Apollo's Urban Legends

I'm confused. A claim is made that public support for Apollo was a myth. To me, the statistics he states don't really support that claim.

"the public’s support for space funding has remained remarkably stable at approximately 80 percent in favor of the status quo since 1965, with only one significant dip in support in the early 1970s"

Well, that one seems to say Apollo had public support.

"in the summer of 1965 one third of the nation favored cutting the space budget, while only 16 percent wanted to increase it."

This would seem to indicate that 33% against, 66 in favor. That is still public support.

"number in favor of cutting space spending went up to 40 percent, with those preferring an increase dropping to 14 percent"

This would seem to indicate 40% against, 64% in favor. Still public support.

"At the end of 1965, the New York Times reported that a poll conducted in six American cities showed five other public issues holding priority over efforts in outer space. Polls in the 1960s also consistently ranked spaceflight near the top of those programs to be cut in the federal budget."

This poll would not seem to indicate a lack of popular support for Apollo, just that there were other issues that those in 6 cities cared about.

"The only point at which the opinion surveys demonstrate that more than 50 percent of the public believed Apollo was worth its expense came in 1969 at the time of the Apollo 11 lunar landing. And even then only a measly 53 percent agreed that the result justified the expense, despite the fact that the landing was perhaps the most momentous event in human history since it became the first instance in which the human race became bi-planetary"

This is the only mention I found where he quotes some article that asked the question if Apollo was worth the expense. Was this polled other times? What were the results? Even then, that question is somewhat after the fact and doesn't necessarily indicate that Apollo did not have popular support.

Is this all of the evidence he's basing the claim on or am I missing something?

"or am I missing something?"

Yep. You are.

What he's talking about is "The belief that Apollo enjoyed enthusiastic support during the 1960s and that somehow NASA has lost its compass thereafter still enjoys broad appeal."

He's not arguing that the support for human space flight has changed. He's arguing that it hasn't! Thereby, as we now moan over what we perceive as a disinterested public, Roger is saying that, hey, we aren't any less, or more interested in human space flight than we were in the glory years of Apollo.

So if we think the attitude of the public to human space flight is deficient now, we shouldn't point back to those glory days as how it could be instead if human space flight advocates had their act together. The myth that he is busting is that the nation was more passionately engaged in human space flight during the Apollo era.

Well the title says "Myth of Popular Support for Project Apollo". To me that would be at least 50 to 60%. Statements like "great public support" or enthusiastic public support" are generally subjective and subject to various interpretations. Without specific definitions, it's rather ambiguous. Having 60 to 66% support in the US is pretty good.

"The myth that he is busting is that the nation was more passionately engaged in human space flight during the Apollo era."

Where has this myth been stated? I'm not doubting it has, just that it is very widespread.

If you ask in a poll "do you support the space program?", you'll get generally positive answers.

If you ask "we have X dollars of funding to add; do we add it to program Y, or to NASA?", program Y will usually win. Even foreign aid and farm subsidies are more popular.

Something Dr. Lanius does not address in his survey of past polls here is public engagement, i.e., how 'caught up' the public was in space endeavors, queries of their 'support' notwithstanding. Perhaps an accounting survey of above-the-fold newspaper headlines or TV news "top-of-the-queue" stories would be a reasonable (albeit secondarily reflective) measure of such an (I believe) important truth. News organizations want to sell papers and/or airtime, so they probably have a reasonably close feel for the pulse of what the public cares or does not care about during any particular period.

And I suspect rather strongly that data from such a survey would show a slightly different set of conclusions, with major surges after Sputnik, Gagarin, leading up to Glenn, then Apollo 11, but a rather steady and not insubstantial "level of interest" throughout the mid-sixties, with the only real substantial tapering off after Apollo 11's return, a bump for the Apollo 13 drama, and then the general fading to near-nothing during the mid-70s...until shuttle finally flew (surge) followed by another fading...until Challenger.

Just a thought.

"Well the title says "Myth of Popular Support for Project Apollo"." "Having 60 to 66% support in the US is pretty good."

It's not about percent. It's about whether Apollo garnered more popular support for human space flight than we have now.

If you think popular support for human space flight now is widespread, then fine, but it's not any greater or lesser than it was forty years ago.

