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> That's a trillion dollars that could have been spent solving world hunger, poverty, disease, even income equality.

Alternate view: we could be a little less warmongery for a decade or so and easily fund the entirety of NASA's history 4-6 times over.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/study-...

We could solve all that stuff easily right now without cutting NASA's budget.

A further alternate view. We could stop the warmongering entirely, and the NASA funding... Using all those combined trillions of dollars on making the world a better place.

On a side note, I completely agree with you. To us there are completely varying degrees on what we consider useful spending. And on the war-funding we are in agreement; that money should be used first before NASA's funding.

> That's a trillion dollars that has been spent solving world hunger, poverty, disease, even income equality.

There, fixed that for you!

The old canard that space exploration has been a total waste of money just keeps popping up. Yet, our economy and the world itself have been dramatically transformed by the innovations and improvements coming out of the space program: solar energy, CAT scanners and MRI for medical applications, ceramic shielding, computer miniaturization, software methods, weather prediction, new kinds of materials, better propulsion systems for planes, food preservation, insulation, on and on.

There are many more. And then there are all the people who were inspired by the space program to go into science and technology fields.

I'd say $1 trillion, if accurate (the entire Apollo program cost about $200 billion in 2005 dollars) would be a bargain.

Compare this with, say, the Dept. of Education created in 1979 by President Jimmy Carter. It's cost about $1.5 trillion over 35 years, and for what? Literacy and math skills have declined almost every year since then.

Let's shrink federal spending in the entitlement and defense sectors, and put more money into space exploration and basic science, and I'll bet you we'll all end up living richer and better lives (and longer lives, too).

"Compare this with, say, the Dept. of Education created in 1979 by President Jimmy Carter. It's cost about $1.5 trillion over 35 years, and for what? Literacy and math skills have declined almost every year since then."

Could you provide references for the cost (including any programs it replaced) and the downward progression in literacy and maths in the USA since 1979?

It strikes me that more people are regularly communicating in writing than ever before and mathematics is sort of cool for the first time in several decades.

The Dept of Education's annual budget is about $70 billion and has been in that range for several years. I did a thumbnail estimate based on that. In fact the accumulated cost might be considerably higher.

The decline in literacy and math scores is well documented.

That is all very well, but could you provide references for the cost (including any programs it replaced) and the downward progression in literacy and maths in the USA since 1979?

edit - Just looked at budgets. You are picking the peak. Which makes me somewhat doubtful of the rest of your analysis. In 2009 it was $32 billion. In 2010 it was $56 billion. It peaked at $71 billion in 2011 and has been almost flat since then.

edit2 - heh, actually the peak was in 2009. Do not trust wikipedia. http://chart.googleapis.com/chart?chtt=Department+of+Educati... http://febp.newamerica.net/background-analysis/education-fed...

Still, the general point holds, it has not been remotely steady at $70 billion.

http://www2.ed.gov/about/overview/budget/history/edhistory.p...

Appropriations since 1980 add up to about $1.334 trillion. This is not inflation adjusted, however, so the equivalent amount in 2014 dollars would be much higher.

I wish they had given NASA that money instead and maybe we'd have a colony on the moon by now.

You have to factor in the cost of the programs it replaced, given it was largely created by transferring education programs from other government departments.

Also, you have given no references whatsoever for your claimed steady decline in literacy and maths since 1979.

I thought I was aware of the early history of CT and MRI and am unaware of the space programme connection. Any chance you could point me at anything - my googling isn't getting me anywhere.

http://spinoff.nasa.gov/spinfaq.htm#spinfaq9

Nasa and Nasa-related contractors did not invent MRI and CAT scanners, but they contributed significantly to the technology as well as related aspects like digital image processing (developed at JPL for processing Moon images).

I mean, probably MRI and CT scanners would have been developed anyway. But space research definitely helped move things along.

> I just did a quick calculation from their wikipedia funding page. Since its inception, NASA has received 1069.323 billion dollars in 2014-inflation-adjusted dollars.

Interesting, thank you, and much less than I would have guessed. Given their achievements, I think that's economical.

> That's a trillion dollars that could have been spent solving world hunger, poverty, disease, even income equality. Sure, there have been all sorts of side-effects from all that NASA R&D ...

The economists call that "opportunity cost" and I agree. I'm always a little uncomfortable with funding NASA missions to Mars, etc., though I think the benefits are worthwhile. Also, NASA has produced much science, including climate change research, which I think is clearly a good investment (based on my limited knowledge of the marginal value of NASA's research).

> ... but let's not try to compare apples to oranges here. Because you can't really compare public and private institutions' achievements. One has to earn the profits it spends on fancy R&D, and the other simply has to ask for it in the government budget.

Not really; it's not a matter of asking. Federal funds are limited and agencies fight wars, publicly and privately, over access to them. As in private enterprise, sometimes funding is decided on merit and sometimes politically.

Ironically, much of private enterprise is funded the same way -- from the federal budget.

If the only thing NASA had done were the two voyagers - for a trillion dollars it would still have been on the cheap.

The trove of scientific data they have gathered over the years is insane. And for the 60 years it exists, a trillion dollars is not much.

> One has to earn the profits it spends on fancy R&D

Or borrow the money, or use wall street magic, or whatever. Also one of the recurrent critics of the current system is that corporations are slaves to the quarterly reports.

The problem with NASA in recent years is not that they spend a lot of money, but that they don't dream big enough.

NASA costs about as much as the Carried Interest tax loophole for hedge fund managers.

And proponents of both justify them as ways of making capital available to worth while endeavors. In my mind that rings true for one slightly more than the other.

It's also a lot smaller than the 4.5 trillion sunk in quantitative easing.

Quantitative easing doesn't actually cost money. The fed buys securities with it and probably breaks even or makes a profit.

Considering the population of Earth has more than doubled from around 3 billion in 1960 to 7 billion in 2014 i hardly think we can blame NASA for spending a trillion dollars.

On the scale of world hunger over a 50 year period, one trillion is a blip. On the other hand spending a trillion on space research over 50 years seems well worth it if within the next 50 we can colonize other planets, moons or terrariums and ensure that the Human race has a backup should something catastrophic happen.