NASA's Budget Vs. Military Spending: is It Justified?

For every $100 of tax that the US government spends, NASA gets less than $0.50 of it. This subjectively sounds like a fair amount, but when you compare it to the US military budget, it seems greatly unfair. Out of the same $100 of tax, the US military gets $54. This rounds up to $716 billion a year. This may invite the question as to whether some or all of the budget could be spent on bettering our knowledge rather than our artillery. It can also be suggested that the importance of NASA’s work is often overlooked. Therefore, in this essay, I will explore the ups and downs of this question and the way forward for the better of the US and their spending habits.

There are many things that NASA could do with 36 times their usual budget. Firstly, they could create a better, ‘super’ Hubble telescope. The successor to the Hubble telescope, the James Webb Space Telescope, is already on its way and is set to launch in March 2021. It will also be extremely costly to NASA, costing over half of its annual budget, at 10 billion USD. What if we could do even better? If NASA had $700B to spend every year, we could create a telescope that is 100 times as powerful as the Hubble telescope. This new telescope could be up to 10 times bigger than the Hubble and have over 10 times the resolution. We could get pictures in less than 2 hours rather than the weeks that it takes Hubble to get results. It would be even better than the 6.5-meter-long James Webb Space telescope and we could see further, with a much clearer image than we could imagine with NASA’s current budget.

We could also achieve what has been a common dream within science-fiction since the 50s; going to the red planet. With a $700B budget, we could achieve colonizing the moon and Mars. With consistent funding of between $50 - $150B over the course of 10 years, we could have a fully functional colony with a complete human crew, each staying for up to a year and a half. The research that we could subsequently perform about water on Mars could suggest potential compatibility for more humans to live there. We could create colonies on the moon, and utilize it as a base for further, potentially manned missions to other terrestrial bodies in our solar system such as Enceladus, one of Saturn’s moons. NASA could also team up with promising private space companies such as that of Elon Musk’s SpaceX and join them on their missions to Mars. NASA could help them with the completion of the Big Falcon Rocket (BFR), a fully reusable rocket that they previously said they would not pay for. Joining in the creation of the first sustainable rocket would be one giant step for NASA, and one they should take if they had the budget.

We could also begin to think about steps that do not only help with space travel but the world. We could create a net-energy creating nuclear fusion reactor. We can split the nucleus from elements such as plutonium to get energy, but what about fusing two atoms together and releasing a much larger quantity of energy? We know that it’s possible due to what we see happening on the Sun, but what about creating that here on Earth? While such high pressures are near-impossible to manufacture, with the right amount of money, this achievement would not seem entirely out of reach. As Ethan Siegel says writing for Forbes magazine, “It's the ultimate holy grail for energy, and the greatest barrier to its success isn't physics, but a lack of investment.”

A separate but equally important factor would be the US military itself. Does it really matter if the US has the biggest artillery? The US spends roughly the size of the next seven largest military expenditures combined, making China’s $131B yearly spending look hardly significant. For every dollar that China spends on its military, the US spends $2.77 on its own. In addition to this, it has been forecast that US military spending on science and technology will only marginally increase over the next decade, compared to defense agencies, which will reportedly receive 50% of the science and technology budget.

The US contributes to 35% of all military spending in the world. The world has 8,400 attack helicopters across all of countries. Of this number, the US owns 6,400. China, the second biggest spender has 500 of their type-99 tanks, which are outclassed by the US M1 Abrams. The US has 8,700 of these M1 Abrams tanks. The US has ten aircraft carriers, compared to the rest of the world which combined only has ten, much smaller ones. The US has 3,500 tomahawk missiles in their arsenal. Each of these missiles can cost up to $1.5 million, all adding up to a total of $5.25B in total, with only 59 of these missiles having been used with a specific use in combat. What’s the point in having so many missiles if you’ve only used 1% of them?