The point has been made repeatedly that if our nation only had the commitment to human space flight that we had in the Apollo days, we'd be getting a lot more done. That's the myth.

Perhaps another way to look at it, is that the public is generally inclined to keep spending at current levels, somewhere around 1/2 of a percent of the Federal budget. This means that generally the public is happy to be spending a little of their money on space.

The public has no interest in spending a lot more on space. Apollo funding peaked at close to 5% of the Federal budget. Some would argue that Apollo would likely have been cancelled before the lunar landing goal had been met if it not been for President Kennedy's assassination. As it was, it was being terminated a year before the first moon landing occurred, when it was decided to stop Saturn production. Some people in high places, like President Johnson, thought it was stupid for the nation to have invested so much in such a capability and then curtail it, but he did not stop the termination.

I do not see that anything has changed today. Augustine said that you could do a lot more, a lot more quickly, if only NASA could get another (pick a number) $3 or 6 or 9 billion each year. I think that anyone who is aware of anything about human space flight knows that the US is in a crisis situation as Shuttle flights come to an end. The future of a $100 billion 25+ year investment, ISS, is potentially at stake. Yet no one in government has tried to 'sell' that kind of a dollar increase in the human space flight budget. Most people question what the ISS is for? Why were we going to go back to the moon? Why did we need a Space Shuttle? Why send people to Mars? President Obama's question was 'what are you doing here-what's the point'.

Other polls would show that most of the public has little knowledge of what the space program does or why it does what it does.

New industries and economies could grow if adequate answers were provided. As it is thousands of people are losing their jobs right now because no one has answered these questions adequately.

Is there an adequate answer?

Look at other industries and you will find that marketing and advertising are substantial portions of their budget. What is the purpose? To convince people why they need the product or service...

Well, this finding just shows how wrong I can be. I can only assume that I've missed all the New York tickertape parades given to each shuttle crew after their missions, similar to the ones after the Apollo missions. I must have also missed the constant network news coverage of the shuttle missions as was given to the early Apollo missions. And, the worldwide adulation given to the shuttle crews after they return and go on their globe-trotting PR tours. And, the visits to the White House by each shuttle crew after their mission.

Thanks for debunking that Dr. Lanius. Sure set me straight.

Ticker tape parades are nowhere near as common these days as they were in the Apollo era. They needed something to do with all that tape, I guess. Might as well throw it at people. Besides, I don't recall any ticker tape parades for these guys in Chicago, LA, or Tuscaloosa.

Re constant news coverage, we get that of Afghanistan and Tiger Woods. That shouldn't be taken to suggest that we think that national investment in Afghanistan or celebrityhood for Mr. Woods is a good thing. Besides, the modern media understands that web coverage of space flights are vastly more informative, to people who want to worship them, than television or newspaper coverage. There is pretty constant coverage of Shuttle missions, if you go to the right websites.

> I can only assume that I've missed all the New York tickertape parades given to each shuttle crew

Horrible logic, fellow. I'll go to a parade for a great accomplishment. That doesn't mean I wanted to pay for it in the first place. And not wanting to pay for it doesn't make it not a great accomplishment. This is basic logic.

Are you one of these people who think voting against a war means you hate soldiers and want to lose the war?

Lets think more than a NASA test monkey. Please.

Yes, Alliance Pilot, you hit the nail on the head!

I was in college in the early 1960s and then worked as an electronic/systems engineer for the Apollo project after graduation.

There was tremendous enthusiasm by the public for the Mercury, Gemini and Apollo project. During each flight the Media had extensive coverage and everyone clustered around their TVs to see what Americans were accomplishing - without the aid of foreigners. Americans were proud of their NASA and their brave astronauts and clever engineers.

But,it was a different America then. Americans had confidence and optimism. After all we had won World War II just 15 year before, we had rebuilt Europe and Japan, we were surpassing the Soviet Union in Space after coming from behind, and our economy was thriving! Families were achieving the American Dream with new suburbs being developed at a record setting pace.Each year Detroit created shiny new American built automobiles, larger, faster and more powerful than anything before. We had not yet become wounded by the Vietnam debacle, Watergate,political correctness, and a run-away litigious society that has been overrun by lawyers.

Alas, today America is worlds apart from what it used to be. And the concern for Space today is much less than what new I-pad, cell phone, or American Idol will be next on the scene.

