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Support For NASA Spending Depends On Perception of Size of Space Agency Budget
MarkWhittington writes "Alan Steinberg, a post doctorate fellow in political science at Sam Houston State University, conducted a study surrounding the vexing problem of how to motivate more people to support increased levels of funding for NASA. In an October 14, 2013 piece in The Space Review, Steinberg announced the results of a study conducted with a group of college students. Steinberg's approach was based on the findings of a study by Roger Launius conducted in the late 1990s that suggested that the American public believe that NASA spending takes up about 20 percent of the federal budget. It has in fact never exceeded four percent, which it enjoyed at the height of the Apollo program, and is currently about .5 percent. Steinberg was testing a notion advanced by Neil deGrasse Tyson that if people knew the true size of NASA's budget they would be more likely to support increasing it."
The public has no idea about the level of US spending. They need to know things like Air Conditioning The Military Costs More Than NASA's Entire Budget. Until they understand that NASA does so much for so little they will never want to expand its budget.
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Spoiler alert - popup, autoplay video and noisy tab within.
And if you want to know the results, you'll have to RTFA. Submitter must be new here.
October 14, 2013
Alan Steinberg, a post doctorate fellow in political science at Sam Houston State University, conducted a study surrounding the vexing problem of how to motivate more people to support increased levels of funding for NASA. In an October 14, 2013 piece in The Space Review, Steinberg announced the results of a study conducted with a group of college students.
Steinberg’s approach was based on the findings of a study by Roger Launius conducted in the late 1990s that suggested that the American public believe that NASA spending takes up about 20 percent of the federal budget. It has in fact never exceeded four percent, which it enjoyed at the height of the Apollo program, and is currently about .5 percent. Steinberg was testing a notion advanced by Neil deGrasse Tyson that if people knew the true size of NASA’s budget they would be more likely to support increasing it.
“As part of a larger survey administered at the University of Houston in two waves, November of 2011 and June of 2012, college students were initially asked to identify their feeling towards the current level of federal spending on NASA as either ‘too much,’ ‘about right,’ or ‘not enough.’ These were coded –1, 0, and 1 respectively. Initially, 84 respondents felt that spending was too much, 219 about right, and 126 not enough. The initial mean level of support for all respondents was 0.098 with a standard deviation of 0.0693.
“Subjects were then asked to identify NASA’s budget as a percentage of the federal budget. They were given these choices: 0.1%, 0.5%, 1%, 5%, 10% and 25%. In the initial round of assessment, 294 respondents (68.4 percent) overestimated NASA’s budget as a percent of the federal budget by at least double the actual value, of which 224 respondents (52.1 percent) overestimated NASA’s actual budget by at least tenfold. This implies that people think NASA is getting a much larger slice of the federal pie than it actually is. While these findings are as expected, the question becomes, what can be done about it?
“Survey respondents were later told the words Neil deGrasse Tyson has said time and time again: ‘NASA’s budget is currently 0.6 percent of the federal budget, i.e., about half a penny per tax dollar.’ Following this fact they were then asked how they felt about the current level of federal spending on NASA using the same metrics. In this post-treatment round 61 respondents felt space spending was too much, 206 about right, and 162 not enough. The post treatment mean was 0.237 with a standard deviation of 0.682.”
The results clearly show a significant shift away from believing that NASA spends too much money toward the belief that it doesn’t spend enough. The conclusion is that anyone who suggests more spending for NASA in order to do things like send human astronauts back to the moon and on to Mars must also educate the public about the true size of NASA spending.
In the hope that the principles in this study are correct, I made this little micro-site to quickly answer the question: "Why spend money on space when there are problems here at home?" http://www.ridingwithrobots.org/earth
Saddle up: Riding with Robots
Almost every federal project is a tiny fraction of the budget, and the same study can be performed on all of them, and since we want clean air, clean water, nice federal parks, more knowledge of the ocean, fewer turtles poached, etc, etc, etc, the results will come out just the same no matter what agency you look at.
"I don't know, therefore Aliens" Wafflebox1
There are some things that are best developed by government due to cost, risk and lack of a valid business case for profit that drives private enterprise. Of course, it should be handed over to private enterprise as soon as a business case is found.
How long will it be before there is a business reason to go to Mars? I'm thinking a LONG time.. So NASA is a reasonable expense, if you have the money.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
A successful one-up of NASA by the Chinese space agency would be a powerful motivator for Congressional funding efforts.
Capcha - "mandarin"
The problem is NASA's obsession with manned spaceflight. The best work is done unmanned, and it's way less expensive. Toss the astronaut suits and use the whole budget for unmanned missions.
Manned spaceflight only makes sense with a huge breakthrough in propulsion. Otherwise, there is no where to go where a human being would be useful enough to make it worthwhile. As it stands, manned flight serves only to fulfill fanboy Star Trek fantasies.
