People Believe NASA Funded As Well As US Military

QuantumG writes "An essay on the Space Review site is reporting that a just-completed study indicates the average citizen has no idea how much funding NASA gets. Respondents generally estimated NASA's allocation of the national budget to be approximately 24% (it's actually closer to 0.58%) and the Department of Defense budget to be approximately 33% (it's actually closer to 21%). In other words, respondents believed NASA's budget approaches that of the Department of Defense, which receives almost 38 times more money. Once informed of the actual allocations, they were almost uniformly surprised. One of the more vocal participants exclaimed, 'No wonder we haven't gone anywhere!'"

Re:Iraq War

[ozmanjusri]

the US could have funded a national health service.

It could have funded a a bit more than that.

There's a nice funding comparison chart that puts some perspective on it here [cosmicvariance.com]

Federal budget vs. GDP

[FleaPlus]

Those are interesting figures, but I'd argue that the important figure (besides the straight-out money amounts) isn't NASA/defense spending as a portion of the federal budget, but rather how they compare as a percentage of GDP (gross domestic product). For FY 2006, the federal budget was 18.4% of total GDP, meaning that NASA was 0.107% of GDP and defense spending was 3.86% of GDP. Despite this, NASA still spends more on spaceflight and space science than the rest of the world combined.

That said, even though NASA could probably use more funding, misallocation of resources is still a huge problem. I agree heartily with this recent comment by Clark Lindsay over at RLV News:

http://hobbyspace.com/nucleus/?itemid=4926 [hobbyspace.com]

Keith Cowing responds to Mike Griffin's claim that he did not cause the VSE budget problems: Mike Griffin on VSE Woes: "I did not put us into this position" - NASA Watch - Nov.15.07

        You most certainly did get the agency into the predicament that it is in today. Instead of going off and reinventing the wheel (Ares 1) you could have bought EELVs off the shelf from a ULA catalog and focused only on CEV development. You forced a rigid and recycled architecture upon the agency - one that requires large monolithic launchers - when in fact you could have come up with one that used existing launchers or straightforward derivations thereof.

I can certainly support that scolding. I think Ares 1 is a disaster and Ares V is a bad dream. However, rather than NASA choosing an EELV outright, I would have preferred a Super-COTS competition in 2006 that went something like the following:
* A budget of two or three billion dollars for Phase 1
* As with COTS, the systems proposed should be capable of supplying a minimum amount cargo to the ISS per year but be upgradable to crew operations no later than 2011.
* The ULA firms would be invited to enter their proposals along with the entrepreneurial rocket firms
* Four commercial launcher proposals would be selected for Phase 1
* The entrants would decide for themselves whether a capsule or lifting body or whatever is the most cost effective system for cargo/crew delivery.
* Assuming at least two firms successfully fulfilled Phase 1, the two with the lowest cost/kg to the ISS would each be guaranteed half of all NASA launches to LEO in, say, the period 2010-2015.
* NASA would focus on lunar exploration systems that would work within the capabilities of the COTS transports. (This would no doubt involve a more modular approach than is currently envisioned.)

Too late now, of course, to run such a COTS competition. It's possible, though, that Lockheed-Martin has used the current studies with Bigelow and SpaceDev to prepare a proposal for NASA launch services just in case the next administration cancels Ares 1. On the other hand, if the Falcon 9 initial flights go well, there will be no need for such alternatives.

Re:Military budget

[edwardpickman]

Part of it is we provide protection for other countries. An example is Japan. Japan spends very little of their budget on defense but we provide military protection. It began over WW II and not wanting Japan to maintain a sizeable military but we inherited a lot of the expense, Japan provides part of the funding. Similar with the Panama Canal. There are lots of examples including bases in Europe. Then there are things like arms subsidies for countries like Israel, but I'm not sure which budget those fall under. Most of the money really doesn't go for defense of our shores so much as our involvement worldwide. And yes a large number of us would love to see the military come home and stay there but that's not likely to happen anytime soon. It's the downside of democracy there's always going to be a percentage that disagree with the majority. We just spent nearly a trillion dollars, and counting, fighting what started out as a few hundred to a few thousand people. It would have been cheaper and saved lives giving each terrorist ten million and send them to Vegas. A few months of gambling and brothel hopping would have taught them the error of their ways.

Re:Military budget

[meringuoid]

The UN doesn't send troops anywhere unless the US volunteers to spend the vast majority of them.

Why must you turn Slashdot into a house of lies?

Current UN peacekeeping operations [wikipedia.org].