NASA cannot 'market' but it ought to be in the business of communicating and educating; the space act that established NASA says that NASA has a mandate to do those two things.

Space Station in just the last year is a great example of how NASA has totally failed in this.

ISS, after more than a quarter century of work, finally reached the originally conceived configuration about a year ago and reached assembly complete (at least on the US side)about 6 months ago. It did it with a bit of a flair when the cupola, maybe the only exciting looking piece of the ISS, was mounted.

NASA had the perfect opportunity to highlight these achievements. But other than the standard, "another Shuttle is bringing another piece", and "Node 3 was named by schoolkids", NASA seemed to offer nothing else. Maybe they were embarrassed it had taken so long?

Think of the new and different photography that could have been formed into a great panoramic view looking out in all directions from the cupola windows. Think of the stories about the achievement of the people who have been working on the program for a generation. NASA offered nothing as near as I could tell.

Keith highlighted on NASAWatch that the ISS finally looked like what had been envisioned back in 1984 when it finally had its entire truss and all 4 of its solar arrays, but did NASA say anything?

The most exciting period of the ISS program after 25 years but apparently nothing was said or done to commemorate and recognize the achievement. You really have to wonder whether there is anyone working to develop any kind of message at all for manned space.

"the US is in a crisis situation as Shuttle flights come to an end"

What crisis? Its business as usual...its routine; nothing new...we'll keep plugging at it for another generation or two and maybe something will come of it.

Popular support for the program? Not if NASA can help it.

One should also consider the demographics.

In the same time-frame Star Trek didn't do well in "share" but the demographic break-down was quite different.

At the time I recall that Apollo, along with Mercury and Gemini, which fed into it, was rather more popular than the Viet Nam war and Johnson's "War On Poverty". Even the Civil Rights movement, as important as it has been, didn't command the human imagination.

If you look at it, for me, Apollo reinforced the idea of a positive future.

Here are some facts:
1) The original Apollo was to be a direct flight requiring the use of the Nova Rocket. One which dwarfed the Saturn 5. Congress refused to pay for it and only by switching to LOR was the program able to proceed using the Saturn 5.

2) LC-39 was supposed to have 5 pads. Once again, when it came time to pay for it, only 2 were built.

3) By the time Apollo 13 lifted off, the networks refused to carry their transmissions live. Only when the oxygen tank exploded did Apollo 13 make the front page.

4) By the time Apollo 17 landed on the Moon, the networks received complaints about the Moon walk coverage interfering with re runs of "I love Lucy".
Re runs! Not even current programing! Sorry, but Apollo became stale vary quickly.

5) Orion is simply a larger LM requiring a Saturn 5 class vehicle to launch alone with a Saturn 1B class vehicle to follow. Had Apollo called for two launches, one Saturn 5 and a Saturn 1B per Lunar flight. Congress, even at the height of the space race would have refused to cover the price tag.

Sorry, but this re enactment of Apollo is not worth the price tag. Even during the space race, this two launch system would not have been approved.

I don't think anyone quite gets it here.

There was negative pressure on NASA's budget even during Apollo, hence its cancellation in 1968.

You cannot argue with a sane mind that NASA was doing a poor job advertising or getting their message out. Everyone knew what they were doing and were quite excited about it, as has been described here.

So everyone's reaction is that NASA should advertise better, etc., and that's probably true. But evidence suggests this won't do much for funding.

We can expect roughly the same budget for the foreseeable future regardless.

Implications might include the following:

1) Sacrificing real value to make something more exciting or to "inspire the 'kiddies'" will not benefit us.

2) Nor will sacrificing likely success for the same purpose.

I'd like to point out that NASA gets its funding, and manages to fund plenty of missions that nobody ever hears about like MESSENGER or that one that collected Sun and crashed in a desert.

I don't oppose these, I think they're awesome, but I just don't buy that exciting "the public" should be a constraint.

"The public" has decided they value space exploration as 0.5-0.8% of the federal budget, just like they continually value artificial light at 0.72% of the GDP.

Apparently, its just one of those things.

We shouldn't totally take it for granted, but we ought to loosen up. People are not paying attention because they are trusting us to make our future in space happen.