Until then, I will be a techie steadfastly against more NASA spending. Its not just the general public you need to convince, its at least some of the STEM people too.
It's never been about spending or how much - it's always about value, plain and simple ROI. NASA has always appeared needy, these days more than ever, and when someone gets noisy about needing funding, people get suspicious.
Why is it NASA always wants just a bit more and their promised discovery is right around the corner? They get used to being funded and hate updating resumes for the private sector. No surprise there and no surprise tax payers mistrust funding them without end.
If it had 20% we'd be on Mars already. Then again I think the continuous push for private contractors doing things for Nasa is brilliant. The only reason defense spending is so much is because of lobbyists, if the same pressure can be applied for the space industry we'll have a huge portion going towards space in no time! Now that I think about it, a huge amount of scientific research should be privately contracted as well. Imagine what we could do with hundred of billions in contracted research. Even if two thirds is utterly wasted we'd still have a lot more done than we do today.
How long will it be before there is a business reason to go to Mars? I'm thinking a LONG time.. So NASA is a reasonable expense, if you have the money.
I'm willing to bet $5 that Elon Musk lands humans on Mars well before NASA do, and for 1% of the cost of a NASA mission.
Sadly, today's NASA can take any amount of money you give them and blow it on pork without achieving anything.
The public has no idea about the level of US spending.
Here is a breakdown on where out money goes.Defense, SS, Medicare, Medicaid, and CHIP - where 2/3rds goes to Medicare.
The perception is that our tax money is wasted on Space, Welfare Queen's Pink Cadillacs and other entitlement programs which I take to be code words for giving money to "lazy (Black) poor people" from folks who want to appear to be PC.
When the truth is we are wasting money on wars and transferring wealth to the old.
And I find it laughable and sad that the Teapartiers are mostly old white people and if they REALLY wanted what they think they wanted, they'd have to shoot themselves in the pocketbook and give up this notion the the US of A has to have a superior military and go off fighting "evil".
Cut military spending to post WWII levels. Stop this one man show when containing roque nations - we need more UN involvement; which is a whole other bugaboo with the Teaparty people and most conservatives.
There's probably a 75% higher probability that someone will die in the process.
Show a specific example of that happening.
There's probably a 75% higher probability that someone will die in the process.
For decades, NASA was quite happy with a launch vehicle that killed the crew one time in sixty. That's shouldn't be a hard record to beat.
Show a specific example of that happening.
SLS.
Unless you count building a rocket that's expected to cost billions of dollars to launch every few years, if any payloads are ever funded, as 'achieving something'.
There's probably a 75% higher probability that someone will die in the process.
Explorers have been dying since man started exploring.
"I don't know, therefore Aliens" Wafflebox1
Sadly, today's NASA can take any amount of money you give them and blow it on pork without achieving anything.
Spirit. Opportunity. Curiosity.
I'm willing to bet $5 that Elon Musk lands humans on Mars well before NASA do, and for 1% of the cost of a NASA mission.
And do what when they get there? Mars is the Atacama Desert without the thick atmosphere, high moisture content, normal gravity and nearness to civilization.
"I don't know, therefore Aliens" Wafflebox1
Explorers have been dying since man started exploring.
Not on live TV. It's one thing to be somehow mildly aware that something happens and being a participant to that. Ditto for murders, animal slaughtering etc.
Ezekiel 23:20
And do what when they get there?
Film a better remake of Total Recall than the last one?
Ezekiel 23:20
Elon Musk would depend on all of NASA's past work, and the NSF, and DARPA, and, etc. etc.
Seriously, if anything ISN'T an island endeavor, it's space travel.
Lastly, you provide nothing to back blowing money. How about giving some examples?
> the American public believe that NASA spending takes up about 20 percent of the federal budget
Bright as always
The people I know who are opposed to funding NASA don't care about how much money NASA currently gets. They don't want it funded, period.
The person on the street may feel differently, but they probably aren't giving a crap about NASA either way.
A society that watches waaaay too much reality TV, Cops and America's Funniest Home Videos, and thinks that Jackass is great shouldn't be too upset by the occasional boom.
"I don't know, therefore Aliens" Wafflebox1
Don't blame NASA for the way your politicians wheel and deal to direct spending to thier own constituency. NASA budget and goals can not be approved without politicians grabbing thier bit of pork.
Sadly, today's NASA can take any amount of money you give them and blow it on pork without achieving anything.
NASA spends things at the direction of Congress, so blame them. I believe that most of that "pork" is because of Congress-critters wanting a piece of the hog for their districts...
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
I would never have guessed that it was that HIGH.
The Federal budget is massive and 5% of that is massive.
