Americans greatly over-estimate NASA's actual budget

[LunarOrbit]

(I'm reposting this because I can't for the life of me find the post I made a couple of months ago... but it's a good article)

From: The Space Review

Americans in general have no idea what NASA’s “cost” is. In fact, most members of the public have no idea how much any government agency’s budget is. What we do know—and have recently documented—is that the public perception of NASA’s budget is grossly inflated relative to actual dollars. In a just-completed study, we asked respondents what percentage of the national budget is allocated to NASA and to the Department of Defense, the Department of Education, the Department of Agriculture, and the Department of Health and Human Services, among other agencies. NASA’s allocation, on average, was estimated to be approximately 24% of the national budget (the NASA allocation in 2007 was approximately 0.58% of the budget.) The next highest over-estimate was for the Department of Defense, which received approximately 21% of the budget in 2007 and was estimated on average to receive approximately 33%.

In other words, respondents believed NASA’s budget approaches that of the Department of Defense, which receives almost 38 times more money (see “Putting NASA’s budget in perspective”, The Space Review, July 2, 2007). Once people were informed of the actual allocations, they were almost uniformly surprised. Our favorite response came from one of the more vocal participants, who exclaimed, “No wonder we haven’t gone anywhere!”

See also: Putting NASA's budget into perspective

[snake river rufus]

0.58% Wow
As the kids on southpark say everytime Kenny gets killed,,,, "those ( you know where this is going)

[LunarOrbit]

Death by starvation. Imagine what NASA could do with a decent budget. Even during the Apollo days I don't think they accounted for more than 4% of the US budget.

[ijuin]

This begs the question of how so many people came to overestimate NASA's funding by a factor of more than THIRTY TIMES.

[Satanic Mechanic]

The Stages to Saturn book I am reading has the costs of all the launch vehicles, in that time's money, and the Apollo program was a bargain in my opinion.
The reason why people go after NASA is because you can actually see where the money is going as opposed to other government programs where the money goes right in the crapper.  Look how much was spent on the WTC replacement and nothing has been built yet.  I do not see people complaining much about how much the government spends on giving illegals benefits and that consumes a hell of a lot more than NASA does.  Probably with the amount of money we spend on illegals, we could easily go to Mars and build a resort there.

SM

[Bob B.]

I don't recall the facts and figures anymore, but I once saw a comparison of NASA's budget to spending within other govenment agencies and programs.  One of the comparisons, as I recall, was that NASA's entire budget is several times less than the amount of waste that occurs each year in the social security department.  (I'll try to look the article up when I get a chance.)

[LunarOrbit]

I've been debating this issue on a Facebook group. I pointed out that in 2007 Bill Gates alone had a net worth of $56 billion. I also pointed out that each B2 stealth bomber cost $2.2 billion (21 were built) and every Virginia class nuclear submarine costs $1.8 billion (3 have been built and 17 more are planned). I'm not sure how useful nuclear submarines are against Al-Qaeda.

If you divided up all of NASA's money and gave it to every American citizen everyone would get a whopping $56. Wow!

[madmax]

I dont' recall the exact details, but a recent FBI report claimed that something like 60% of the Medicare budget is lost to fraud each year. Since Medicare's budget is around 100 billion (I think), that's 60 billion lost to fraud, roughly 4 times NASA's entire budget.

Maybe Nasa should apply for Medicare?

[LunarOrbit]

This is the kind of reasoning the Facebook group members use:

"Why does our government spend BILLIONS of our dollars on shooting rockets into outer space when....."
- millions of people starve to death in the world every year?
- we could use that money to give all our citizens free healthcare?
- we could fund research for alternative fuel?
- we could give more funding to education!
or, the most practical yet:
- we have a freaking huge federal debt!!!!

My response:

- NASA creates jobs, ensuring that tens of thousands of people don't starve to death.
- Closing NASA would make available only $56/person per year for free health care.
- NASA has been researching alternative power sources like solar power and hydrogen fuel cells for decades.
- NASA is all about education, unless you're against teaching science.
- NASA is a minuscule part of the national budget, removing 0.58% from the budget isn't going to make a difference. And in the long run NASA helps the economy by providing good jobs (ie. jobs that pay more than minimum wage) and by creating spin-off technology.

