I was a high school student during the early days of the space program, and I remember well the opposition to it. As a science and space enthusiast, and for patriotic reasons (I was 10 years old when the Soviets launched the first artificial satellite), I was outraged at what seemed to be a general opposition, or at best, a lukewarm support, for space exploration. I didn't take a survey, but I would have guessed most people really didn't care, and a substantial fraction actually opposed it. Downright boosting like mine was rare. Except for rabid space groupies like myself, even pro-space people tended to be somewhat tepid in their approval. If the opponents had bothered to organize or demonstrate their disapproval publicly, there probably would have been no space program at all except for the development of ICBMs and (under corporate lobbying) COMSATs.

Most people used some variation of the same old line, "There are too many problems here on earth for us to be wasting money in outer space." Well, they were right. But they were also very fundamentally wrong. It all depends on your point of view.