http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A10334-2004Jan12?language=printerWASHINGTON - President Bush's plan to build a space station on the moon and eventually send astronauts to Mars hasn't grabbed the public's imagination, an Associated Press poll suggests.
More than half in the poll said it would be better to spend the money on domestic programs rather than on space research.
Asked whether they favored the United States expanding the space program the way Bush proposes, people were evenly split, with 48 percent favoring the idea and the same number opposing it, according to the poll conducted for the AP by Ipsos-Public Affairs.
Most respondents said they generally support continuing to send humans into space.
However, given the choice of spending money on programs like education and health care or on space research, 55 percent said they wanted domestic programs. Based on previous estimates for a moon-Mars initiative, the space cost would run in the hundreds of billions of dollars.
"You can't have a war, cut taxes, have the economy in a garbage pail and spend billions going into space," said Dallas Hodgins, a 76-year-old retired University of Michigan researcher from Flint, Mich. "How are they going to pay for all this? I don't see how it's morally justifiable. In Flint, there isn't a school roof that doesn't leak."
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