Comment by tikhonj
6 days ago
Based on some rough numbers, NASA's budget (around $24B) would be <4% of the US's total spending on entertainment, with a pretty great return in research, engineering and education to boot.
I also looked up the NSF's 2024 budget, which, at $9B, was much lower than I expected.
NASA does both manned and unmanned stuff. Don't conflate those when you are looking at returns.
Look at this joke of a list https://www.nasa.gov/missions/station/20-breakthroughs-from-... for an illustration. And those were the 20 best things they could come up with.
There are actually a lot of really interesting discoveries on that list. I haven't thought deeply about whether it represents value for money, but I would say that that is anything but "a joke of a list."
And 'Stimulating the low-Earth orbit economy' is a joke. Spending money not as a means to an end, but as the end in itself?
Apart from the research into the effects of microgravity on humans, pretty much everything else could have been done cheaper and better without humans.
Or take this example:
> Deployment of CubeSats from station: CubeSats are one of the smallest types of satellites and provide a cheaper way to perform science and technology demonstrations in space. More than 250 CubeSats have now been deployed from the space station, jumpstarting research and satellite companies.
Cubesats are great! But you don't exactly need a manned space station to deploy them. Similar with many other 'achievements' like the 'Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer'.
See also how they don't mention any actual impact. Only stuff like "This achievement may provide insight into fundamental laws of quantum mechanics."
And this is supposed to be the list of highlights. The best they have to offer.
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Also, it's NASA, so they can't come out and say "stopped soviet rocket technology and expertise from proliferating" which was a large motivator for the ISS.
> with a pretty great return in research, engineering and education to boot.
If a company could spend 24B in research they would probably produce a lot more things than NASA
Absolutely! Think of the many new ways to display advertising that are being neglected while we foolishly launch people and things into space.
Well, NASA itself is a good counterexample here:
NASA could do a lot more good science, if they didn't (have to) launch primates into space.
The track record of NASA sending stuff to space is pretty bleak
Google's R&D budget is like $60B. Make of that what you will.
Of course, that's partially a tax optimisation.