Nasa total budget1/6/2024 NASA is first and foremost a science agency. However, do justifications exist to have a well-funded NASA that spends money on exploring space that only the space agency can do? As it turns out, there are such justifications. Indoor farms allow for growing vegetables in urban centers, using less water, in a temperature and light-controlled environment 24/7. It focuses on indoor, vertical gardens, a technology developed by the space agency for astronauts to grow their own food on space stations, lunar bases and long-duration interplanetary voyages. The report also trots out the oldy but goody justification for NASA of technological spinoffs. But the cost overruns and schedule slippages interfere with the Artemis program’s main goal, which is to get astronauts back to the moon and, eventually on to Mars and beyond. The uber-expensive, wildly behind-schedule Space Launch System certainly creates lots of NASA jobs in important states and congressional districts. In 2013, the government's Office of Personnel Management accidentally sent $84.7 million in payments to retired federal workers who'd already died - slightly less than in the previous few years.īy contrast, the New Horizons spacecraft, launched in 2006 and due to reach Pluto this summer, cost a total of $700 million, or $77.8 million per year.The number of jobs NASA generates is a bad metric for determining the space agency’s value. 7) Payments to dead federal workers cost more than NASA's mission to Pluto Meanwhile, to cut costs, NASA has repeatedly considered shutting down operation of the Opportunity rover, which landed on Mars in 2004 and is still collecting data, surviving 40 times longer than its original projected lifespan. 6) Making pennies and nickels costs more than operating a threatened Mars roverĪs Things That Cost More Than Space points out, because it costs more for the US Mint to make pennies and nickels than they're actually worth, the government lost $105 million on the coins last year. NASA's Curiosity rover cost $2.5 billion to develop, launch, and send to Mars. 5) Destroyed weapons cost more than the Curiosity Mars roverĪs it wound down the war in Afghanistan, the US military destroyed or abandoned more than $7 billion worth of weapons and other military equipment. That probe will cost taxpayers about $2 billion. Meanwhile, after years of being told that uncrewed missions to Jupiter's moon Europa (which is believed to have a water ocean underneath its icy surface) were too expensive, NASA has gotten approval for a streamlined, cheaper probe that will orbit Jupiter instead of Europa itself. Since 2000, US taxpayers have spent an estimated $3.9 billion on football stadiums for profitable, privately held NFL teams. 4) NFL stadiums cost taxpayers more than exploring Jupiter's moon NASA's entire 2013 budget was just $16.8 billion. In 2013, Medicare made $45.7 billion in what the Government Accountability Office calls " improper payments." These are a mix of payments sent to the wrong people, accidental overpayments, and, to a large extent, outright fraud. 3) Improper Medicare payments cost more than NASA's whole budget NASA's budget for planetary science - all its programs to explore the moons and planets of our solar system - was $1.35 billion. The US Postal Service lost money last year, costing the federal government $5.5 billion. (Thanks to the Planetary Society's Casey Dreier for this comparison.) 2) The Postal Service costs more than exploring other planets Generous estimates for a human Mars mission peg its total cost at around $100 billion over 20 years, or $5 billion per year. Here, inspired by the excellent blog Things That Cost More Than Space, are some of the things we routinely spend much more public money on: 1) The F-35 fighter will cost more than sending humans to Marsĭevelopment of the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter has spiraled out of control, escalating to a total cost of about $1.5 trillion over the course of 50 years, or $29 billion per year. The price tags for NASA and its various programs might sound big, but put into context they're fairly modest. Congress has directed NASA to develop the biggest rocket ever, but it's unclear whether there will be money to actually use it once it's finished. We've discovered liquid oceans on several different moons in our solar system, but cuts to NASA's planetary science budget (the money it can spend on exploring other planets and moons) mean we won't be sending probes to them for at least a decade. Read enough about space exploration and you detect a common theme: the universe contains all sorts of wonders, but we don't have enough money to properly explore them.
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