MINURCAT: all European, half of them French.
MONUC: a wide variety of nationalities, none American; largest contingent is from Pakistan.
UNOCI: troops principally from Bangladesh, Bénin, France, Ghana, Jordan, Morocco, Niger, Pakistan, Sénégal and Togo.
UNMEE: 1,500 of 3,300 troops are from India.
UNMIL: various nationalities, none American.
UNMIS: again many nations, none American.
UNAMID: not in Darfur yet, but among the nations stating that they are likely to participate you will not find the USA.
MINURSO: many nations, none American.
MINUSTAH: principally Brazilian, with other South American nations providing the rest.
UNMOGIP: no Americans.
UNMIT: no Americans [un.org] though Wikipedia does list the US; maybe there was one guy who's since gone home.
UNFICYP: no Americans, troops from many nations led by Argentina.
UNOMIG: this is the first one I've found where there ARE Americans, though the bulk of the force seems to be Russian.
UNMIK: substantial American presence, 3,000 of the 16,000 troops in Kosovo. At the height of the operation the US provided 7,000 of 50,000, just ahead of Germany on 6,000 and equal to France, but well behind Britain's 19,000.
UNDOF: Austria, Canada, India, Japan, Nepal, Poland, and Slovakia.
UNIFIL: no Americans, largest contingents from France, Germany and Italy. UNTSO: has some Americans, can't find a breakdown by nationality, but the total strength of the force is 150.

So, er, yes. Thank you, America, for your great contribution to UN peacekeeping operations worldwide. Now we see why that colossal defence budget of yours is good and necessary.

Re:At this point, you are correct

[Anonymous Coward]

I think you mean every president and congress in the last 3 decades has loved deficit spending.

Also, the budget deficit has decreased dramatically under GWB. If you're going to make an argument you should at least get the facts straight first (assuming you care about facts...)

Re:Military budget

[Teancum]

Also, NASA is a PR friendly way to fund ballistics research.

You might have made a very well reasoned argument along that line back in the 1950's when NASA was first created, and certainly there have been some refinements of launch technology that have been transfered from NASA to the U.S. Air Force (who runs the actual ballistic missile program in the USA).

But who needs a ballistic nuclear missile to make the journey to Saturn? Or Pluto?

I just don't buy this common argument, and it has very little to do with reality or what NASA actually gets involved with.

The bulk of NASA spending is currently on maintaining the current "army" of workers who service the Space Shuttle, and that is one of the many reasons for the current debacle that surrounds the Ares I & Ares V programs. NASA is more a pork barrel program (starting with Lyndon Johnson back in the 1960's) to "earmark" technical research centers throughout the USA, and a jobs program for PhDs in America.

Because these individuals with PhDs are pretty bright, and they do come up with some cool stuff from time to time, it can be argued in some ways that there is a huge benefit, both economically and politically to have people employed this way. It is also nice to know that somebody in the federal government is doing the way far out "what if?" thinking about what the future of the USA might be like 100 or 300 years from now.

I just don't see how Ares I development is going to help create a new generation of ballistic missiles for the Air Force.

Re:I'm reminded of what Ike said:

[Mork29]

The military has become a tool for delivering profits to Lockheed Martin and Boeing and other conglomerates under the auspice of national security.
Is there another company better suited for designing aircraft and other military technolgies? If so, why aren't they bidding on more military contracts?

The Crusader artillery project, finally canceled in 2002 after $11 billion was spent on it. Donald Rumsfeld said it wasn't mobile enough for the 21st century.
Imagine the first pioneers in computing. To 99% of Americans, I'm sure it sounded impossible/stupid/wasteful/etc.. Guess who poured R&D money into computing? Guess who still does? Yes, several military projects have been nothing but giant sinks. They failed. The produced nothing. Can you show me a research institution that hasn't had a failed project? Yes, these failures have big dollar costs, but the successes that they have are immeasurably succesful.
Do you have any idea how much money the military has spent on developing medical technology and techniques? When we go to war, demand for this tech only increases...

The Air Force and Navy have F-15s, F-16s, and F-18s. But they're building the F-22 and some F-35 joint strike aircraft, too? At what point is enough enough?
The F-15 was designed in the 70s. Yes, it's time to replace it if we're going to stay #1. I firmly believe that if you don't have the best airforce in a major war, you loose. I like a my countries military setting itself up for success by being the best. I'm sure if you were the pilot in one of these aircraft, or a Soldier on the ground being supported by these aircraft, you'd agree. Oh, and did you here about just the other day when an F-15 fell out of the sky? Have you heard about the numerous times that "maximum flight hours" for these craft have been extended because nobody expected them to still be in service?

