But when you are gushing $4+ billion a month, everything else has to be cut.
What they are giving NASA over the next five years, will be spent in just April+May in Afghanistan and Iraq.
If they wanted to fund NASA the war would not matter.
We stopped going to the moon at the same time that we withdrew from Vietnam.
The only thing that correlates with the end of any interesting manned space program is the growth of government entitlements.
Social Security and Medicaid suck up FAR more of the federal budget than the Department of Defense does.
This is false. Actually, it's the other way around. See here:
USA currently borrows that much per MONTH (mostly from China).
Vietnam was a bargain basement deal compared to current wars.
Also remember that in our "modern" wars, far fewer soliders die, instead they get lifelong permanent disabilities requiring super-dooper expensive care, and since they are teenagers or in their twenties, we have to fund their care for 50+ years instead of just paying for a funeral.
So there are massive hidden costs to war.
See this:http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/1/1a/NASA_budget_li...
See that nonexistent budget slide that happened when the war started? Oh, excuse me, what we actually saw was almost $5 Billion in additional spending.
Right, if only we weren't fighting a war.
It would probably not be a good thing to "give NASA a massive budget". It would prove politically unsustainable, and then it would be cut back down. The resulting turmoil is not usually worth it.