People and governments make all kinds of mistakes, and when comparing manned to unmanned space programs and their relative costs, it's worth examining what the

People and governments make all kinds of mistakes, and when comparing manned to unmanned space programs and their relative costs, it's worth examining what the overall societal expenditures look like. For example, the cost of maintaining the USA's nuclear arsenal is very comparable on a yearly basis to the entire NASA budget (~25-30 billion). However this pales in comparison to the complete amortized cost of the US adventure in Iraq from 2003-2008 or so, which is on the order of $2.5 trillion (large error bars there), or about $500 billion per year. Conclusion: we certainly have the civilizational resources to increase both unmanned and manned space programs by at least 15-fold each if we'd just stop wasting money on stupid wars. Note that's just USA expenditures, as well.