I would like to see the NASA budget LOWERED
The problem lies with information about funding. And the main source for this information is the media. And the media seems to have it in for NASA. Every time a space mission is mentioned in the news its price tag is mentioned with it. Which gives the perception that the space craft or mission is very expensive. When was the last time your heard the price tag of the Seal raids in Somalia or Lybia or on Bin Laden's compound? How much did the NSA's PRISM program cost? If the mass media told everyone the price of all the other government activities as they were reporting them then, by comparison the NASA prices wouldn't seem like much at all.
NASA can't even put telescopes in space without blowing through their funding. I think their budget should be increased (in fact, I'd argue that we should redirect 50% of our current military budget into the space program [and return the other 50% back to the taxpayer in the form of social programs and reduction in taxes])
But, you asked for a specific example, so here you go!
The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), previously known as Next Generation Space Telescope (NGST), is a planned space telescope optimized for observations in the infrared, and a scientific successor to the Hubble Space Telescope and the Spitzer Space Telescope. The main technical features are a large and very cold 6.5-meter (21 ft) diameter mirror, an observing position far from Earth, orbiting the Earth–Sun L2 point, and four specialized instruments. The combination of these features will give JWST unprecedented resolution and sensitivity from long-wavelength visible to the mid-infrared, enabling its two main scientific goals – studying the birth and evolution of galaxies, and the formation of stars and planets.
In planning since 1996,[3] the project represents an international collaboration of about 17 countries[4] led by NASA, and with significant contributions from the European Space Agency and the Canadian Space Agency. It is named after James E. Webb, the second administrator of NASA, who played an integral role in the Apollo program.[5]
JWST's capabilities will enable a broad range of investigations across many subfields of astronomy.[6] One particular goal involves observing some of the most distant objects in the Universe, beyond the reach of current ground and space based instruments. This includes the very first stars, the epoch of reionization, and the formation of the first galaxies. Another goal is understanding the formation of stars and planets. This will include imaging molecular clouds and star-forming clusters, studying the debris disks around stars, direct imaging of planets, and spectroscopic examination of planetary transits.
The mission was under review for cancellation by the United States Congress in 2011 after about $3 billion had been spent,[7] and more than 75 percent of its hardware was either in production or undergoing testing.[8] In November 2011, Congress reversed plans to cancel the JWST and instead capped additional funding to complete the project at $8 billion.[9]
So NASA is a reasonable expense, if you have the money.
I like NASA's achievements, but we don't have the money. We are about $17,000,000,000,000 in the hole, the debt is getting larger every day, and there is no plan to get out of the hole. About 43 cents of every Federal dollar spent goes to pay off the interest on this debt. The USA is doomed if we continue on this path.
Circle the wagons and fire inward. Entropy increases without bounds.
Sorry charlie. You can't pick and choose where to assign blame. Congress being inept means NASA is inept, they are part of the same governmental structure of inefficiency and corruption that forms the military-industrial complex we call a government. Should NASA get more money? Absolutely they should. The return on the investment is there. We should also work to disentangle their funding from the current vampire squid whose tentacles are deeply entrenched in the nubile schoolgirl vagina of the american tax payer. Congress shouldn't be abel to come home after a long day of kicking puppies and beat the shit out of NASA like it is some abused houswife. Lobbyists should be hung from the trees that line the walkways of DC. Giant dick shitting nipples should be shoved up the ass of every current, former and long since dead and buried member of congress. If we want NASA to not suck we have to excise it from the cancerous growth we call government and give them funding without the undue influence of that paedophile chikan known as congress.
But as it currently stands trying to absolve NASA of guilt by solely blaming congress is like you trying to assess blame on your penis because you fucked a chicken and now have mutant transgenic chicken babies on welfare. You did the fucking of the chicken, champ. Now man up and take care of your god damned chicken babies you twisted sick son of a bitch!
It should be of note that even within NASA, programs like those you have mentioned are being cut in favor of SLS & the James Webb telescope. Like all government funding, those projects which go under budget and are efficient tend to get even less funding, while wasteful projects tend to get an ever larger share of the funding. Robotic missions have been cut so severely over the last couple of budget cycles that it is simply amazing that any of the researchers are even bothering to stick around.
20%? They're probably confusing it with the NSA.
I'm not from the US so I don't have influence over any of it. But to say "NASA's budget" and then complain about them wasting money on pork is a bit odd as the only reason they have a budget is due to the many strings attached wrt to where and how the money is spent.
The majority of the hardware expenditures are via private companies and have been for a very long time. NASA neither has the means or ability to build much of the hardware or lauch facilities. Has NASA ever built a rocket? Instruments sometimes are but more often in collaberation with international colleages and still with lots of private companies.
Yeah, but it's a little like being $1 million in debt and focusing on how much you order pizza rather than your house/car/yacht bill. Sure, you can't really afford to order pizza if you're $1 million in debt but it's not going to make any difference either. You've really got to look at that house/car/yacht.
