The 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 lunar mission is upon us, and space exploration in the United States has increasingly become the purview of private enterprise as opposed to government agencies. But what do Americans actually believe about space exploration. A new poll from C-SPAN and Ipsos includes some revealing data about American attitudes about space travel.
It also contains one particularly eye-catching item: 11% of millennials polled believe that the moon landing was faked.
On the bright side (no pun intended), this also means that 89% of millennials do not believe the moon landing was faked.
The poll results also revealed a high degree of admiration for NASA’s work, substantial name recognition for Neil Armstrong and a strong overall belief in the importance of space exploration.
11% of millennials believe the moon landing was staged, as opposed to 6% of Generation X and 3% of Boomers. A higher percentage of millennials (40%) expressed an interest in vacationing in space than either Generation X (33%) or Boomers (21%).
While 11% of millennials doubt the evidence of the moon landing, a significantly higher percentage grew up with a very different take on visiting space. According to the poll, 27% of millennials wanted to be astronauts when they grew up, as opposed to 26% of Generation X and 18% of Boomers.
One thing all three age groups have in common? Over half of each believe in the existence of extraterrestrial life, though they differ more substantially from group to group when asked if aliens have visited our planet. Though with (admittedly satirical) talk of a forthcoming raid on Area 51, perhaps we’re growing even closer to discovering the answer to that question as well.
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