No amount of salesmanship is going to sell me a re enactment of Apollo. Orion should really be named "Block 3 Apollo" For that is what it really is.
The entire concept of scrapping the shuttle and returning to the same mode of space travel we did 30 years ago is flawed. While not as "Sexy" as a mega rocket lifting off to the Moon. we should persue:

1) Air launching in place of the first stage
2) A 2nd generation Shuttle which will bring us closer to the goal of the original shuttle program.
3) A true space craft for exploration which is turned around for its next mission in LEO instead of thrown away after every mission.

NASA and the Kennedy Administration orchestrated an 'advertising campaign' mainly through Life magazine throughout the 1960s, just as von Braun had orchestrated one through Walt Disney in the 1950s. People were aware of what was going on and the excitement lasted as long as there were new things going on.

Apollo 12 got little coverage as compared with Apollo 11. But when their lunar surface color TV camera failed, what little interest there had been died.

In 1966, when Gemini 8 spun out of control and the national news intervened with special bulletins, they received complaints form viewers missing Batman.

Still, NASA was everywhere with plentiful news magazines, radio programs, TV specials and mission coverage, NASA Facts wall charts in most classrooms and kids writing in from all over the country to NASA for free pictures, books and information. Science, math and history fairs all over the country featured regular displays of space.

Now NASA has a very small marketshare of the information superhighway
http://nasawatch.com/archives/2010/08/what-is-nasagov.html
The only way you get people to pay attention is when there is something new and different.

For people looking for information, it is much more a matter of making information plentiful, simple and straightforward to find. The organization of NASA's information resources on the internet is poorly organized. Its difficult to find information on a particular planet or a particular mission if you go to a NASA website, since the information is organized by centers and programs. Eventually if you want to look for a while you can find some really neat things, but most people don't want to spend that kind of time. NASA winds up preaching mainly to the choir. The public is unaware of most of what NASA is doing.

I don't believe the good doctor... Where does his data come from? This is poor research with no references. Who did the surveys? How were they conducted? How were the results consistently collected? This wouldn't pass any form of credible peer review!

This wouldn't pass any form of credible peer review!

Op eds and blogs don't have to pass any form of peer review. He's a highly respected space historian, and these are his ideas, intended to provoke this kind of conversation. The data is obviously pretty subjective. We'll leave the research paper with reference list to a grad student.

Launius isn't claiming that people were a lot more supportive of human space flight in the Apollo years than they are now. The idea that they were is what he's trying to argue with, and the deep entrenchment of that idea is pretty obvious from some of the comments here.

It may be that being excited about human space flight doesn't cleanly translate into being supportive of human space flight, and what media coverage in the early years was representative of was the former, not the latter.

That's an interesting thought that supporters of human space flight should consider. If getting people excited about human space flight doesn't naturally lead to their support for federal expenditure on it, what does?

To some degree, it comes down to answering to national needs. The human space flight program hasn't made compelling arguments about how it does that. Sure, inspiration, technology development, soft power, and all that stuff. But those ideas just aren't catching hold in the collective consciousness of the taxpayer, and evidently never did.

There are some really cool things on the NASA website. Once when I was reading about how jet engines work, a long time ago, I wound up on a NASA page with a simulator. You could change the turbine stages and subject it to different altitudes and conditions and see what it does... And see famous engines like the J-58 as examples.

But it is organized by center and organization, and that just makes no sense.

Google can find a lot of it, but NASA could offer a more centralized repository. The NASA.gov site tries to sort things out but most of their content is still dispersed over the sites.

I do check their site regularly though, personally.

I like the image of the day series they have going and I used to read Wayne Hale's blog regularly.

I don't believe the good doctor... Where does his data come from? This is poor research with no references. Who did the surveys? How were they conducted? How were the results consistently collected? This wouldn't pass any form of credible peer review!(Quote)

Fact: After Apollo 11, the people lost interest, they complained to the networks about the Moon walks preempting re runs of I love Lucy....Reruns!

Fact: LC-39 was to have 5 launch pads. Congress cut off funding after two were built.

Fact: The cost of going to the Moon was a constant issue. Congress refused to fund the Nova Rocket and NASA had to settle for the smaller Saturn 5

Fact: Other than the crying of space cultists, there is no massive public outrage over Obamas cancellation of Orion.

""The public" has decided they value space exploration as 0.5-0.8%"
No, they was not. Average american taxpayer does not know how much NASA cost him in first place.

