While this is how this story is regularly retold it's not quite accurate. Polling around the Moon program tells that while there was a large minority of people vehemently in support of it, the overall response was mixed, and NASA was generally seen as a good target to cut funding from. [1]
I think there are lots of parallels between the Moon landings in the 60s and the idea of colonizing Mars today. In particular, most people don't think it's possible, and so they think it's a waste of money. The Apollo program only received majority approval once we landed on the Moon. People also tend to dramatically overestimate the cost of achieving great things in space. Polling suggested people thought the Moon missions were taking up about 22% of the budget. In modern times it's down to less than 0.5%, and that's with NASA blowing tens of billions of dollars of pork projects like the SLS.
Overall support for the Moon program only began to steadily rise in the years after human spaceflight was defacto completely cancelled by Nixon, and people were able to coolly reflect on what a ridiculous and important achievement that was.
According to your own link, the thing people don't like isn't space exploration, it's paying for it:
> "When you divorce it from the numbers and you ask people if they like NASA and spaceflight, people say yes," Launius told SPACE.com. "75 to 80 percent are in favor."
Because obviously; people don't like paying for anything.
If you ask someone without a lot of surplus in their life whether they'd rather have the money themselves in tax cuts or benefits or they want to spend it on astronauts, they want food on their table. Especially when they're overestimating how much the space program costs.
But the question was, did people want to work for NASA? And then you get to select your idealists from the >75% in favor of the space program.
I think there are lots of parallels between the Moon landings in the 60s and the idea of colonizing Mars today. In particular, most people don't think it's possible, and so they think it's a waste of money. The Apollo program only received majority approval once we landed on the Moon. People also tend to dramatically overestimate the cost of achieving great things in space. Polling suggested people thought the Moon missions were taking up about 22% of the budget. In modern times it's down to less than 0.5%, and that's with NASA blowing tens of billions of dollars of pork projects like the SLS.
Overall support for the Moon program only began to steadily rise in the years after human spaceflight was defacto completely cancelled by Nixon, and people were able to coolly reflect on what a ridiculous and important achievement that was.
[1] - https://www.space.com/10601-apollo-moon-program-public-suppo...