re: #97 Dark_Falcon

Space is going to belong to private firms for a time. There remains a place for NASA personnel up there, but we’ve got to get our fiscal house in order first. After that, we can think about big ticket non-defense programs again.

In 2007, the US spent 16.143 billion on NASA, and 652.5 billion on the military. NASA is not, and never was, a “big ticket” program. We spend more than 40 times NASA’s budget on the military, and nearly 100 times NASA’s budget on social programs. To reference NASA as a significant contributor to the debt is laughably ignorant. The ROI of NASA spending in terms of technological advancement (not to mention jobs), however, is huge.

It’s a shame this argument keeps getting trotted out by extremists, given it has so little basis in reality.