Since its inception NASA has tried to justify its raison d'etre, in the beginning it was the space race with the Soviets, but with the warming up of the cold war that incentive has evaporated. These days the public want real deliverables from NASA and the perception is that it is over-funded and under-performing. This is where NASA needs to communicate to the populace how it will directly benefit them much like the national education (NASA has much to educate people about) and health agencies (Space observations can track pollution levels) . This article brings out the discrepancy between people's perception of NASA funding and the reality.
"In a survey ... NASA’s allocation, on average, was estimated to be approximately 24% of the national budget (the NASA allocation in 2007 was approximately 0.58% of the budget.)"
Misconceptions indeed ....
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This reminds me of all these people who want to see their houses in World Wind. After you tell them about Landsat resolution their reaction is something like:
"What?! You gotta be kidding! I can't see my house?! But this is a NASA project, right? I bet they have some super-duper-subcentimeter-realtime-video feed streamed from the top secret satellite fleet."
The same misconception... :)
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