And this doesn't even take into account that such a fearsome military is all too often misused in wars of choice like Vietnam and Iraq. So we spend all of this money to build a huge military, then spend even more money to misuse it...without ever having declared war.
What the military is used for, and how big its budget is are to different subjects. Always try to emphasize one point when making an argument and don't throw in a random tangent.

NSF even worse

[belthize]

NSF entire budget in FY07 was ~37% of NASA's budget (16B vs 5.9B). Of that 5.9B
$215M went to astronomy. ~56% of that $215M went to facilities like NRAO, NAIC, Gemini and NOAO.

      NSF has a much better track record than NASA in terms of ROI it's just not as sexy.

      While I'd love to see NASA's budget increased I'd prefer to see NSF's increase.

http://www.nsf.gov/about/budget/fy2007/tables.jsp#tables [nsf.gov]

Belthize

Re:At this point, you are correct

[transami]

That depends on a lot of factors.

• Are they counting the GDP in the same way as they used to? (No.)
• What does the GDP consist of these days versus back then? (More financial services and less product manufacturing.)
• Who owns the debt? (We're well over 40% foreign investment now.)

You can't just compare one time to another without considering the differences. And don't forget that we were paid back a good sum from WWII nations for our war efforts (In fact, the final payment was just two years ago or so).

Re:Increasing wouldn't necessarily be good

[Anonymous Coward]

If NASA's budget was increased, it would probably be at the expense of education

This statement is indicative of the same ignorance of government spending that the study was trying to highlight. The US Federal government spends almost nothing on education, that having been deemed an expense best borne at more local levels. Your state pays the lions share of government contributions to university education and your county/city pays the lions share of government contributions to primary and secondary education. Most of us think that's the way it should be: it allows the residents of the school district, who pay the bills, a great deal of flexibility in exactly how and how much money is spent. If you involve the Feds in primary education, they're going to set sweeping policies that have to be applied equally in rural schools of 50 students and inner-city schools of 5000, and those policies will suck at the extremes. If you think NASA should be a higher priority than defense, tell your congresscritter you think we should forego a flight of 6 F-22s ($137M each or $800M together), a single Aegis destroyer ($1B each), or a single B-2 ($2.2B), and give the savings to NASA. One destroyer is 10% of NASA's $10B budget and would be a huge boon.

Seriously: it's your money, find out how the guy/gal you elected is making you spend it. Odds are, you'll find the highly publicized programs that you like but receive a pittance in comparison with programs you're not crazy about.

Re:Military budget

[cojsl]

The US pays the largest percentage of the peacekeeping budget at around 25%: http://www.state.gov/p/io/pkpg/ [state.gov] US personnel are active in 8 of the 17 peacekeeping operations, but actual US troop numbers were hard to find (or my search abilities were weak). This is further confused by the fact that the US is reluctant to place troops under direct UN control. Kosovo, for example, had US troops under NATO control, so though they were supporting the UN peacekeeping mission, they were not "UN peacekeeping troops" included in the UN's headcount

Re:Iraq War

[shbazjinkens]

With what has been spent on the Iraq war, the US could have funded a national health service.

Are you sure about that? Considering that the British NHS costs about $200 million a year, and America having five times the population, it would cost at least a trillion dollars a year, over twice the budget of the entire US military.

In response to you and the AC who responded to you, I did some searching. A NY Times article [nytimes.com] says the NHS costs Britain 30 billion (presumably in pounds) which equates to 61.5 billion US$. That means (assuming that the two countries are comparable per-capita) the USA could expect it to cost 307.5 billion US$ after the system settled, which is notably less than the USA military budget. This is assuming my source is correct, I don't have more time to find extra citations.

Re:Military budget

[Anonymous Coward]

> It's a program that's actually MAKING money right now, and the surplus, though it is used to finance debt (at interest) is not directly diverted to other programs, but is held out for future Social Security spending (which will, in fact, eventually exceed the program's income and deplete all of that banked-up money, if nothing is changed). It's essentially self-contained and untouchable.

Jesus tittyfucking Christ, where the fuck did you get your economics degree? Enron?

Nobody's arguing that the US government won't pay the "bonds" in the "trust fund". We're arguing that in order to pay those bonds and avoid default, the only two options are both equivalent economic catastrophes.

Social Security is like a negative-amortization option-ARM loan... on a product where you know the value of the house (taxpayer revenues) is going to go down, and the interest rate (reflecting your creditors' increasing skepticism on your ability to service the debt) goes up. The only way you can actually pay a $1M loan on a property worth $500K is to (a) raise your revenues by robbing $500K from your neighbor, or (b) counterfeit $500K of money.