By the way, here is the Facebook group:

http://www.facebook.com/wall.php?id=2208976715

You might have to have a Facebook account to read it.

[Bob B.]

I dont' recall the exact details, but a recent FBI report claimed that something like 60% of the Medicare budget is lost to fraud each year. Since Medicare's budget is around 100 billion (I think), that's 60 billion lost to fraud, roughly 4 times NASA's entire budget.

Now that you mention it, I think it was Medicare I was reading about, not Social Security.

[Satanic Mechanic]

Now that you mention it, I think it was Medicare I was reading about, not Social Security.

It is OK to say it Bob, Social Security is a waste.  The government pinches, borrows and steals that money.  I know when I retire, there will not be any social security money left.  I wish the government would allow us to opt out of and get an interest bearing retirement account or a Roth IRA to put money into.

SM

[Johno]

I've been debating this issue on a Facebook group. I pointed out that in 2007 Bill Gates alone had a net worth of $56 billion. I also pointed out that each B2 stealth bomber cost $2.2 billion (21 were built) and every Virginia class nuclear submarine costs $1.8 billion (3 have been built and 17 more are planned). I'm not sure how useful nuclear submarines are against Al-Qaeda.

Slightly off topic, but it illustrates the point brilliantly.  The B-2 is an excellent example of how you can get the absolute LEAST out of research expenditure.  It's a textbook case of how not to do it.  To whit: Cancel the program after the vehicle is put into production.  When research and tooling-up costs are amortised, the actual production costs are minimal. Effectively, when you put it all together, subsequent aircraft would cost almost nothing by comparison.  But no, since they finished the program after the pre-production airframes were done, you ended up with the 21 most expensive aircraft ever; in real dollars I suspect they'll keep that record for some time.  But not forever - the US Congress has a track record of never learning. Witness the gradual exsanguination of the F-22 program.

The USA, by the way, is only the worst example.  Governments around the world and at all levels don't seem to know how to get any value for money.

Recently the New South Wales State Government[1] wound up a contract with a company that had, in 1998, contracted to provide integrated ticketing for all Sydney's public transport (in time for the 2000 Olympics).  It's now 2008, and the contract was terminated after the government had spent $120,000,000 (using the zeroes makes the impact greater!  ) on it.  And what did we get?  SWEET DIDDLY.  They announced last year that they were preparing for the initial trial, but that never happened . . .  Your tax dollars at work.

When you consider all this, NASA is remarkably efficient, even at their worst.

[1] In Australia, state governments are responsible for Health, Public Transport, Education, Roads and Town Planning.  It seems significant to me that currently in Sydney:
* Hospital emergency departments regularly go to "code red" status - that is, if you come in bleeding to death they simply have to send you elsewhere.  It's not unusual for non-critical patients to be airlifted to Brisbane - that's over 1000km!
* The public transport network was barely coping 20 years ago.  Now what little of the network there is services a small percentage of the city very badly.
* Schools have basically enough money for day to day expenses, no maintenance or new building of infrastructure.
* Basically no new road infrastructure except drastically overpriced private tollways (most of which go broke quickly owing to greedy and stupid investors buying into the project believing grossly inflated estimates of potential use).
* Complete chaos in the Town Planning department.  It's widely believed that questions over whether or not a particular project will be approved is decided by throwing a dart at a target saying "yes" and "no" and then answering whatever the hell they like.

[madmax]

Maybe Nasa should apply for Medicare?

Hmm, on second thought, NASA isn't old enough to apply for Medicare, but it will be in another 15 years or so.
Then it can put in claims for rocket fuel as an Rx. Medicare apparently doesn't check any claims, so it might just work.

[Johno]

"Reasoning" and "facebook" can be difficult words to put into the same sentence . .

[snake river rufus]

Hmmm I tried to post a reply similar to Johnos but only the quote came through. Anyway I deleted a poorly presented post.