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​Most Americans Would Pass Up a Free Trip to Space

They can land a man on the Moon, but can't make people think it's worth doing again.
​Peek-a-boo! Image: ​NASA

If you'd be willing to take a free rocket ride into orbit—and I assume most Motherboard readers would—you're in a minority in America. According to a Monmouth University Poll conducted last December, only 28 percent of the 1,008 Americans interviewed would take a free ride into space in a private company's rocket.

Anyone else find this really surprising? Free trip into outer-fucking-space—floatin' around, getting all that perspective and Tang and shit—and three-out-of-four people are like "Nah, I'm good"? What the hell, America? First Bush's second term; now this?

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Lest you think, "Oh well, maybe people have well-founded safety concerns and a will to live," there's even an "it depends" option, which only 3 percent of people opted for. No wonder so few of us bother to get passports.

I thought maybe there was some nostalgic patriotism at play here. After all, even if we didn't get to spac​e first and even if we can't get there right now, the US has had—at the very worst—one of the top two manned space programs ever. And that's giving Russia some real credit. But the same poll found that less than half of Americans are in favor of spending tax money to send people back to the Moon, or to Mars or an asteroid.

The poll also found that it's not that we're all against the idea of private companies going into space. Some 58 percent of us are in favor of private companies going to space. We just, apparently, don't want to go with.

Patrick Murray, director of the Monmouth Polling Institute, said ​in a press release that "America is still fascinated by the prospects of space exploration, but balk at the price tag," which is a more generous assessment than I was willing to make. "However, they opposed the space program's cost in the 1960s as well," he pointed out.

Back in 1967, thought of as NASA's heyday, 54 percent of the public thought the space program wasn't worth the annual $4 billion price tag. Adjuste​d for inflation, that's over $28 billion. We're not spending nearly as much today—NASA asked for $17 billion for 2015—but then I guess we don't have a looming specter of communism that we need to bankrupt.

Anyway, budgets and costs are real considerations, and I respect that, especially with private companies and other countries proving themselves plenty capable of trekking starward. But seriously—if its free for you and "the taxpayer," why wouldn't you go? What are you doing that's better than a free trip to outer space?