I don’t really think that’s the case - it’s more nuanced. Most Americans are pro space exploration [1], but against manned missions and colonization efforts [2]. I have a strong feeling most people are probably also against boondoggle projects like SLS and seemingly-constant massive cost overruns on things like JWST.

This makes sense if you think about it - flying humans around the solar system just doesn’t make much sense until we have actual orbital industry at some point in the future to bring the costs down to a reasonable level. And I personally have to agree with the camp opposed to Mars colonization, but for different reasons than most. Mars is kind of a crappy place to try and live by most metrics. It seems like colonization efforts would be better allocated to large asteroids or water-rich moons.

[1] https://www.pewresearch.org/science/2018/06/06/majority-of-a...

[2] https://morningconsult.com/2021/02/25/space-force-travel-exp...

> Even though provable, tech transfer in aerospace innovation proves most abundant.

When someone (usually NASA or NASA fanboys) does a Gish gallop and drops of huge list of things supposedly created by NASA, it's worth picking a couple to take a deep dive into. When you look at the details, the amount of tech transfer is often not anywhere close to the amount claimed.

Still, there is good science and technology that comes out of NASA. But it's likely we'd have a lot better results if a large chunk of the NASA budget wasn't spent throwing people up into space for no reason.

>>> huge list of things supposedly created by NASA

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NASA_spinoff_technologies

Bowflex ;)

I honestly don’t understand why public opinion matters so much for space exploration while the military budget is not held to the same standard.

Honestly though several really nice space exploration projects have been well founded by several governments (including India, China, Europe and North America). Some really silly projects have also been privately funded (e.g. space tourism for the rich). People are rightly questioning how people get so insanely rich that they can afford this. They ask if they are paying their fair share of taxes, if they pay their workers fairly, and which contracts the government have offered them.

If you separate those two classes of space projects I bet you would find way more support for the former (or at least some indifference) while you would find that people vehemently oppose the latter.

If you put it to a vote, majority of Americans will allocate public funds towards stimulus cheques and not the military.... what majority of Americans would allocate funds towards is not necessarily the thing that gets done.

If you put it to a vote and said we can continue to fund NASA or your taxes can be lowered by $75 / year, NASA would be done.

You could probably say that about most government programs though.

Yep.