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NASA was founded as a guise for science in the light of a cold war power play. There are several quotes even from Kennedy saying that the Space Race was a diplo
by valarauca1 13y ago
NASA was founded as a guise for science in the light of a cold war power play. There are several quotes even from Kennedy saying that the Space Race was a diplomatic framing of ICBM missile building and testing.
What NASA does accomplish is economic growth of America as a whole. What most people don't realize is very dollar given to NASA roughly translates to 2-4 dollars of GDP growth of American research, development, and manufacturing.
Really one of the most direct ways of the US Government putting additional money in the hands of the American is NASA's budget strangely.
- SamReidHughes 13y agoExcept no, you can't go and spout numbers about GDP growth ratios without considering the opportunity costs of not having NASA's employees work in other sectors.
- valarauca1 13y agoI'm talking about government spending to money actually being used in the economy. In which NASA is largely the best program. On a person by person level yes there is likely some wasted talent at NASA, and their skills could be put to better use else where. But doing a micro-economic analysis of every 1 person's case over 300,000 employes and 18,000 contractors would be very time consuming then making boarder macro economic statements. Also remember micro-economics are wrong about certain things, macro-economics are wrong about things in general.
- mcguire 13y ago"300,000 employees and 18,000 contractors" Assuming you're talking about the '60's, it's the other way around. If you're talking about today, it's still the other way around but the number of contractors is much smaller.
- valarauca1 13y agoThose numbers are taken from NASA itself, they have links to the size of their operations nasapeople.nasa.gov
- mcguire 13y agoDo you mean this: https://wicn.nssc.nasa.gov/c10/cgi-bin/cognosisapi.dll?b_action=powerPlayService&m_encoding=UTF-8&BZ=1AAABgNNr_f942m2PQWuDQBCF~8yOaS9hdlTUgwd1DRHamEahZ6NjCTFuUFOaf981KYTSzu7wHm__gV2ryJdFme~STIXjpAfO1BMQHSShS5TK2I89x~NXsYt24AfKd4Mg8mLHMM~WvJtGu2S9jcp1CLSqdT9xPxnX6q7hAdwYHOyrE4OtFttBt4eOgTC57HlcgKsMea7qY~XBv9F3PRxbPdQz~LM245YqkmWSbzZpUmZGotc0~Ae14rewRRQSEaVEIQQKFwWhmI8QUdcZOD2dO31lHgGDvDeBukxXI0DtPP0yP2m4MfaFq082kADygWwDsATaAwX3QD4C8afk7c7m~qBbP_obQJNj2A%3D%3D https://wicn.nssc.nasa.gov/c10/cgi-bin/cognosisapi.dll?b_act... (Aaahhhhhh! Cognos! Aaahhhhhhh!) I don't have a good source for the number of contractors, other than wikipedia. (...which cites http://employeeorientation.nasa.gov/contractors/default.htm http://employeeorientation.nasa.gov/contractors/default.htm. Huh.)
- tanzam75 13y ago> (Aaahhhhhh! Cognos! Aaahhhhhhh!) Aha! Now we know where NASA's IT budget went -- to IBM. IBM specializes in making sure that you spend your full IT budget each year, so that upper management isn't tempted to cut it next year.
- valarauca1 13y agoYes but IBM also makes very damn reliable mainframes, also z-series can emulate system360's, which NASA had quiet a few of (the last one wasn't decommissioned until 2010). So likely to maintain payroll or tax data they kept IBM.
- Zigurd 13y agoSome of the numbers I have seen for NASA's economic benefits are pretty spectacularly good. But you would have to then believe that the same holds true for SDI ("Star Wars") because it's pretty much the same thing without the science/exploration fig leaf.