Science

What If NASA Had the U.S. Military’s Budget?

March 21, 2018

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Space exploration has never come cheap, but what if NASA got a multi-billion dollar boost in the form the U.S. military’s budget?

They sent humans to walk on the Moon, flew by every single planet in our Solar System, delivered the first residents to the International Space Station…

What else could NASA have done if it had a bigger budget? Say, the budget of the U.S. military?

How close would we be to colonizing Mars? Would you be spending your vacation on the Moon? What about visiting other solar systems?

In 1969, NASA spent over $25 billion, or about $170 billion in today’s money, so that the whole world could see this… But once a small step for a man became one giant leap for mankind, the budget of the American-led space agency started… shrinking.

Today NASA gets less than $20 billion annually to explore (and colonize) what’s out there. Is that enough for humanity’s ambitions?

Not if you plan on buying a piece of land on the Moon. What if… due a printing error in the Federal budget, the enormous U.S. military budget went to the space agency instead?

What would $600 billion pay for? Here’s the International Space Station. The largest artificial satellite that has ever orbited Earth.

Over 200 people have lived and worked here since it launched in 1998. But, it may be defunded as of 2024 and then no one’s going to set foot on it.

With another $100 billion, NASA could afford to keep doing the research on the ISS for at least another 20 years. A military-sized budget would cover that.

Not only would it allow the space station to remain up and running, but it would also allow them to send more astronauts. And there’d still be enough money left over for NASA’s biggest ongoing projects.

Developing the Space Launch System that would carry us to the Moon and deep space? Sure!

Finishing the James Webb Space Telescope, the most powerful of its kind ever built? Not a problem!

And then there’s Mars. Together with SpaceX, NASA could restore the uncrewed Red Dragon mission that would mark the beginning of Mars colonization.

Sending the first humans to Mars would cost NASA around $450 billion. With $600 billion of annual funding, a crewed mission to the red planet would become NASA’s next “Apollo” very quickly.

We’d build a human colony on the Moon, turning it into a base for our trips to deep space. It would also serve as a blueprint for Mars colonization.

We’d move up the launch date on the Europa Clipper – a mission to Jupiter’s smallest moon in search of signs of alien life in the ocean of liquid water beneath its icy shell. Maybe Europa would become our next destination for the crewed missions?

Just imagine… Regular commercial space flight… Uncrewed missions to other solar systems…

Increasing biological and physiological studies to figure out how humans could survive away from Earth… Wouldn’t that be awesome?

What else do you think we could achieve with a military budget? Share this if you think the sky is not the limit. And we’ll keep bringing you to the edge of your imagination.

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