My belief has always been that part of the NASA budgetary purpose was to keep a vibrant aerospace industry – “corporate welfare” is the charged term but there were military/prestige/scientific reasons to preserve the capability. This provided jobs and a voting constituency in Congress to continue NASA funding. There are also those, like many of us on the board, who would fund NASA because we believe in it ideologically (but that can be a harder sell).
In these debates there is always the point raised that NASA is sucking up vital scientific dollars that would be spent elsewhere. The point is usually that the opportunity cost of funding NASA Manned Space flight is not funding some other project. (Usually the example used is schools – sometimes it is other NASA Science)
Is that true? If NASA’s $16B budget were halved (About 52% is spent on the Shuttle and ISS – roughly what the Moon-Mars Initiative would eat) and the 42% left were to focus was on LEO earth observation and other weather satellites, Hubble, research, education and 2ish probes a decade to other planets – would the money “saved” be poured into hard science? Be kept in NASA? Would it be used to fund healthcare or other social programs? Or (my cards on the table what I think) would the money not be spent at all and instead of a ~$314 billion dollar yearly deficit we’d have a ~$306 billion dollar one.
I think really what we have is a choice of doing Moon-Mars-Manned or doing nothing with that money just because of the constituencies and politics involved in Congressional appropriations– what do you think?
You can thank me for constantly bringing up the fact that the entire NASA budget amounts to a rounding error in other major parts of the federal budget. It’s a particular bugaboo of mine.
Congress regularly appropriates amounts for other stuff that is many times the NASA budget. The money would simply disappear, IMHO.
Take this for example. Planned outlays for education in FY2007 are already four times the planned outlays for NASA. While that’s not as extreme a dsicrepancy as, say, defense, or HHS, it’s not as though the NASA budget would triple the money for schools.
I’m not going to argue with you that $8 billion isn’t a “rounding error” in the overall federal budget, but you can say the same thing about every single government program out there… except probably Social Security or Medicare.
It is, however, real money. It would be enough to fully fund No Child Left Behind, which a lot of people are more concerned about than going to Mars. I’m just sayin’.
However, I have no doubt that if manned space flight were eliminated, there would be other programs to take its place in the NASA budget. The aerospace industry would certainly come up with some new kind of expensive technology that would keep them from laying off people and fill a space-related need that none of us conceived as being so important and so overlooked.
NASA gets about $16 billion per year. The Pentagon spends about $6 billion per month on Iraq. So eliminating NASA’s yearly allocation would buy less than 3 months of warfare and occupation in Iraq. I think NASA gives the taxpayer a much greater return on his money than does the Pentagon. All eliminating its budget would do would be to make a small dent in the deficit.
Bush has increased the budget of the Dept of Education by more than twice NASA’s entire budget since he’s been in office. Anyone see a big return on the money there? Are kids much better educated? Are test scores going through the roof?
Frankly, a reinvigorated manned space program has more value for education than probably the entire Department of Education. How many children were inspired to work harder and go into the hard sciences in the 70’s because of Apollo? Every little boy wanted to be an astronaut. So they studied science and math and worked harder in school.
A manned space program is good for a nation’s psyche. It inspires children, gives us a common achievement to share, and makes us think a bit more beyond ourselves. As far as government programs go, you won’t find anywhere near the bang for the buck anywhere else.
Oh, come now. You can’t seriously believe that the Apollo missions created some sort of countable increase in Americans between the ages of 35 and 45 who are well-trained in math and science, or that the end of the moon missions had any effect on same. A look at the increases of H1B visas issued to bring in smart people from overseas to cope with national deficiencies in the sciences ought to put that to rest pretty quickly, otherwise I’ll have to ask for a cite for what really sounds like nostalgic nonsense.
I can easily beleive it as well. There is no better way to inspire future engineers and scientists than some really cool, high-profile endeavour that highlights the achievements of what these people can do. To doubt that is also to doubt that no marketing and public images really matter and I find it hard to believe someone could believe that.
“A look at the increases of H1B visas issued to bring in smart people from overseas to cope with national deficiencies in the sciences ought to put that to rest pretty quickly”
The Apollo program ended over 30 years ago. The people coming in from overseas aren’t to replace the 35-45 year-olds. They’re coming to replace the 25-35 year-olds that we can’t find enough of. Where I work, my estimate (not a cite, I know) that over half of the engineers are due to retire in the next ten years.
Cite (from http://www.rpi.edu/homepage/quietcrisis/ps101103-swe.html):
“A recent study by the U.S. General Accounting Office reveals that fully 15 percent of NASA’s current scientific and engineering staff is already eligible to retire. During the next five years, that number will increase to 25 percent. NASA Administrator, Sean O’Keefe, testified before the Congress earlier this year that his agency’s scientists and engineers, aged 60 and older, outnumber those aged 30 and younger by a factor of nearly three to one.”
From same source: “The Glenn Commission — known formally as The National Commission on Mathematics and Science Teaching for the 21st Century, and chaired by former Astronaut and Senator John Glenn — identified an impending demographic shift in which two-thirds of the nation’s mathematics and science teaching force will retire by 2010.”
I think it’s pretty snarky to imply that I won’t change my mind with a good cite. This is, after all, a question that should have an answer. Show me the facts and I will believe it.
The issue of retirements isn’t relevent: that’s a question of demographics, and it doesn’t show whether fewer people studied science before Apollo, greater numbers in the aftereffect of Apollo, and fewer again once Apollo was over. The issue of retirements at NASA strikes me as not any substantially different than the Baby Boomer retirement that will affect dozens of other businesses, government agencies, and Social Security.
If I remember correctly, the Apollo missions had quite an impact on the advancement of semiconductor science in the 1960s? I would imagine that continued investment in space missions also pays dividends for future generations. Kinda like car companies involvement in F1 racing. (Perhaps NASCAR too if you want a car that only turns left. )
)