While most adults (54 percent) are bullish that humans will be able to routinely send civilians to space as tourists in the next 50 years, they’re not so sold on going into space themselves. Fifty-eight percent said they were either “not too likely” or “not likely at all” to travel to space if price weren’t a concern, up 10 points from the 48 percent who said the same in a September 2017 Morning Consult/Politico poll.
When asked if they would be willing to spend more or less than the price of an average airplane ticket to go to Mars, 53 percent said they were not interested at all in space travel.
Those numbers change slightly based on gender and age. More men (44 percent) said they were likely to embark in space travel if price weren’t a concern, than women (23 percent), while the idea of traveling to space was more popular among Gen Z (46 percent) and millennials (49 percent) — compared to 32 percent of Gen X adults and 19 percent of baby boomers.
Making space exploration a priority though, even during a pandemic, could bode well for Americans’ morale, Logsdon said, such as what happened with the first moon landing in 1969 that came on the heels of a decade of domestic and international civil unrest.
“It was a counter balance to the negativity of the time,” Logsdon said. “If we do inspirational things in space -- go back to the moon or travel beyond land rovers on Mars -- that gives us a sense of future, a sense of positive achievement to counter the pervasive negativity.”
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