posted 11-13-2019 11:46 AM               

The problem facing anyone trying to assign motives for the support for the space program is that you have to ask them the right question in order to get their feelings. Unfortunately, while public attitudes toward the space program have been polled since the dawn of the space age, motivations have not been well explored. So Burbach set out to find the answers another way, correlating opinions on space program spending with other, better-studied attitudes, like those toward the military or the environment...

Although there is a link between political affiliation and support for the space program, it's small. Once other variables have been controlled, "the model predicts a Democrat would have a 10 percent probability of wanting greater spending, and a Republican would have a 14 percent probability." As expected, Americans who supported higher military spending also favored more space funding. There was even higher support for increasing space funding among respondents who had high confidence in science, and a small but positive correlation between support for the environment and space funding.

When Burbach added party affiliation to the analysis, the differences turned out to be pretty minor. Republicans who support the space program are less likely to support welfare spending, and Democrats and independents who support the environment are slightly more likely to support the space program. Burbach didn't see the expected negative correlation between space and social funding among Democrats.