Are there any prominent individuals and/or groups opposed to the space program.
Libertarians and or libertarians likely have trouble with the whole ‘NASA’ thing.
You need to define your terms. Many groups and individuals are opposed to manned space programs on the ground that they are too expensive and that unmanned, robot, or drone probes can collect just as much science for far less money.
A large number of people express opposition to spending any money at all for space programs as long as there are unsolved problems on earth.
These objections are economic rather than philosophical, though. If what you mean is whether groups are opposed to exploring space for metaphysical reasons, then I don’t know of any.
Doesn’t really matter. You can ask any question you like and find a couple of percent of people objecting.
What about then-senator and presidential candidate Barack Obama, as in this interview with NPR:
Bolding added. But upon preview, I think Exapno Mapcase explains it better.
I mean anyone or group that is opposed to a significant element of the space program (ie manned space program for instance).
Penn & Teller had a really hard time with this on their show, being that they claim to be both some breed of Libertarian and huge fans of the space program.
Perhaps you should clarify what you mean by “opposed” – As has been noted, there are a substantial number of people who oppose spending on the space program in a general way (chiefly summarized as “the money would be better used elsewhere” or “government has no business doing most of the things it does, this included”). But I’m unaware of any group that opposes it in an activist sense – demonstrating, interfering with programs, or even fund-raising or publicly advocating primarily on that issue. Groups like the religious fanatics in the book and film Contact are, as far as I know, strictly fictional straw men.
I don’t see any opposing.
Haven’t had much luck finding proper organizations calling for the NASA budget to be cut.
I did find many organizations calling for it to raised, in the face of Congress trying to cut it.
I remember some silly astrologer objected to NASA’s Deep Impact project on the grounds that the damage to the comet negatively affected the balance of the universe or something. She lost her $300 million lawsuit in a Russian court.
Aha, that reminds me that there are people opposed to the nuclear power sources they use on some of the long term probes.
They even have protesters!
Many scientists more or less disapprove of most of the space program: the manned space program. I’m included. It is often said that NASA has to stage big personality extravaganzas to create sufficient voter enthusiasm to maintain their budget, and programs that really do science, such as JPL’s planetary probes and all the spaceborne telescopes, need the manned program’s glory to rub off on them in financial form.
The space shuttle exists to facilitate the space station, for example, and the space station exists to create a justification for the space shuttle. What has science on the space station done? The only thing I am aware of is that polystyrene latex microspheres, which are microscopic plastic balls grown floating in water and used for jobs like calibrating scanning electron microscopes, are now available in larger sizes of a few hundred micrometers. They’re grown in microgravity. Earth-grown microspheres aren’t available any bigger than a few dozen micrometers.
When the Challenger blew up, IIRC, van Allen (of radiation belt fame) had an article arguing against manned space travel in the issue of Scientific American that happened to be at newsstands right at that moment.
Whitey on the Moon doesn’t actually SAY he disapproves of it, does it? Just don’t want to jump to any unwarranted conclusions.
Obama’s latest opinion:
http://blogs.sciencemag.org/scienceinsider/2009/12/exclusiveobama.html
he is in favor of an increased NASA budget and the continuation of the Ares launcher.
Of course he is only talking about 1/3 of the increase needed to actually do that, but I assume he has his reasons. And I for one, am willing to assume anyone, Obama included, has good reasons until proven wrong.
RtFL!*
This is as clear as he gets,… Taxes takin’ my whole damn check, …
… Was all that money I made las’ year (for Whitey on the moon?)
How come there ain’t no money here? (Hmm! Whitey’s on the moon)
Y’know I jus’ 'bout had my fill (of Whitey on the moon) …so, Exapno Mapcase’s first post, second paragraph.
I don’t really doubt that Gil was very aware that the war in Vietnam sucked the well dry on LBJs “Great Society” not the space program.
But it’s a lot harder to turn that into as catchy a hook as “Whitey('s) on the moon” is.
CMC fnord!
*Read the Funky Lyrics 
There are a number of people - as noted generally of the libertarian persuasion - who dislike NASA and the the way it has run the US space programme but are strongly in favour of space exploration - including manned space flight. I’m thinking of people like Jerry Pournelle.
A while since I checked in at Chaos Manor but as I understand it his view is that NASA have become a self perpetuating job creation scheme without doing what they should be doing - advancing basic understanding of aeronautics and space flight. He damns the Shuttle programme, arguing that NASA should not be in the business of trying to run a space haulage business with prototype technology and the existing massive overheads.
I think it is NASA itself rather than government funding per se he has problems with - he points to the old DoD funded X15 and DC/X programmes as how government money should be spent.
It’s easy to find people or groups opposed to space exploration for fiscal reasons in that they simply believe that the money could be better spent, or saved, or whatever. But are there any organizations or prominent individuals out there who oppose it per se, just for we-don-belong-there type reasons? Or because they believe that God didn’t mean for us to go there? I imagine anarcho-primitives would be opposed to it, but then, hell, they’re opposed to toasters too.