Next Stop – The Red Planet

The Martian, Red Planet, Mars Attacks, John Carter. The list of movies that take place on Mars goes on and on. We are curious—can you blame us? At some point or another, almost everyone has thought about what it would be like to be on another planet! So, in our latest round of research-on-research, we had some fun and we asked respondents when they think we’ll land on Mars.

Overall, 27% of people don’t know and don’t care when we’ll land on Mars. However, of those that have an opinion, 18% think we’ll land on Mars in the next 5-10 years.

Gender

When comparing response by gender, we see that males are significantly more likely to have an opinion on when we will land on Mars than females. They are 7% less likely to say they don’t know or care when we’ll land on Mars than the overall average. Males also tend to be more optimistic on the subject, being most likely to think we’ll land on Mars in the next 5-25 years.

Age

Looking at age, we see that the older a person is, the less likely they are to think we’ll land on Mars in the next 5 years. Additionally, the older a person is, the more likely they are to say they don’t know or don’t care when we’ll land on Mars. Those aged 45-54 are most likely to think we’ll never land on Mars.

Ethnicity

When it comes to Ethnicity, we find that 23% of African Americans believe we will never land on Mars, at 7% higher than the overall average. Caucasian or White respondents are the most likely to believe that we will land on Mars in the next 5-25 years.

Income

When comparing response by income, we see that the higher a person’s income, the more likely they are to have an opinion on when we will land on Mars. We also see that the lower a person’s income, the more likely they are to think that we will never land on Mars. The higher a person’s income, the more likely they are to think that we will land on Mars in the next 5-25 years.

Panel

Finally, we looked at response by panel. Panels E and O are most likely to think we will land on Mars in the next 5-10 years. We also see differences up to 14 percentage points between panels. Additionally, responses vary up to 8 percentage points higher and lower than the overall average by panel. These differences can be due to variations in panel makeup, management, or a variety of other factors.

For instance, Panels A and J may have more respondents age 65+, making their responses more likely to skew toward the belief that we will never land on Mars as we saw in the graphs above. This is why strategic sample blending is the best practice to ensure any changes in your data are due to shifts in the market, not differences among panels. NASA, if you’re reading this, we’re happy to help on your next study!