I don’t really think that’s the case - it’s more nuanced. Most Americans are pro space exploration [1], but against manned missions and colonization efforts [2]. I have a strong feeling most people are probably also against boondoggle projects like SLS and seemingly-constant massive cost overruns on things like JWST.
This makes sense if you think about it - flying humans around the solar system just doesn’t make much sense until we have actual orbital industry at some point in the future to bring the costs down to a reasonable level. And I personally have to agree with the camp opposed to Mars colonization, but for different reasons than most. Mars is kind of a crappy place to try and live by most metrics. It seems like colonization efforts would be better allocated to large asteroids or water-rich moons.
This makes sense if you think about it - flying humans around the solar system just doesn’t make much sense until we have actual orbital industry at some point in the future to bring the costs down to a reasonable level. And I personally have to agree with the camp opposed to Mars colonization, but for different reasons than most. Mars is kind of a crappy place to try and live by most metrics. It seems like colonization efforts would be better allocated to large asteroids or water-rich moons.
[1] https://www.pewresearch.org/science/2018/06/06/majority-of-a...
[2] https://morningconsult.com/2021/02/25/space-force-travel-exp...