17,318,000,000. That’s a big number. But what if I put this in front of it? That changes everything. This is the amount of money that the National Aeronautics and Space Administration received this year from the government. That’s enough money to buy everyone in Middlesex County a Ferrari, purchase every NBA basketball team, or give every single person in Metuchen over a million dollars each. That a lot of cash. And NASA gets it by the truck load every single year. In the past 10 years alone, NASA has collected over 164 billion dollars. In their 50 year existence, it amounts to over 400 billion.
So what are they doing with all this money?
What does an organization that doesn’t help to fight crime or reduce poverty do with all that money?
What does an organization that doesn’t feed the hungry or shelter the homeless do with all that money?
What does an organization that doesn’t improve education do with all that money?
Well, I’ll tell you.
NASA has created something that you’ve all probably have seen on infomercials. It’s called Termperpedic. It’s a bed.
They have developed a revolutionary, breakthrough space suit that you can……… go to the bathroom in.
They even have created a state of the art… pen that can write in space. It cost over a million dollars to develop. Russia just uses a pencil.
So why would NASA make a bed, a porter potty space suit and an anti-gravity pen? It sounds like they have a lot of money to burn.
Some of the more obvious things that NASA invests its money in are two largest and most famous of the NASA projects. They are the Space Station and the International Space Station. 42% of their entire budget goes to funding these two projects. It is apparent that NASA puts an enormous amount of time energy and money into these projects, the bulk of which goes to making sure the astronauts can survive in space. The costs to engineer unmanned missions are considerably smaller, obviously provoke no deaths, can produce more and more accurate results, and can achieve equal or more than humans while in space.
So why do they continue to conduct manned missions?
Your guess is as good as mine.
So is the money that the government invests in NASA worth it?
I say No.
The fact that we can find out the number of 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. If the government took action to reduce the amount of money that NASA received annually, that extra money can be used for more important things in our country.
17 billion is a big number. I thing NASA can spare some change.