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Apart from the continued devaluing of Science in our country and severe underfunding of any scientific institution?

• adventured 5y ago
  > severe underfunding of any scientific institution NASA is well funded, not underfunded. It receives over three times the funding of ESA by comparison. Why aren't the Europeans funding their scientific institutions better? Because the combination of soaring entitlement costs and stagnant growth robs them of the necessary tax revenue for that. Which is exactly what's happening in the US, and it's going to get a lot worse yet. The US has a bit less of an excuse, seeing as it could safely cut $200b off of its military. However, that $200b spread around to every squeaky wheel still won't go very far (it's equal to a mere ~2.3% of total government spending), you might be able to fairly boost NASA's budget by $3b per year if you slashed the military. Back in reality, that $200b in cuts should probably be entirely allocated to healthcare, which brings us right back to the central issue of priorities; and the Europeans know that quite well, which is why ESA is poorly funded.
  • cptskippy 5y ago
    Explaining why the ESA is also underfunded doesn't justify under-funding NASA. Two wrongs don't make a right. Across all industries the average R&D budget is around 4%. When you look at the US R&D budget it's about 3% of the annual budget with 2% going directly to Military R&D and 0.5% going to defense and other military adjacent R&D. That's not entirely accurate thought because the Military budget for R&D also encompasses Training and Exercises. So only a fraction of that 2% is used for actual R&D. That missing 1% is 3x Nasa's budget and 1.5 the DOD's.