The Pros And Cons Of NASA Spending

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This raises the question: should revenue be increased or spending reduced? It seems that the answer is a little bit of both. Surely, this has its advantages and drawbacks, and it is very important to consider where these cuts have been made. Most of the reduced spending has come from programmatic cuts. This means that funding for different government programs has been reevaluated and many programs have experienced a decrease in support. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration, NASA, is one of the programs that the government has decided it cannot continue to finance at its current rates, and the money being put into NASA has been cut back. This is definitely not a smart place to make spending cuts and, at least for the near future,…show more content…
The recent retiring of the space shuttle has been estimated to have cut over 4,600 jobs. Indeed, many attempts have been made to directly measure the affect NASA has had on the economy, but ultimately none have been very successful in finding a conclusive answer. Undoubtedly, NASA’s promotion has obvious benefits, such as the improvements it makes to the telecommunications industry, but it is very difficult and costly to distinguish what effects NASA has had on any part of the economy, and much more difficult to determine its effects on the economy as a whole. However, some estimated ratios of revenue generated compared to spending have been as high as 14-to-1 for NASA. This indicates a very high return on the money spent by the government on NASA, but many dismiss these ratios as very generous. There have been more conservative results that are closer to 3-to-1 or 2-to-1. Even if these conservative estimates can be believed, it still means that NASA ultimately provides more money to the economy than the government spends on it. Other estimates have been made, and the conclusion has been widely drawn that based on “the mission success of the life sciences effort and ample evidence of other social benefits, it can be concluded that NASA Life Sciences investments have more than ‘paid for themselves’. While all of the studies don’t agree on the exact numbers, all of these studies do agree that NASA is a generally good investment for the US government. Therefore, the argument that NASA funding should be cut because of the tough economy is not one that can be supported with any substantial
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