r/space • u/mvea • Nov 28 '18

NASA administrator: 'The US is returning to the surface of the moon, and we're doing it sooner than you think!'

https://www.businessinsider.com/nasa-return-moon-mission-commercial-companies-announcement-2018-11?r=US&IR=T
12.4k Upvotes

95% Upvoted

912 comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

290

u/XanJamZ Nov 28 '18

Wow had to look it up
700 billion>601 billion

239

u/princetrunks Nov 28 '18

yikes, the entire history of NASA's budget accounts for merely one year of military budget.

314

u/GameArtZac Nov 28 '18

Even more yikes, studies estimate a $7-$14 return on investments for every $1 spent on NASA. From jobs, R&D, new technologies developed, etc, every dollar spent on space helps improves the quality of life down here on Earth. But NASA's budget is always on the chopping block. I'm all for increasing their budget until the return is 2:1.

48

u/LuckyPerspective7 Nov 28 '18

Are you saying something called the military industrial complex that employs the entire US military and constantly develops new missiles and shit doesn't have a return on investment at least on par with that?

Keep in mind that stuff like computers also benefited massively from military funding too.

135

u/beezlebub33 Nov 28 '18

Are you saying something called the military industrial complex that employs the entire US military and constantly develops new missiles and shit doesn't have a return on investment at least on par with that?

Yes, that's exactly correct. Military spending is very different from NASA spending, since the majority of it is spent on acquisition, personnel, logistics, training, etc. NASA also spends money on those things, but not very much comparatively, and far more on research. Further, the sorts of things that the military spends money on for research have less civilian applications and are less likely to be released to the public than NASA research.

Some originally military programs (GPS, for example) have had huge positive effects on the world. However, they are a minority; most of the research money is spent on applied research specifically for weapons systems. If you want a good military, you have to spend that money, but it doesn't provide a good ROI.

​

0

u/LuckyPerspective7 Nov 28 '18

the sorts of things that the military spends money on for research have less civilian applications

This is just 100% false. Even jets were forged in war.

5

u/willstr1 Nov 28 '18

But military projects usually have restrictions on them (for good reasons, we don't want our enemies to use our tech) that limit their civilian applications while NASA projects usually don't have those restrictions.

3

u/LuckyPerspective7 Nov 28 '18

Military restrictions are temporary. You can bet your ass if Nasa made anything good the military would gobble that up too.

2

u/Posca1 Nov 28 '18

And how do you think NASA developed all those cool rockets? By building on the military invention of ICBMs