Your bank will not let you (c) Write a check to yourself for $500K.

The difference is that when Joe Sixpack steals $500K from a bank, or prints $500K in his basement, he goes to jail. The government is trying to do (c) (the "treasury" "loans" "money" to the "trust fund") and it just doesn't work. It fools people who don't know accounting, but it's ultimately just an Enronesque way of saying (a) or (b).

The reason you don't see it in the private sector is people go to jail for pulling that shit. Would you invest in a bank that has this:

"Your estimated account balance is based on current management policy. Management has made changes to the policy in the past and can do so at any time. The policy governing account balances may change because, by 2040, the deposits invested will be enough to pay only about 74% of account balances."

...buried in the fine print as a disclaimer? NO! Because it's not a fucking bank, it's a fucking pyramid scheme. Go to any bank on the fucking planet, and ask any banker about that statement. Ask him to describe what sort of operation would make you such an offer.

So why the fuck do you trust an organization that says this...

"Your estimated benefits are based on current law. Congress has made changes to the law in the past and can do so at any time. The law governing benefit amounts may change because, by 2040, the payroll taxes collected will be enough to pay only about 74% of scheduled benefits."

...and it's not even the fine print. It's in bold text in the little "statement" the SS administration prints for you every fucking year. It's all over SSA.GOV, for fuck's sake What the figgety-fucking fuck is wrong with you?

When SS's trust fund is depleted, that expense will have to come from somewhere. The only places for that money to come from are:

a) General revenue. Raise taxes (and not just FICA taxes) on everyone to 60-70% of income.
b) Printing press. Catastrophically devalue the dollar in order to make sure everyone gets their $1000/month... even though it'll barely buy a pizza by that time.

A company tried that once. Loaning money to itself. Paying itself with the proceeds of its own bonds. You may have heard of it. It was called Enron. People wound up in jail for it.

Re:Don't be fooled ; military budget is far higher

[wes33]

Net Discretionary spending is not the same as the total budget. In fact, NDS is about 40% of the total budget. I think the original figure of 21% is base military as percent of total government expenditure. And by military they mean base military funding, not WoT stuff.

So there is no big disagreement really between your figures and the article figures ...

Re:The post may be wrong.

[everphilski]

Sounds about right. Middle class is in the 25ish% tax bracket, and most of us have mortgages and other things which reduce our tax liability.

Re:Military budget

[Anonymous Coward]

Personally I could never be happy about a military that "accidentally" murders innocents, spits on the grave by telling them it's their own fault, and then turns around and does it over and over again.

Reference 1 [washingtonpost.com]
Reference 2 [reuters.com]
Reference 3 [msn.com]

Most of these massacres aren't even covered by the major news providers. These are the exceptions.

Of course, it's the money men that actually make the decision to wage offensive (not defensive) wars: your "representatives" in government, the people who profit by waging war. You know, the people who have that special, god-like ability to determine the price of human life.

Re:At this point, you are correct

[Mspangler]

"The problem now is that we don't produce much in our factories, import massive amounts of energy from overseas, and our currency isn't valued as much on the international market."

The last point will eventually correct the first point. The overvalued dollar nearly destroyed the domestic industrial base because all those lower-valued currencies made it cheaper to build new factories overseas. That situation is rapidly going away. Capital is starting to flow into the country again. My employer is putting in multiple expansions that add up to about $1.1 billion. Now Singapore got the $4 billion expansion, but the tide is starting to turn.

The second point is the intractable one, but not as bad as it seems. The imports are in one sector, transportation. Fixing a structural problem in one sector is easier than trying to do it all at once.

As to the point that "Even if China completely floated the Yuan to a fair and free market value against the dollar their goods would still be cheaper" I'm not so sure. Their demand would soar as well if they weren't being systematically kept poor. And they are still building heavy infrastructure.

Did you know that their government will not allow Chinese steel to be used in high-pressure steam piping? There was a minor scandal where some company bought Chinese pipe, routed it Texas, stamped it Made in USA, and sent it back to China. Where it blew up under pressure killing 6. This won't last, eventually they will figure out how to make a good pipe, but if the dollar comes down we can still compete.

And it better. The '90's dream that we would close down all "that nasty polluting industry" and get rich off of software and media content has been shown to be pretty hollow.

Now, back to my Death to the Dollar dance....

Odd, but since WWII the key to economic prosperity is to drive down the value of your own currency. France, Germany, Japan, Taiwan, South Korea, China...(not sure about about the rupee) now it's the US's turn.

