> But times are tight. We're massively overspending as is - borrowing tons of money our grandchildren will still be paying back. So increased spending is far from free.
FYI, if you remove all NASA spending from the budget, the total deficit remains the same out to something like 3 or 4 significant figures.
That requires two sign figs to appear so it's not that far off of what i guestimated (1 order of magnitude off: 9.01E11 - 8.83E11 is 1.8E10).
If i had said, "if you remove all NASA spending from the budget, the total budget remains the same out to something like 3 or 4 significant figures," then we would need 3 sig figs to see any impact by NASA's budget (3.803E12 - 1.78E10 = 3.785E12 ~ 3.78 ~ 3.8 ~ 4).
I think my ultimate point that NASA's budget is pretty inconsequential to either the budget or the yearly deficit stands since it is only 0.468% of the budget and 1.97% of the deficit.
Break down the budget categories enough, and you can say the exact same thing about anything. "If you remove tank spending from the budget, the total deficit remains the same out to something like 3 or 4 significant figures." Guess we should keep buying tanks, too.
My point is that the entire operating budget of NASA, not just part of the program, but literally the entire agency, could be wiped from the budget without affecting the budget deficit in any meaningful way.
I'm not breaking down categories nearly as deep you had to dive to get to your example of tanks. Looking at NASA is like looking at the entire operating budget of the Army, the FBI, or the NSA.
This isn't to say that there aren't inefficiencies at NASA that can be corrected. I'm sure there are, but since NASA's entire operating budget is orders of magnitude smaller than the deficit even the most optimistic optimization will have basically no effect on the problem.
Except, historically $1 billion for tanks today meant $1+ billion for tanks for the foreseeable future.
The actual long-term costs of $1 billion military spending are far more than those of $1 billion of NASA spending (and let's not even get into the economic reward of said spending).
FYI, if you remove all NASA spending from the budget, the total deficit remains the same out to something like 3 or 4 significant figures.