Why We Should Fund NASA

Space Exploration & Why We Should Fund It Space exploration is a really expensive endeavor to the common civilian, it costs billions to operate a mission to space, billions to build the shuttles to get up there. The U.S.A space program NASA has seen less funding each year since 1966 where it peaked at 4.5% of the federal budget down to 1% in 1975 and it still loses funding each year even today! How is NASA staying afloat and it is effecting how long it will take us to achieve reasonable and safe space travel. NASA funding is shrinking, this year the Obama administration budget proposal for NASA was $17.5 billion, below the $17.7 billion budge from 2014, major expenditures include science missions, space ops to the ISS (International Space Station) and public commercial exploration development totaling near $14 billion alone. In the past NASA used most of their budget for contractors in designing and manufacture …show more content…
They have started “privatizing operations” (Steven) through programs such as “Commercial Orbital Transportation Services” (Steven) program which is an investment in cargo transportation into space. As far as commercializing to the public, you may have heard about tickets to the moon or space hotels. Well developments in “late 2014 demonstrated the continuing challenge of pursuing safe and reliable space travel” (Steven), they collected more than seven hundred deposits for planned suborbital flights at $250,000 a seat! However this route proved a failure when a fatal crash during an October test flight occurred. Analysis of the rocket used proved to be a failure in the “refurbished Soviet rocket engine” (Steven) designed back in the 1960’s and build before 1974. This further proves the lack of funding our space organization has and the needs for more and proper funding for accidents like this to be potentially