When you have to bum rush Wally World to eat. Trickle down taxation killed the middle class and its jobs. No jobs no money for NASA pretty god damn simple. I hate having to explain this shit to rocket scientist.
A repost of a Google+ post I wrote a year and some change ago:
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From today forward, all federal government expenditures will be priced in "Iraq War Days" (IWD) or "Iraq War Years" (IWY). For quick reference:
Source: "United States Federal budget, 2012" and "Mars Science Laboratory" pages on Wikipedia for budgets, google.com/publicdata for US population, National Priorities Project via "Cost of War" Wikipedia page for IWD exchange rate.
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Something I didn't note in my original post that's probably worth mentioning in passing: Social Security is huge, "bigger than the National Defense budget" huge, but it's basically self-funding because it's a retirement investment paid for by payroll taxes (modulo population bumps, e.g. the post-WW2 "baby boom"). Person A pays in, person A cashes out, theoretical net cost to taxpayers $0.
Range Voting: preference intensity matters
Curiosity, listed as a "success" was way over budget by the time it launched. From wikipedia, "Eventually the costs for developing the rover did reach $2.47 billion, that for a rover that initially had been classified as a medium-cost mission with a maximum budget of $650 million, yet NASA still had to ask for an additional $82 million to meet the planned November launch." That percentage overrun is in exactly the same ball park as James Webb and SLS.
If people knew the budget for the military, would they support it less?
Not on live TV.
Don't worry, a Mars mission will be on a 3 to 20 minute delay.
Science is all about firing a drunk pig out of a cannon just to see what happens.
And do what when they get there?
Start the reactor.
$220B on debt interest, something that shouldn't exist. End the Federal Reserve.
I'd really like to see someone start OSSEA, the Open Source Space Exploration Association. Get Neil Degrasse Tyson as the spokesperson and a few other space and science luminaries and use kickstarter or similar to find each project. Accept volunteers. Put all data collected online.
No idea if it would work but I use would be neat to see them try. I'd donate money and possibly donate time as well being open source
Just ask people how much money should NASA get. If perceived size is the problem, they will probably answer 1-5%. That of course would double the current budget in the worst case.
In the grand scheme of things and what caused the federal debt, I'd say NASA is like ordering the pizza....
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
And it's not likely that teaching them will help, considering the contempt that "facts" are held.
Sorry for the cynicism, but I'm having a hard time believing that an American public that believes in a 6000-year-old Earth, a secret Islamic president, and that climate change doesn't exist would ever accept or even understand the true nature of the government's budget.
Thats nothing more than a feel-good brochure - what, are you in marketing or something?
Quantify the benefit derived from the expense; if you cant, then it shouldnt be done.
Perfect timing!
http://www.geek.com/science/a-decade-after-its-first-manned-space-flight-china-is-becoming-a-power-in-the-skies-1573891/
Remember NASA was originally created through the cannibalization of military programs such as the X-15. Also recall that NASA actively discouraged the development of commercial space launchers to drum up business for its space shuttle. It purposely delayed permits for the commercial sales of Atlas and Titan rockets. I personally worked on reusable launchers and cheap satellites only to be told on multiple occasions to cease work or my company would never receive another NASA contract. If you're a space company, NASA was the only game in town. TRW created a million pound thrust engine for $40K (it had limited re-use -- they fired it 3 times on the San Juan Capistrano test stand). It went nowhere because of NASA.
Now also note that NASA's management and culture is incompatible with space exploration. We lost two space shuttles through wishful thinking and shortcuts. In this case it is hard to distinguish treason from incompetence.
Given NASA's history of actually impeding the development of space, their demonstrated incompetence, and our national debt, we're past due selling NASA off. We need to beef up other means of funding space research. Think of the Ansari X prize. NASA exists to perpetuate itself without regard to benefits to the nation.
They weren't happy about it. They grudgingly accepted it as a limit on know-how. For engineers and crew, loss is never "acceptable" but acknowledged as a consequence of the trials involved in continually pushing the bounds of capability. Those involved know we are not infallible creatures, nor our works, and carry on despite the inevitability of loss.
Excellent exposition and summation, kudos.
I'd add only that a significant portion of the eventual cost is to be laid directly at the feet of Congress due to the stop-and-re-start costs - it's costing a lot of time, money, and effort to get everything back up to speed and proper condition; further, the dollar cost is higher due inflation since '96.
Bullshit.
Follow links, dig, think. All that you command is out there and for the most part easily found.
The burden is not upon the site's maker to do your bidding. Rather, it is upon you, to get your mind off its couch and do something to help - and you know you could, if you wanted to. It's up to you, to carp from the sidelines or to put your efforts to something.
You may have reason to know that it's easy to sneer and harder to build.