12 days of the budget for the entire us military sounds like a pretty damn good amount of money. Quick lookup indicates that's something like 21 billion dollars.
The real question is, what makes the military 30 times more important than space exploration, given that we are leaving days of (relative) peace?
At this point, the military is (in-part) a jobs program, both blue collar and white.
Much of the jobs money is coming out of the war money, which is not included in that figure.
Surely we can create a better jobs program with that money?