Is NASA a waste of $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$?

Question

NASA receives approximately $14 billion annually from Congress despite their costly mishaps, failures & cost overruns. Each Space Shuttle launch costs approximately $600 million. As of yesterday, the national debt is up to $8,504,680,145,498.58 ( that's $8 billion +). Do you think that the tax-payers money could be better spent? Or do you think NASA is so important and beneficial it doesn't matter how much money they need to fulfill their curiosities?

correction thanks to "outbaksean":
the national debt is at $8 trillion +, not billion
i was thinking trillion but typed billion, you know how that goes sometimes
thanks sean

response to "gypsy": actually, NASA has a larger budget than nearly all of the world's civilian space agencies combined

response to mrjeffy123: in addition to accidents, i mentioned cost overruns & failures which include: approx $1B+ was spent on the the X-33 rocket which was supposed to replace the current space shuttle; the X-33 costs 30 times less to launch than the space shuttle, but the X-33 involved a lot of "high risk" technologies that were unproven; NASA ran out of $ for the project & the contractor spent more than it initially committed & the project is still not completed nearly 10 years later.
In addition, they had 2 failed Mars missions in 1999 and have had various cost overruns

i can't choose a best answer, so i'll leave that up to voters.

Answer 1

no

Answer 2

First of all, the US National debt is not 8.5 + billion, it is 8.5+ TRILLION....1000 times as much.

Secondly, for the most part, NASA has a good success record (after getting past the '50s). NASA has only had 3 accidents which cost the lives of the astronauts (Apollo 1, Challenger, Columbia), meanwhile they continue to launch numerous manned and unmanned missions which benefit mankind with their scientific merits.

The NASA budget is tiny compared to other government expenditures. Defense is expensive, given that we (the US) are at war....missiles and bombs don't come cheap. But even putting defense aside, by far, the largest single government expenditure is mandatory spending.....things like Social Security, Welfare, payment on the debt, ....

Also, each shuttle launch is not a big waste of money. Right now, the priority of NASA and the space shuttle is completing the International Space Station (ISS). Some of the parts of the ISS are too big / massive for other space agencies to take into orbit, only the shuttle can handle them, the world is counting on us to do our part. Also, the ISS is an important cooperative, peaceful, effort between the US and many other nations...it has political importance as well as scientific.

Answer 3

The total U.S. defence budget is $257 billion per year. I don't think $14 billion of that going to NASA is hurting the country, and I don't think shaving $14 billion per year off the budget is going to correct an 8 trillion dollar debt that has nothing at all to do with NASA.

Answer 4

Nasa is needed. We cant just sit and stagnate when it comes to technology advancements.

One major thing to remember when you are crunching numbers on the Nasa budget. Where do you think that the money goes? All the billions of dollars you are worrying about is going to workers, contractors, suppliers etc. That money goes into the economy. The workers spend the money on houses, cars, food.

That money doesn't just vanish. It gets spent in our communities.

Answer 5

They are certainly not a waste of money. In fact they don't have near the annual budget that others do & yet they still make giant strides in their work. And their work benefits us every day, even if we don't realize it.

I'd suggest you do a little more research about NASA & other agencies, before asking if they're only there to fulfill their curiosities.

Answer 6

Because of 1950DA, Apophis, and those yet undiscovered, the SETI project, i doubt whether we're giving anough money to NASA. Most scientists believe we'll need at least 10 years advanced warning to initiate interdiction of a planet destroying asteroid, in order to deflect its collision with earth.

SETI may not be a high priority, but extinction level events should be a high priority...but that's just me.

Answer 7

Which NASA? I'm all for parts of it, but not a fan of other bits.

I think NASA rocks with a wide range of research - scramjet engine technology for example. I think they run an innovative deep space exploration program, and I want to see more of that. And they do a lot of good research in dozens of different fields connected with aerospace and the environment.

But I am not a fan of what our 'manned space program' (ie Shuttle and now ISS) has turned into: a mutually satisfactory splitting of taxpayer money among NASA administration, Big Aerospace and certain congression districts, which has along the way, managed to suppress our advancement to any goal worthy of manned spaceflight.

What goals? Build solar power satellites & power civilization... bring in abundant minerals from the asteroid belt so we don't have to tear up Earth for them. And with a fraction of the revenues from these activities, explore the Solar System. I can't overstate how much I want to see us do these things.

To do this, we'd need reliable, economic access to space. The Shuttle does not cut it, and never was intended to cut it - but most damningly, it has been NASA's evident outlook that has made the job far harder.

Why?

NASA is a space access monopoly. NASA is actually descended from the "NACA" - the National Advisory Council on Aeronautics. This US govt agency's mission was established in 1913 (I think) and its purpose was to do basic research in aeronautics - and because it did, hundreds of American companies were able to build airplanes based on the data it published.

A *terrific* success story of how government spending could be done to establish an entirely new industry - and increase tax revenue in the long term.

While NASA certainly has brought copious research into the public domain, what hasn't been much remarked on is how little information we actually get on making spaceflight cheaper.

Remember the VentureStar? This sexy shuttle replacement was supposed to bring launch costs down. A *billion dollars* was spent on researching it - but don't be fooled. It failed, in my opinion, because NASA believed that bringing launch costs down required new technology. So they loaded the poor thing with every new technology they could think of.

The result: surprise, there are delays getting things like linear aerospike engines and metallic heatshield tech to work, much less work together.

What about what they learned in the process? They did learn a lot that was valuable... but...

...it's all locked up in the patents of Lockheed-Martin. Government money, but no government data. Pardon me while I curse. &(#@(!&*!!!

The old NACA's research is behind practically every part of every plane you or I have ever flown in; but the space entreprenuers now, like Burt Rutan, have to do their own research, by and large, from the ground up.

What our country needs is more actual flight data. We need to try new designs and see if they work. The DC-XA, remember that? The original plan was to build a near-space, scaled-up version, and get actual flight performance data from it.

Now: recently NASA did award $500 million to SpaceX and Kistler so they could develop unmanned ISS support capacity. Great!

This is just a demonstration budget. There's no commercial contract here yet, but what they hey. It's a start.

This COTS (Commercial Orbital Transportation Services) is a step in the right direction, but remember: NASA is facing a significant budget crunch, both with Bush's "Vision for Space Exploration" and in its obligation to supply & service the ISS.

I think that it was forced to turn to this expedient, so it could take the pressure off of its budget down the road. Up until now, NASA's been the only game in town, and until recently was perfectly happy to keep it this way.

Maybe now, we'll have a chance. If we're to be a manufacturing, energy producing nation again, space would be a terrific place for it.

Answer 8

At some point, humans will have to leave planet Earth. Wether it is because we see an unstoppable asteroid heading our way, just too many people, a need to find more metal resources to mine, or because the Sun will eventually engulf the Earth. It is better to start learning about how to explore and survive in space now, than it is to wait until the need is imminant.

Answer 9

NASA, at times throughout its history, has returned the money placed in it out 25 fold. Due to varouis inventions that has came along.

If you want to find a waste of money, check out the War in Iraq.

Answer 10

No, without astronauts searching planets in our universe, where will be when the Earth is over populated? Also the fact that one day we may find some other life form sounds very exciting to me.

Answer 11

nasa is horribly underfunded and deserves more money then anything other then national security. also thats not $8 billion + thats $8 trillion +