gotten extra money [soylentnews.org] and scope changes [soylentnews.org] to reduce delays. They have to get it flying ASAP before the gravy train crashes. Pence's 2024 Moon target similarly compresses the work and throws more money into the fire. The BFR is tentatively scheduled to send artists around the Moon in 2023. It will be ignored less and less as it hits new milestones like hover tests (Starhopper is mostly a test of the Raptor engines), reaching orbit, delivering payloads, refueling with a BFR tanker, and launching people.
There is Falcon Heavy, which could certainly be used to send Crew Dragon to the Moon, although it might be a convoluted plan [teslarati.com]. And it looks like Heavy will be used to launch several [soylentnews.org], if not all, LOP-G segments. But it will take a full BFR to put SLS in the ground for good.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]