You all know how NASA eats up a huge portion of the federal budget, and that’s why we need to cut lots of NASA fat, right? Actually, that’s a misguided public perception–many people assume that NASA accounts for 20% of the federal budget. In reality, NASA only accounts for half of one-percent of the federal budget; for this past year, the NASA budget amounted to $20 billion.
What else can you get for $20 billion? How about this? According to Steve Anderson, a retired Brigadier General who was General David Petraeus’s chief logistician in Iraq, the United States spends $20 billion every year air conditioning U.S. military tents and other temporary living quarters in Iraq and Afghanistan. Two starkly unnecessary wars, and even a small portion of the expense of these wars equals the total budget for NASA, which, for decades, has inspired all rational-thinking people with its space exploration missions.
Priorities like this force me to conclude that our leaders are functional psychopaths.
Addendum 2012:
A few months back, a pair of syndicated radio DJs were commenting on a news item concerning NASA helping train commercial pilots in a middle eastern country. They work mockingly referring to NASA as "the SPACE GUYS!!!", totally obvious to the fact that NASA stands for National Aeronautics and Space Administration and that NASA is charged not only with space flight, but also with the safety of commercial aircraft and the promotion of the American aircraft industry around the world.