The NASA Myth

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Do we need NASA? Johnny Depp is set to break Tom Hanks' record to become the highest paid actor ever, in that he will receive $56 million dollars for the fourth Pirates of the Caribbean film. One guy. Swishing in front of a camera, playing pretend pirate. Yet, I never hear people discussing whether we really "need" Johnny Depp anymore.

Global Distribution of Military Spending
by the Stockholm Intl Peace Research Institute
and the US Center for Arms Control (May 2010)

I found this disturbing chart, courtesy of the GlobalIssues.Org website, in a fellow space writer's discussion about federal spending. If you have time, I recommend his blog: The Space Advocate. He is opinionated, vehement, not even remotely politically correct – and almost always right. In this particular rant, he asked: "Seriously, how many ways to kill a human being do we need to come up with?"

It's a fair question, and it set me trolling through hundreds of links, hoping to find a visual comparison of money we spend killing versus money we spend exploring.

I grow weary of hearing that tired old whine, "Why give money to NASA when we could be using the money for problems on Earth?" It's not even worth debating... certainly not on my blog, because I'd be preaching to the choir about all that world space programs have done for Earth, and how even minimal spin-off technologies have changed the lives of entire generations and nations.

NASA's budget for FY 2010 was about $18.7 billion. We hear the words million, billion and trillion bandied about on the news these days like they're nothing, but I won't sit here and try to convince anyone that is not a huge amount of money. It absolutely is. However, there is a greater perspective to be drawn, here.

The annual budget of the United States for 2010 was over THREE TRILLION. The cut that was allocated to NASA was thus 0.623%. Less than one percent. I went roaring around the internet and found over a hundred pie charts for 2008, 2009 and 2010 budgets; without fail, NASA barely even merits a visible slice (unless the chart is enlarged to a pie that you could live inside).

Get your magnifying glass and try to find NASA!

Consider also these statistics, as compiled by Forbes, the NY Times, Consumer Reports and the Bureau of Labor Statistics about how Americans spend their money:

Each year, Americans spend over $65 billion dollars on illegal drugs, and another $315 billion on rehabilitation facilities and health care costs to get people off said drugs. Seems to me Robert Downey, Jr. & Steven Tyler alone probably spent more on questionable substances than NASA will ever have for certain earthbound projects (climate science, ocean exploration, etc.).

Americans also spend $600 billion per year in casinos, gambling money away for no other result than to lose games of chance. See the budget list in the addendum post just below this one, and examine the categories that cost under $600 billion.

I have not found a single person yet who admits to contributing to the massive pornography industry, which somehow stays afloat on a mere $10 billion in revenues per year -- despite having no customers. Amazing.


Why don't we put more money into health care? Into famine? Again, fair questions. I don't know the answers.

Why do members of congress get to vote themselves raises? Why did they give money to car companies whose CEOs have private jets? Why do law-breakers in prisons have better exercise equipment and libraries at their disposal than I do?

If you really want to talk about skewed priorities, why are there more shelters in the US for abused animals than for abused women? I don't know.

What I do know is that NASA isn't the mythical spending sponge that some people claim, and I'm at a loss to understand the unfounded indignation, given all they have provided "for the benefit of all."