“We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard.” - John F. Kennedy
After World War Two with the defeat of the Nazi regime and the death of Adolf Hitler, two massive superpowers would emerge in the chaos of war. The Soviet Union and the United States of America. Two giant juggernauts! The Soviets would begin development of a ‘space program’ early in the 50’s with the development of R-7 rocket and Object D, which come from the Nazi V-2 projects during the war. The USSR would approve ground control and deadlines for Object D’s space flight. However, scientist knew that problems with development would cause the project to derail. So they proposed an alternative plan called "prosteishy sputnik," or "simplest satellite," also known by the Russian abbreviation of PS. The new concept would be very light compared to Object D, and it was planned to be launched within April and May of 1957. During that time, the R-7 rocket would see massive upgrades. It would feature a few upgrades that made it distinct from the previous R-7 rocket. Ahead of development, on October 4th, 1957. Sputnik would be launched into orbit and change the course of human history. For the first time ever, Humanity would take its very first step into space. Also marking the beginning of a new era of tensions between the superpowers that would lead to humanity's greatest technological achievement in recent times!
America reacted, but she reacted in a good way! A red scare amongst Americans of course. They were in absolute dismay that their enemy could have developed space technology so fast and that the US was now far behind the Soviets technologically. Fear of economic, political, and nuclear leverage around the world raised fear mongering amongst the political parties of Congress.
This would in turn force President Dwight D. Eisenhower to speed up the US space programs. The “Space Race” had officially begun with the US launching Explorer 1 on January 31, 1958.
Okay so at the height of the Space race, Nasa had about 4.41% of the total US budget in 1966. That might seem like a lot of funding for an agency now days. But let's take into account that today, the US military budget is about 600 Billion dollars! That is 54% of the budget. That is a lot of money to spend on the military and today Nasa only gets about 18.5 Billion dollars or about less than 0.5% of the budget. You see the big difference here? But who are we trying to scare with our big military?
China the next big spender compared to the US , spends only 190 billion roughly on their military. There seems to be a little bit of overkill here on the US’s part! For example, China has about 500 of their Type 99 tanks, which suck compared to the US M1 Abram, which the US has about 8700…
Not enough? Okay. Let's talk aircraft carriers. The US has 19 aircraft carriers all spread around the world for different purposes and missions. The REST of the world has 12 aircraft carriers, which are all tiny little things compared to what the US has. Here is a British carrier next to an American supercarrier.
The world together has about 8400 attack helicopters and the US owns about 5780 of these. But to be fair guys, the US wants to protect the world from an alien invasion. Come on now! It's going to happen right? Probably not.
But the problem that I see with this huge arsenal is not the fact that we have a LOT, but rather that the equipment is so darn expensive. During a total war situation, (NOT a guerrilla war like Iraq) where the US might lose significant portions of their military to casualties. How the heck are we going to be able to sustain replacement without killing ourselves with debt? Raising taxes? Good luck, especially with Americans being very anti-war nowadays. We are going to drive ourselves to an economic disaster! I say spend more money on bringing down the COST of the technology!
Okay so have established that the military is too much and is overkill. Alright so how come there has not been any need for new space missions? For one which I won't touch on cause it's pretty simple to understand is that Americans love their military! We like feeling big and strong. The second reason is that there is no USSR today that could ignite a new space race. So politicians and Americans don't ever think about the glorious wonders of the Universe and how the Russians have now invaded and imprisoned everyone on Pluto!!
So what if we gave all them dollars to our good friends at Nasa! Well let's take a quick look at a few facts. The TOTAL cost of the Apollo program was 136 billion dollars spread over 13 years. That's about roughly 10 billion dollars a year! Now we aren't talking about Nasa’s budget here just simply the cost of the Apollo program. Also remember that were talking about one of humanity's greatest technological achievement. So with all this new money imagine how the development of research and technology would speed up? Nasa could cut mission deadlines by 90%. Nasa Could pump out telescopes that make hubble look like a play toy like how a bodybuilder pumps out reps at the gym. Nasa could severely upgrade their infrastructure to accommodate a vast amount of new bright scientist. This feeds the cutting time of projects by vast amounts. I predict that discoveries of our beautiful universe would skyrocket. Nasa could also even invest in private companies like SpaceX to avoid nasty bureaucracy. Making development even cheaper and a better bank for the buck. I mean think of all the potentials.
Lunar Bases
Asteroid Mining
Mars missions
Private space flights
Star Trek ships!
Highly advanced Space Stations
With the new infrastructure that could be possible with a $600 billion dollar budget, Nasa could support thousands of trained astronauts! Also with foreign scientist flocking to the US, we could become the science and technology capital of the world. The US would be on track to colonizing mars in a few decades or less. If you liked a the lovable Curiosity robot that made headlines in 2012, then think about how more little robots were gonna be able to send to explore the solar system. Im totally for more R2-D2’s!
