Our use of space resources touches many things you probably do every day. Communications satellites, weather satellites, GPS satellites, Earth monitoring satellites, national defense satellites, and many other types of space assets are now tightly integrated into our modern society. Anyone who uses a phone, owns a GPS, watches TV, checks the weather channel, checks email, browses the Internet, or even lives in a country whose national defense is intimately tied to satellites, depends on space resources.
So sure, if you live under a rock, space has nothing to do with you. Otherwise, yes, we should be willing to spend a wee little bit of our immense wealth on investing in the future.
And it's pretty silly to talk about printing funny money to pay for NASA, when we're spending less than 50 cents out of every 100 federal budget dollars on it. Look at any federal budget pie chart and you will immediately see where the big changes must be made in order to balance the budget: national defense, medicare/medicaid, unemployment/welfare, and yes, interest on the national debt. Those are the drivers of our federal deficit, not NASA, or any of the other single-digit federal outlays that are routinely put forth as spending scapegoats. Until that reality is faced by our politicians and voters, we will continue to be awash in debt for the foreseeable future.
I agree with the basic thrust of this editorial. However, I must make one small but important correction.
The U.S. space program was never funded at a level that would come close to a "massive, multi-trillion dollar" budget. This widespread misperception has done much damage to NASA over the past 60 years. In the 1966, NASA's budget peaked at slightly less than 4.5% of the federal budget, with a total outlay of $5.9 billion then-year dollars, or about $32B FY2007-dollars (corrected for inflation). For FY2012, it is expected that NASA will receive less than 0.5% of the budget, or somewhere between $17B and $18B.
The total federal expenditure on NASA since it was founded in 1958 has been less than $1 trillion, even after adjusting for inflation. Compare that to the amount of our treasury spent on TARP, the stimulus, bail-outs, foreign wars, "security contractors," etc, and you will see where our politicians' true priorities are.
For a President who likes to emphasize about how we need to increase our STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Medicine) education, he is truly missing the boat regarding NASA. If there is one federal agency that inspires our youth to get into STEM, it is NASA.
We should properly fund NASA because of the benefits to ourselves, regardless of what China, India, Russia, or any other foreign space power is doing.
Therefore, we should set NASA's budget at 1.5% to 2% of the federal budget. A robust and inspiring space program does not have to break the bank, nor does it have to revert to the levels seen back in the sixties. But it does need to be consistently funded at a level that will help establish a sustainable space infrastructure.
Will China shame the US back to strong space program?
Our use of space resources touches many things you probably do every day. Communications satellites, weather satellites, GPS satellites, Earth monitoring satellites, national defense satellites, and many other types of space assets are now tightly integrated into our modern society. Anyone who uses a phone, owns a GPS, watches TV, checks the weather channel, checks email, browses the Internet, or even lives in a country whose national defense is intimately tied to satellites, depends on space resources.
So sure, if you live under a rock, space has nothing to do with you. Otherwise, yes, we should be willing to spend a wee little bit of our immense wealth on investing in the future.
And it's pretty silly to talk about printing funny money to pay for NASA, when we're spending less than 50 cents out of every 100 federal budget dollars on it. Look at any federal budget pie chart and you will immediately see where the big changes must be made in order to balance the budget: national defense, medicare/medicaid, unemployment/welfare, and yes, interest on the national debt. Those are the drivers of our federal deficit, not NASA, or any of the other single-digit federal outlays that are routinely put forth as spending scapegoats. Until that reality is faced by our politicians and voters, we will continue to be awash in debt for the foreseeable future.
January 3, 2012 at 5:36 p.m. permalink suggest removal
Will China shame the US back to strong space program?
I agree with the basic thrust of this editorial. However, I must make one small but important correction.
The U.S. space program was never funded at a level that would come close to a "massive, multi-trillion dollar" budget. This widespread misperception has done much damage to NASA over the past 60 years. In the 1966, NASA's budget peaked at slightly less than 4.5% of the federal budget, with a total outlay of $5.9 billion then-year dollars, or about $32B FY2007-dollars (corrected for inflation). For FY2012, it is expected that NASA will receive less than 0.5% of the budget, or somewhere between $17B and $18B.
The total federal expenditure on NASA since it was founded in 1958 has been less than $1 trillion, even after adjusting for inflation. Compare that to the amount of our treasury spent on TARP, the stimulus, bail-outs, foreign wars, "security contractors," etc, and you will see where our politicians' true priorities are.
For a President who likes to emphasize about how we need to increase our STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Medicine) education, he is truly missing the boat regarding NASA. If there is one federal agency that inspires our youth to get into STEM, it is NASA.
We should properly fund NASA because of the benefits to ourselves, regardless of what China, India, Russia, or any other foreign space power is doing.
Therefore, we should set NASA's budget at 1.5% to 2% of the federal budget. A robust and inspiring space program does not have to break the bank, nor does it have to revert to the levels seen back in the sixties. But it does need to be consistently funded at a level that will help establish a sustainable space infrastructure.
January 3, 2012 at 9:34 a.m. permalink suggest removal