Should NASA get $3 billion more a year?

Maybe we should just give 3 billion a year away for cash for clunkers and stay on earth and forget science... who needs it.

remember ever dollar spent for space goes through the economy 10 or more times. During this time it is taxed more times than you might think. It creates jobs. Took 400,000 people to put 3 men on the moon. This is not wasting money like bailing out banks which did not create any large number of jobs. If all that money were spent on building a high speed train from coast to coast or going back to the moon, most banks would have recovered on their own. Would have taken longer but would have been better in the long run.

So let's see...spend a little to help the economy (and help people stand on their own two feet), or spend a fortune of yet another useless government "gimmee" program (and create more dependents on the government gravy train)...

I wonder which one BO will choose...I'm sorry; I guess we already know...

A stimulus program that actually supports high paying jobs for Americans - what a novel idea!

The United States isn’t going to the moon any time soon, and probably not for a long, long time. The american people have decided that they want socialism more that they want space travel. Consider these numbers: in 1968, NASA’s budget was 4.72 billion dollars, or 2.4 percent of the federal budget. Social spending (social security, health spending, welfare, education, etc.) was 59.4 billion dollars, 33.3 percent of the federal budget. The deficit was 22.3 billion dollars. Forty years later, in 2008, NASA’s budget was 17.3 billion dollars, .6 percent of the federal budget and an increase of 307 percent. Social spending had risen to 1.81 trillion dollars, 66.4 percent of the budget and an increase of 2,947 percent. The deficit was 419.6 billion dollars, an increase of 1786.6 percent. This shows that the pocket stuffers in Washington have learned that the way to stay in power is to shovel out bundles of tax dollars( and a lot of phoney dollars) to a lot of people, not spending it on science and exploration, which, thanks to the publik skool system, few people understand anyway. And the peepul keep reinforcing the lessons by continually re-electing them. The drift to socialism can’t be entirely blamed on the tax-and-spend democrats. Until this year, the biggest deficits in our history were presided over by the three most “conservative” presidents in the past eighty years. So it looks like anyone who is really interested in space travel will have to be content with Star Trek re-runs for some time to come.

I have wached the space from the begaing and would give part of my SS to see it still going.

Unfortunately, when most people think of the previous Moon program, they think of a bunch of rocks in museums. These people do not realize that current firefighter uniforms are based on space suit technology, medical monitoring equipment is based on spacecraft telemetry systems, current computer technology is based on the microprocessor research funded by NASA, etc... http://www.thespaceplace.com/nasa/spinoffs.html This link is to the NASA spinoff homepage. Whole industries have been created as a result of NASA programs.

NASA's biggest problem is that they have fallen into one of traps of being a government agency.

That is, nobody is ever rewarded for finding a cheaper or quicker way to do anything. The more expensive, longer approach always results in more jobs for a longer period of time, and eventually more and more money.

If you actually accomplish your goal, your job is no longer needed. So the trick is to never quite make it, never quite finish.

And if you ever find a cheaper way to do something, the people supplying the money will look at that and say "Well, that's all the money you get then!" so there is no incentive to cut costs. You'd be a fool to do that.

The first time we went to the moon, we did it because it was a war of sorts. We had to win. And we did and it paid off in untold dividends.

But now, there's no war. No urgency. NASA is just another agency looking for a goal that will look good on paper but with an approach that will never quite work and put them all out of business.

The problem isnt the budget or the goals. It is the fact that NASA, like so many government organizations, has no concept of how to spend money wisely. Get private business involved, give them some incentive to get involved, and they will not only get the job done, but do it on time and below budget.

We should take care of our business at home first! Someone once said, "First things first!" Well..our first priorities are healthcare, starvation in other countries & our own infrastructure...bridges, roads etc...etc. All these rocket scientists with their mega-salaries, can do what many Americans are doing now.... go look for a job! After we get our own house cleaned up....then we can "go play outdoors"!

