NASA FUNDING STEPHEN PASQURELLO
Every year billions upon billions of taxpayers’ dollars are invested into NASA, and the overall benefits of the organization are not apparent to the average person. The immense masses of money that are consumed by NASA don’t seem to be justified by their findings and such discoveries are not practical to our lives on earth, nor does it improve our lives. The priorities of the government can be questioned when over ten billion dollars are poured into NASA’s funding each year while poverty and crime overwhelm the country and the nation’s massive debt increases by the second. Therefore it is imperative that the government puts into perspective what is really important and to decrease the budget that NASA receives as the needs of the country increase.
17,318,000,000. That is the number of dollars that NASA will receive this year and this is nothing out of the ordinary. In the past ten years alone, NASA has collected over one hundred and sixty four billion dollars. In the fifty years of existence, NASA has embarked on many different missions and projects, two of the most famous being the Space Station and the International Space Station. Combined, the two huge projects are funded by 42% of NASA’s overall budget. Since these two projects take up the bulk of the budget they are the most susceptible to criticism and for good reason. The projects are impractical and at too high a risk. Funding for the project can be considered “financially reckless” when the costs come out to $380 per American and the chances that the station will be damaged by existing satellites or other air born objects is 1 in 5. There is no foreseen use for humans to live in space, so why does NASA need to spend so much money on finding out if we are able to. Also just recently, the space shuttle the Discovery lost a piece of foam off of its fuel tank just after leaving Earth’s atmosphere but if the “shuttle was deeper in Earth's atmosphere, the chunk could have hit the orbiter with potentially catastrophic results.” This is one example where NASA messed up but got lucky and lives were not lost.
“Some scientists question why NASA has devoted so much time and energy to engineering projects to put humans in space. Manned space travel may be inspiring, opponents say, but it is largely impractical. The costs of outfitting a ship or station so that it can safely support humans are immense, and the risk of losing lives in space will always remain. Many experts believe that NASA's focus should be unmanned missions that, due to increasingly more sophisticated technology, can achieve and transmit important scientific results. They contend that NASA could develop technology to perform in space as well or better than humans, and at a much lower cost.” (NASA)
NASA has put an enormous amount of time, energy, and money into producing projects like the Space Station and International Space Station, the bulk of which goes into making sure that the astronauts can survive in space. The costs to engineer unmanned missions are considerable smaller, obviously provoke no deaths, can produce more, and more accurate results and can achieve equal or more than humans while in space.
6.04 billion, about 1/3 of NASA’s budget, is the amount that the FBI received in 2007 to protect our country. Crime in the country and attacks against the U.S. have proven to be a large problem in today’s world and the funds that the FBI gets to prevent these sorts of things are trumped by NASA’s. NASA has been asked by the government to plan more practical, less expensive projects and to cut staff by a small portion but they have failed to do so, stating that they would not be able to operate with a smaller annual budget and a smaller work force. They also have been asked to produce projects that will show more immediate effects rather than others that could take years to show any important information but they continue to demand large sums of money each year to pursue every idea under the sun. It is the responsibility of the government to protect its people in a way to make sure that the society benefits in some way from the taxes they spend. As of now the government fails to do that, considering that NASA does not affect the common, everyday people that make up our community and country.
As of today, April 21, 2008, the national debt of the United States stands at a tremendous $9,377,241,791,018 and since September 29, 2006 it has risen 1.53 billion dollars each day. It is an undisputable fact that this is a problem and it needs to be solved or it will only get worse. The only way for this problem to be solved is for the government to take a page out of its own book and conserve money to pay it off little by little. This will not be an instant solution but it will reduce the debt and eventual, in the very distant future will be able to be at a reasonable and maintainable amount. The reality is that if NASA was completely eliminated and the money they got was used to pay off the debt it would take over 500 years. (Assuming that they would save about 17 billion a year) The other truth is that NASA does not need that much money to operate, it can survive on a lot less than it claims to require.
Is the money that the government invests in NASA all be worth it? The fact that we can find out how many stars there are in the universe or if a plant grew on Mars a million years ago is not practical information that can be applied to our lives on earth. The effects or benefits, if any, are not apparent and do not help the world, as a whole strive to be a better, more advanced population. If the government took action to reduce the amount of money that NASA receives each year they could make a significant impact on our country. By redirecting this large sum of money, the government could make real changes by the means of relieving the harshness or poverty in America, lessen the intensity of crime, and slowly pay off the country’s steadily increasing national debt. It is not a question of if NASA can spend the money giving to them it’s, isn’t there more important things the money could be used for. I think NASA can spare some change.

BIBLIOGRAPHY
Hall, Ed. U.S. National Debt Clock. 22 April 2008. 21 Apr 2008 .
"Poverty:2006 Highlights." U.S. Census Bureau, Housing and Household Economic Statistics Division . 21 Apr 2008 .
"NASA Funding." Issues & Controversies On File 15 Feb. 2005. Issues & Controversies. Facts On File News Services. 31 Mar. 2008 .
"Space Station." Wikipedia. 2008. Free Software Foundation. 21 Apr 2008 .