NASA Funding: what percentage of the federal budget?

I vote 0%. We have been blessed by God with this green earth. We humans should not strive to seek out other godless planets or solar systems and needlessly anger such a giving Master.

 

I wonder how much free [or near free] R&D tech they got from NASA.
I don't know if I want Space to be in Private hands.

on the fence. . . .

Rocket River

 

We need to spend more on technology that's for sure. If not Nasa other technology. But it's crazy we are letting other countries beat us.

 

I would rather prioritize money for brain, mind, conscious research. We've gone a long way and know much more about the external world. We know almost nothing of our inner mind world.

 

I think this is where people mistake how good NASA is for innovation. It's easy to be limited by our own imaginations, but at NASA, you get accidental innovations that benefit people in ways we could never imagine.

http://science.howstuffworks.com/innovation/nasa-inventions/5-surprising-nasa-inventions.htm#page=2

 

Lost interest when you mentioned climate change in the same sentence as healthy discussion... CLIMATE CHANGE IS A MYTH YOU'VE ALL BIN FOOLED! Theres a God up there somewhere, and why would he ever let his precious beautiful Earth that he created in 4 days go to waste over the fuels that allow my legislators to have the stage that they do to educate us on the subject? Foolish scientists.... Pick up a bible.

 

A depressing read for a space junkie like myself: http://physics.ucsd.edu/do-the-math/2011/10/why-not-space/. Some things might have changed since then, but we are no closer out of the conundrum. (His other blog posts about energy and "The Future" are interesting as well.)

So I voted 0%.

Also because of this tidbit about the Orion test flight from CNN: "Though Orion's first flight won't have people on it, it won't go up empty. It will carry the names of more than a million people packed on a dime-sized microchip.

"Sesame Street" is sending up some mementos to inspire students about spaceflight, including Cookie Monster's cookie and Ernie's rubber ducky.

Also going up: an oxygen hose from an Apollo 11 lunar spacesuit and a small sample of lunar soil. A Tyrannosaurus rex fossil from the Denver Science Museum will be on board and lockers will be filled with flags, coins, patches, poetry and music." WTF? This just reeks of stupid PR for stupid people. If that's the best NASA can do, I say shut it down.

 

NASA isn't just space exploration.

It's the true mecca of technology.

3%.

 

My first gocart was named the Friendship 7, I watched 1000 hours of Walter Cronkite and the moon landing live. I believe it is in the interest of the US and the world to continue the scientific advancement of space flight. That being said, there are things that require attention here on Earth including replacing the infrastructure we rely on ( roads, pipes, grids, national broadband etc.), changing over to renewable energy sources, expanding sustainable agriculture, feeding and educating our children etc. to a point that the current NASA budgets seems about the right focus. We need to be doing it but spaceflight for exploration doesn't need to be rushed. We aren't racing time or anyone to get there and I think once we do it, it will be AI that goes not human beings.

The best "use" of space is monitoring Earth to improve lives on the surface.

 

Some of you seem to be treating this as a zero sum game. That is if we give NASA more money, we'll be taking money away from some other government program or effort.

The fact is that at NASA's peak in funding, many other programs were also better funded than they are today. Declines in government spending have hit every corner of government.

NASA's funding inadequacies are representative of a society that has chosen not to prioritize government spending as a whole.

In addition to NASA, we've cut funding to other forms of scientific spending. We are a country that simply does not prioritize science like we used to. NASA is just the easiest to point at because we take it as such a point of pride. But if you look at say medical research, the federal government has also cut back on grant programs that are extremely important.

Also on a last note, the politics of science spending has taken a much bigger dive very recently. It wasn't that long ago that a Republican like Arlen Specter would fight regularly for increases in spending on scientific research. (Specter was a huge advocate for federally funded research on engineering and medicine) NASA in particular was represented by the House Majority Leader (Tom Delay) who did in fact go out of his way to fight for NASA funding. Texas's senators like Kay Bailey Hutchinson also made it a point to fight for spending on NASA and medicine because Texas benefited greatly from that.

Those days are gone. Texas's Republican politicians could care less about spending on science despite the fact that the state disproportionately benefits from such spending. In addition to that, the House's ban on earmarks in 2010 makes it virtually impossible to add on spending on science to unrelated bills which used to be a common thing.

 

NASA, like a lot of other agencies, has been captured by corporations. The percentage of money spent on actual NASA employees is small compared to what is spent on contracts. That we can't launch a rocket without a signoff from a ton of contractors seems odd to me. NASA employees should run the program and not just be relegated to contracting officers for the the companies that skim a big chunk of our space budget.

Of course, I'm using hyperbole, but not much. Yes, you can find real NASA scientists, but again, if we're going back to the 60's, let's do it without the corporations sucking up the money. Any NASA request these days is a giveaway to the vampires that suck off the taxpayers.

 

How about the Govt stops handing out billions in corporate tax subsidies.

There's a start?

 

Reading the results of Murphy's poll I was amazed at the cluelessness of his students. I suspect he teaches a science course for U.S. liberal arts majors.

There are some embarrassing math errors in Murphy's arguments against space. If he taught a class with competent aerospace students, they would take him to school.

I agree with you that much of NASA's activity has been PR stunts though. Although their probes have done some amazing planetary science over the decades.

 

In fiscal year 2015, the federal government is projected to spend around $3.9 trillion..

 

While true to some extent, the levels the OP is talking about can't just be additive. He's proposing multiplying their budget by 10x (from 0.5% of spending to 5%). You don't want to just add $160B in annual spending without it coming from somewhere (whether it be taxes or spending cuts).

Besides, it's unclear what NASA would even spend that money on. You don't just give an agency an extra $150B to play with without any real efficient strategy of how to use it.

 

I'm not voting in the poll. Why? Because while I'd be thrilled to have NASA's budget double to 1%, I think 5%, considering the current situation the country finds itself in, is too much by far. We should also double funding for scientific research, in my opinion. Put a 1 percent option in the poll and I'll vote for it. Just to be clear, this is coming from a huge supporter of the space program, including manned space flight. I watched Walter Cronkite cover the Moon landing and went see the speech Jack Kennedy gave at Rice Stadium calling for putting a man on the Moon before the end of the decade. So more money for NASA and for scientific research, within reason. I think 1% for NASA is reasonable.

 

Thank you for the charts. Revenues below our mandatory spending, we have got to grow up on taxes.