Yes I think it should. Since the auto makers are in debt to the government, make them foot the bill for the extra 3 B a year.

others have hit the proverbial nail - the money we are talking about gets pumped back into society, as scientist's' and engineers' wages get spent on stuff. a country with no frontiers, no goals (other than to fix its problems) will die. hopefully, the folks who run the country will understand this - sure wish those folks were a cross section of the rest of us and not mostly lawyers.....

3 BILLION $ more annual for NASA for a joyride to the moon but nothing for health care & the public option !!!! Tell Sen Nelson & the other Blue Cross DINO Dogs "that DOG won't hunt!!" THis is just not putting the cart before the horse but facing the horse towards the cart & NOT SHOEING HIM TO BOOT !!

Lets see $23 billion for the auto industry, which we wont get back or $30 billion over ten years that might give us new techology like what smaller computers, better cell phones, smaller pacemakers and just about every other science innovation that we have done for the last 50 years. Lets just bail out another few banks and greed in wall street and get nothing in return, try to get a loan lately. No wonder we are going down in science and math our priorities are all wrong.

With China, India, Japan, and Russia all looking to land a man on the moon within the next twenty years can we afford not to? Whatever resources are available on the moon, Mars, or elsewhere I rather be the one discovering it, not the one who ends up having to buy it from another country.

First of all to Laura-261470, There are already so many satellites already in orbit, we're soon going to need to take some out in order to fit more, think of it...space junk since we started space exploration. Next, I'm really hoping we will fix the environment and all, however, there are so many things that could happen, not just climate change, that would either make us extinct, or if we choose correctly, could move to another planet. That's the last thing anyone would want to see, but i'd rather have an option than...well...we're all dead.

Until the huge problem of time and distance is solved going to the moon or Mars is a waste! It takes over a year to get to Mars then have to wait months before Earth is in alignment to return and then another one year plus flight back. That is not realistic use of money or wasting two plus years of life just riding to and from etc. Besides Apolo 1 with Neal Armstrong discovered the moon is simply a barren rock! Then Apolo 2,3,4, confirmed the moon is just a barren rock. The Mars robots have taken thousands of pictures and guess what? Mars is a barren "rock"! So spending billions to visit barren rocks is rather stupid. Simply keep improving the current space station and satelite program to stay ahead of the Chinese and Russians! Especially the Chinese as they want control of space long term and they are trying now!Sir Edmund Hillary who climbed Mt. Everest when asked what is at the top stated "it is a cold barren "rock"!

Mike II, you put it best. We need to stop breeding so *%$#@ much, and make the best of planet Earth, and its resources. There are far better things we can do with that 3 billion.

The drive to reach the moon in the 60's demonstrated unequivocably that the return on technological development and science was definitely worth the effort and the money. I believe that we are now poised on the verge of some of the greatest scientific achievements of all time, if we have the courage to move ahead on space exploration. I'm not sure that a return to the moon is the best goal, but it makes sense to establish a moon base that would be a jumping-off platform for exploration of Mars and some of the other objects in our solar system. Who knows what exciting and profitable developments could come from such an effort? We might end up making discoveries that pay for the entire project.

In another vein, I suggest that NASA consider establishing a "public corporation" entity, which would accept individual donations from people all over the world to help in the space effort. Some sort of eventual dividend could be offered, even if it is simply the personal pride in being part of the on-going "reach for the stars." Take a look at it, NASA.

The problem is we already went to the moon.  What's the added value of going again (with humans), just to look good in front of other countries.  A cheaper solution is to use robots and test technologies to build a moon base without direct human intervention.  Just look at the rovers on Mars.  At least one is still going way beyond expectation and without needing a human there to guide it.  Explore with robotic technologies first.  Build with more advanced robotic technologies second.  And, then send humans.  By that time we would have learned how to apply the results to Mars for colonization.  Duh.  Why is it so hard to figure out a cheaper solution?