It can also be said that the US is occasionally reckless when it comes to spending money. Billions have been wasted in the past over ideas that, with a little bit of thinking before handing out the money, could have been saved. In 2017, the US raced to give new camouflage uniforms to soldiers out in Afghanistan. However, the fighting was located in the desert. The US spent $20 million on camouflage uniforms, for lush forest green colors, not the sandy yellow of the Afghanistan desert. The US also spent NASA’s entire budget on air-conditioning in Iraq, which has resulted in failure. As Steven Anderson, a former Pentagon employee estimates, there have been over 1,000 deaths as a result of these targeted fuel convoys. Freestanding tents in the middle of the desert trying to combat 51°C heat require lots of fuel. As Anderson says, by making those structures more efficient the US could not only save dollars but lives. There are other examples of the US not thinking ideas through clearly with the Lockheed Martin F-35 A Lightning II. This was an idea to create a plane that the air forces, navy, and marines could all use to their advantage. It was meant to be able to land anywhere, take off anywhere and carry an assortment of weapons. However, it turned out to be a trillion-dollar mistake. It became a ‘black hole’ of mistakes, delays, and technical issues and took with it $1.5 trillion. It’s plagued by issues and costs over double of even the US’s annual budget because they didn’t think their plans through enough.

But does NASA deserve the same budget as the largest military in the world? If the US focused less on their military budget, there is the possibility that they would lose their superpower status, the next in line for spending being China. This is worrying as China already has plans to equal the US spending by 2050. With any potential danger of a large-scale war looming, having the US let their military guard down would not be a good idea. China has already patented a hypersonic missile, which would be nearly impossible for the US to intercept. Without the security for the rest of the world from such a dominant military body, there could be some dangerous repercussions such as potentially a world war. This suggests that while the focus on military spending may be slightly misplaced, the cause remains incredibly important in maintaining global peace, something that space travel and exploration cannot achieve.

It can also be said that the US holds great power in protecting against the threat of nuclear attacks. Even with the threat of the hypersonic missiles that are being developed in China at the moment, the US has been critical in the prevention of WMDs; weapons of mass destruction. In 2003, President Bush created the Proliferation Security Initiative (PSI), as an initiative to help to control WMDs. The creation of this program has, according to the US state department, stopped exports to Iran’s missile program and related equipment to Tehran’s (believed) missile program. The defensive system is critical to maintaining world peace, with the US being the front runner for protecting the world from the threat of nuclear weapons. The list of countries with the ‘badge of owning nuclear weapons’ is steadily increasing. There have been just under 2,000 nuclear tests that have been recorded, with a growing number of countries now ready to fire with a ‘big red button'. Although President Trump has proudly boasted that his ‘button’ is “much bigger and more powerful” than that of North Korea’s, shifting funding towards NASA could take away from the influence that the US military holds.

What about the soldiers? The Department of Defense claims to be a hub for over 1.3 million jobs for personnel in active duty, 740,000 civilians, and 826,000 National Guard employees making it the largest employer in the US. But it is not always a question of direct employment. Just the existence of military bases is often a boost to a local economy, as the bases ensure lots of specialists to come, who will bring up expenditure and construction. We also see improvements in retail and hospitality purely from the existence of these bases. Prior to shutting down Plan Maryland, it was estimated that their military presence created an additional $16 billion within the state of Maryland. With a serious budget cut, nearly 2 million people would be jobless, and the US wouldn’t have that extra paycheck just from keeping people in those jobs. Clearly spending so much on the military has been useful for the US, and as a result, it can clearly be said that the quantity of money given to the military is entirely necessary, and while funding NASA would create jobs in itself, it is debatable whether this is even comparable to the number of jobs that are created by the US military.

In conclusion, US spending has its fair share of the good, the bad, and the ugly, and shifting that budget to NASA has its own fair share of the same. While it can be said that NASA deserves a much larger budget, it should not be suggested that this money come out of the military’s pocket. From what has been explored, it is clear that the military provides economic stability in a variety of ways, and therefore neglecting this would be rash. However, it can also be said that NASA research relies heavily on public interest, which has dwindled since the Cold War, as has the interest of many government officials. As a result, NASA is often severely overlooked, and with the rate of current climate change and global warming ever increasing, perhaps space exploration is our only option.

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