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Moon Settlement Majority
A recent survey conducted by Zogby Interactive has found that 63% of Americans believe that humans will eventually establish a permanent colony on the moon, with 39% believing that it will happen within the next 50 years.
Commercial space travel is now regularly in the news, most recently for Professor Stephen Hawking's zero-gravity flight and his support for private ventures like Richard Branson's Virgin Galactic. Zogby found that two thirds of Americans (66%) express support for space exploration and three in ten say they would be interested in space tourism if they could afford it. Of these, 41% said they would like to travel to the moon and 32% would be interested in taking a flight to Mars.
Large majorities of Americans are in favour of some form of space programme, with four in five saying that it's important to the country's international prestige to have one. When it comes to NASA's budget, 71% are against any form of cuts, while one in three Americans would back increasing NASA's funding.
More than 34% rated the Apollo moon missions as the space agency's greatest achievement, and 18% rated the Hubble Space Telescope as a major success. Yet there were concerns about the ageing shuttle fleet, with nearly 45% saying it is too old, too expensive and too flimsy to fly us into space.
The Zogby Interactive poll of 4,824 US adults was conducted online in March. Zogby has been tracking public opinion since 1984 in North America, Latin America, the Middle East, Asia, and Europe and is on the web at www.zogby.com .
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