It wasn't, but we're comparing to the yearly budget of Manhattan/Apollo (as a fraction of GDP). NASA budget was between 0.3-0.9% of GDP in 1963-1970[0], that wa

It wasn't, but we're comparing to the yearly budget of Manhattan/Apollo (as a fraction of GDP). NASA budget was between 0.3-0.9% of GDP in 1963-1970[0], that was per year. In 1965 GDP was $743B (nominal), so 0.5% of that is ~4B, and the (nominal) cost of Apollo (which wasn't the whole NASA budget) was 25B. As aa part of GDP from 1970 (1.073T) the total cost of Apollo would be like 4% of that single year's GDP. Not a good comparison because when Apollo started GDP was 563B and was 1.3T when it ended. [0] https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Total-NASA-Appropriations-and-as-a-Ratio-to-GDP-Per-Capita-1958-2005-Constant-2007_fig4_323116968 https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Total-NASA-Appropriation...