Public Opinion of Commercial Space Exploration

ABSTRACT

Utilizing data from a representative survey of Americans, this paper aims to understand who supports commercial space exploration. The findings show parallels to trends previously identified in who supports space exploration. In addition to confirming that knowledge about commercial space is relatively low to non-existent, the data also indicate that respondents do not believe that human spaceflight should be carried out entirely by private actors. Though typical demographic markers associated with support for space exploration, including gender, age, education, and income are identified here as being important, the data indicate that knowledge of commercial space activities is a key mediator for their influence, thereby identifying a key causal mechanism involved in the formation of individual opinion on commercial space that may also be applicable to other elements of public opinion-space studies.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

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16. Ibid.

17. Ibid.

18. Wendy N. Whitman Cobb, “Trending Now: Using Big Data to Examine Public Opinion of Space Policy,” Space Policy, vol. 32 (2015): http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.spacepol.2015.02.008.

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24. Ibid.

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26. Whitman Cobb, “The South and NASA”.

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28. Jeff Foust, “Launch industry asks Congress for regulatory reforms,” Space News, October 19, 2023: https://spacenews.com/launch-industry-asks-congress-for-regulatory-reforms/.

29. Beatrice Nolan, “SpaceX urges Starlink users to petition FCC and US senators amid its squabble with Dish Network over radio frequencies,” Insider, June 29, 2022: https://www.businessinsider.com/spacex-starlink-dish-network-fcc-senators-squabble-government-officials-2022–6.