NASA had big plans back then

Time has been re-running articles from the 60’s and 70’s and this one caught my eye.

It caught my eye because I’m a big proponent of space exploration. Put it this way, if we don’t get off this planet and out of this solar system in the next 5 billion or so years, the human race will be erased when our sun goes into its red giant phase.

Now, here’s what really gets me. The U.S GDP for 2006 (GNP==GDP) was $12.49 Trillion dollars. Of that, $500,000,000,000 goes to military expenditures. Yes, five hundred billion dollars a year. That works out to about 4% of GDP. In 1970 NASA asked for .5% to 1% of the GDP. The GDP was $900 billion, so NASA wanted $4,500,000,000 to $9,000,000,000. If we were to give NASA that 1% today they’d have $124,900,000,000 – $124.9 Billion dollars.

Instead they’ll get a paltry $10 billion for FY2008. That extends out to $15 billion in 2011 or so. But still, that’s only 8% of what they should get according to what they asked for in the 70’s.

Personally I’d like to see about $250 billion lopped off the military budget and transfered into our space program, health care, and education. I think there’d be more than enough to go around and we’d be getting to Mars and beyond that much faster.

Instead we get to be witness to the debacle that Iraq has become. All in all, I’d say we’re not getting our dollars worth for what we put in for federal taxes.

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