Do a search on Launius both in Google and in Google Scholar and you'll find many of his peer reviewed papers. This was only a blog. Do searches on "space exploration poll" or related terms and you will find many of the polls of at least the last dozen years, and references to others from years earlier.

BernieEOD
Fact: Other than the crying of space cultists, there is no massive public outrage over Obamas cancellation of Orion.

Many space cultists have not been crying. Many of us do not believe Constellation was the right approach. Many of us do not believe Constellation was the right architecture. Many of us do not believe Constellation was the intended goal of the "vision". Many of us do not believe that even for what it was, Apollo on steroids, it was being implemented properly or fairly.

Almost no one yelled, screamed or cried out at the end of Apollo. Every one of the top space managers of the time that I have spoken with were pretty happy it ended when it did. They said it was too expensive, it was not sustainable, it was using resources that could better be used for other things, it was too difficult, and it was dangerous and they were quite certain they were going to lose a crew at some point if they kept going, in which case the moon in the sky would become a permanent very visible memorial to NASA and Apollo.

Constellation as it was being implemented would not have provided any factors of safety greater than what Apollo offered-in fact significantly less. Apollo had a CSM originally sized for moon landings and therefore had a lot of rendezvous and maneuvering capability so that if the LM could not make the intended orbit, there was a lot of capability to go and get it, possibly down to orbits only a couple tens of thousands of feet high. Constellation's Orion CSM had to be severely downsized because of launch and landing mass constraints to where the can had been kicked down the road so to speak to have the Altair LM provide much of the maneuvering capability to go to and orbit the moon. It had little or no capability to perform a rescue. Mainly it provided a redundant pressurized cabin for a small portion of the mission.

As far as public support of Constellation, to my knowledge NASA never did communicate what the intended goal of the later, downsized program was or why it was a compelling reason to go back to the moon. Along with the technical and managerial problems of Constellation, this might be the greatest downfall of Constellation. They had an opportunity, a clean slate, to state purpose, rationale, and garner support. I don't think they even tried.

A lot of people do not realize that we have not been sending people to the moon for 37 years. Many think this is where the Shuttle goes, regularly. Would a picture of a Constellation astronaut on the moon look significantly different from an Apollo astronaut on the moon? The first pictures of Armstrong and Aldrin on the moon (there were about 30), were released about August 1, 1969. People were tired of pictures of astronauts on the moon by November, about 15 weeks later. Few of the Apollo 12 or later images were widely published because most people were not that interested.

What should we be doing in space now?
We cannot cease striving to make space travel less expensive. We should be building a new Shuttle to replace the existing one, which would be smaller, simpler and less expensive to fly. We should be building on the ISS capability to develop a semi-permanent, long duration sortie vehicle that can go places and do things; higher orbits, satellite deployments and servicing. Eventually once we are comfortable with its capabilities it could be transformed to a vehicle that could go to the moon, asteroids and planets.

I don't know why anyone thought a repeat of Apollo was required or the best thing to do now.

If you have the semi-permanent, long duration sortie vehicle, no one needs the Orion Apollo Mark II capsule. The capsule approach will be provided by Space-X and Boeing, as commercial endeavors and one thing neither needs is competition by NASA.

NASA needs to learn to make use of its existing people, expertise, facilities, resources and operating systems instead of throwing them away every time there is a new program and trying to do something new and better. In Constellation's case it was neither new nor better than Apollo. It would have been different from Shuttle or ISS; that is really about all you can say of it. For the few people who were tired of working on those already existing programs, it was something new.

We appear to be on the same page. A smaller cheaper shuttle is close to existing. Bensen Space is developing the Dream Chaser based on the HL-20.
The Atlas 5 is on the road to being man rated which the Dream Chaser is slated to ride on.

Perhaps the Dragon or even Orion can be reworked into an orbital workhorse using a service module that can be serviced in the same manner the Hubbel is from the shuttle. The capsule can be used as an emergency re entry and thus spend years in space before returning to earth.

True exploration would be to build the "Discovery" from 2001 a Space Oddessy. A 2nd Generation Shuttle is the key to truly fulfilling the dream.

Perhaps air launch where a large plane does the work fo the first stage might be the key to making access less costly.

The Dream Chaser was awarded a CCDev grant. If the Congress funds CCDev than they've got a little bump.