           

Re:At this point, you are correct

[Martin Blank]

Canada also has a national debt - about 40% of GDP as I understand.

According to NationMaster [nationmaster.com], the level of the US public debt is around the same level as that of Austria, France, Canada, Germany, and Portugal, around 65% of the GDP, give or take. These numbers are across different years, but are probably still accurate to within a reasonable degree.

Looking elsewhere, the deficit for FY2007 came in much smaller than predicted at $163 billion, about 1.2% of the GDP for the country. Comparing this to the deficits run by several European countries, such as France (2.5%), Germany (1.7%), and Austria (1.4%), it's not that bad (though it should be a mild surplus). The next year should prove interesting to watch, though, as various financial issues may hit tax revenues. We shall see.

Re:US military spending

[tddoog]

Military spending in the USA isn't even the #2 item in the federal budget today, and if the Pentagon were to be demolished, every member of the armed forces discharged, all of the bases closed... or in effect the Department of Defense eliminated from the federal budget, there would be virtually no impact on overall federal spending.

That is completely false. Of the discretionary budget of ~1 trillion. $717 billion goes to military/national security. The Department of Defense gets 481 billion directly with 145 billion allocated separately for the wars in Iraq/Afghanistan. Demolishing the pentagon would have a huge impact on the federal spending and would reduce by at least 480 billion, but it would throw us into a major recession because so many jobs rely in the military industrial complex.

The overall budget is approximately 2.9 trillion but Social Security(608 billion), medicare (386 billion) and medicaid (202 billion) are paid for by separate taxes and are not discretionary spending.

More on the budget http://www.thebudgetgraph.com/site/index.php?main_page=product_info&products_id=1 [thebudgetgraph.com]

You don't have to implement it that way...

[Goonie]

Here in Australia we have private and public health care systems coexisting - not perfectly, but reasonably well. If you want LASIK, cosmetic surgery, or your knee reconstruction done tomorrow rather than in a month's time, the private sector is happy to offer the service for a big enough fee.If not, our single-payer system, Medicare, covers you. You won't get a private room, and you might have to wait for elective surgery, but you'll get treated.

By the way, you have an excellent point about the artificially restricted supply of health services. The AMA and its equivalents around the world are the last of the guilds.

Re:Iraq War

[DavidTC]

Or, maybe they could take all the welfare projects, which has an even larger budget than the military, with many of the projects estimated to be over 50% fraud, and return all that money back to us, so that we can afford our own medical care.

WTF is this? A fucking contest? Gee, let's look at social services, which benefit everyone, and compare it military spending which benefits, let's admit it, absolutely no one. (At least not at this scale.)

I love the idea that these two things should be roughly equal, it's like a husband and wife arguing over their budget, with the husband talking about how the wife spends slightly more on food and bills than he spends on restoring his classic 57 Chevy, and maybe she should cut back some. Hey, dumbass, one of these things actually benefits citizens of this country, and the other does not. (In fact, the other results in their deaths, which is where the analogy breaks down.)

And, lastly, while 'many of the welfare projects' may be over 50% fraud, many of the projects are also microscopic, so I suspect that statistic was stated exactly that way for a reason. There could be dozens of tiny projects totaled two billion dollars that were 50% fraud, which would make the overall fraud roughly, oh, 0.3% of social services.

The actual large projects, social security and medicare, do not have anywhere near 50% fraud. Social security has almost no fraud whatsoever, and it's actually 'ahead' in the fraud department with the number of people who pay social security taxes to fake social security numbers. (Almost all fraud in SS there is people continuing to collect checks to the deceased, so there's almost no organized large-scale fraud, just one person collecting one check they shouldn't.) Unemployment and general welfare might have as much as 10% fraud, or as little as 2%, it depends on who you ask, but it's nowhere near 50%. Medicare doesn't have a lot of fraud, unless you include insurance companies ripping people off using Medical Part D. Sometimes doctors set up schemes, but they set those up with normal insurance companies too, or even just rip people off directly. The Federal government has no control over Medicaid distribution, so if your state has large amounts of fraud, bother them. Those programs make up more than 90% of all welfare, and, as you can see, there's nowhere near 50% fraud.

'Many of X have a 50% level of something' is a classic way to lie with statistics, even assuming it's true and you didn't pull it out of your ass. The fact you threw 'estimated' in there to try to vague it up actually just made you factually wrong, as I suspect no programs are estimated by anyone with credibility to be that wasteful. You'd have been better off leaving that word out and just asserting they were that wasteful, and then when I showed up with estimated that said they weren't, you could say the estimates were wrong.