My article on the space program was controversial as I knew it would be and I received a lot of responses from it. I was so impressed with the statistics that Jim presented on wasteful spending in America that is superior to the cost of the space program, that I asked his permission to repost his response as an entry. In this country there is always going to be a debate over which resources can be used to better serve the needs of the poor, veterans, and the underprivileged. I believe the  goal should be to raise awareness on such issues through healthy debate. I always welcome different points of view in my blog, and I often learn from them. This was the case with Jim’s response. His statistical references are very enlightening and I even commented to him that the space program just might move to the bottom of my hit list for government wasteful spending! Here are his comments:

“Well, let’s just take one of your examples “figure out how to feed the poor in America” and apply a little cold, hard, light of reality onto your fantasy wishes.

Something I came across while doing a little research was a 1997 study by the US Department of Agriculture entitled “Estimating and Addressing America’s Food Losses.” The amount of food wasted by the U.S. (and I guess other similarly advanced countries) is absolutely staggering.

Out of 162 million tons of food available for consumption in the USA in 1995, 44 million tons was wasted by “food retailers, consumers and foodservice establishments.” That is almost 30% of the total amount of food produced for human consumption!

Fresh fruit, vegetable, milk, grain, sugar and corn syrup accounted for two-thirds of wasted food.

What is truly criminal about this is that not only was the value of this wasted food estimated at over $31 billion — but it is estimated that this would have fed up to 49 million people in the U.S.

That was 1997. Current figures now show how half of food in the U.S. goes to waste. This amounts to total losses of up to $100 billion per year — nearly SIX TIMES the annual budget for NASA — with $20 billion of that occurring in the farm and processing sectors, and $30-40 billion occurring in the retail sector. Household losses alone account for a further $40 billion, reveals research conducted by Dr. Timothy Jones, an anthropologist at the University of Arizona’s Bureau for Applied Research in Anthropology.

Dr. Jones found that U.S. households waste 14 percent of their food purchases. As much as 15 percent of the food wasted is food that was never even opened before the expiration date. The average family of four wastes $590 worth of meat, fruits, vegetables and grains each year, adding up to a $43 billion nationwide total.

You know, M.L., a billion is a difficult number to comprehend, but one advertising agency did a good job of putting that figure into some perspective in one of its press releases a little over a year ago.

A billion seconds ago, it was 1959.
A billion minutes ago, Jesus was alive.
A billion hours ago, our ancestors were living in the Stone Age
A billion dollars ago was only 8 hours and 20 minutes, at the rate our government is spending it.

While this thought is still fresh in your brain, let’s take a look at New Orleans. It’s amazing what you can learn with some simple division.

Senator Mary Landrieu (D-Louisiana) has asked the Congress for $250 billion to rebuild New Orleans.

Interesting number, but what does it mean?

Well, if you are one of the 484,674 legitimate residents of New Orleans (every man, woman, child), you each get $516,528.

or. . .

if you have one of the 188,251 homes in New Orleans, your home gets $1,329,787.

or. . .

if you are a family of four, your family gets $2,066,012.

Now, as for the Levies. . .the state government of Louisiana has been receiving federal funds (no doubt in the billions) for improvements to be made on those levies for over 30+ years and very little ever got spent on them.

Louisiana has had warning after warning that a Class 3 hurricane or greater would breach the existing levy system. Those warnings go all the way back to the 60’s — yet where did all those billions go?

While you’re contemplating an answer to that M.L., consider the following from writer Virgiliu Pop of Timisoara, Romania (in 2004):

“. . .Since the beginning of the space era, it has been argued that the money spent on space exploration should rather be used on meeting the needs of the underprivileged. “If our nation can spend … twenty billion dollars to put a man on the moon, it can spend billions of dollars to put God’s children on their own two feet right here on earth” – were stating respected figures like Martin Luther King, Jr.

People like him were not necessarily opposing space exploration; they were instead disputing the priorities – is space exploration worth pursuing when money is so badly needed elsewhere?

Unfortunately, the benefits of the space exploration are not self-evident, no matter how real they are. And people are genuine in their worry that money is being wasted in space. Their concern with spending priorities needs to be addressed.

The high profile of space exploration makes it appear more expensive than it actually is. The uninformed, yet caring citizen, is under the earnest impression that the money would make a genuine difference in the fight against poverty. The real dimensions of the social needs are, in reality, out of proportion with the money spent in space – be it in the past, now or in the immediate future. Otherwise, there won’t be any social needs left after the Congress stopped funding the Apollo missions to the Moon.

In the same time, many of the critics of the space program on social grounds are “limousine liberals.” They point the finger at the US government for wasting their tax money in space instead of helping the poor — but they are not feeling guilty for their own consumerist life style and for their own scale of priorities.

For instance, this year, total pet-related sales in the United States are projected to be $31 billion – the double, almost to the cent, of the $15.47 billion NASA budget. An estimated $5 billion worth of holiday season gifts were offered – not to the poor – but to the roving family pets – six times more than NASA spent on its own roving Martian explorers, Spirit and Opportunity, who cost the American taxpayer $820 million both. Instead of providing a launch pad for the immorally expensive shuttles, Florida can do better and clothe the underprivileged – a genuine alligator pet collar cost only $400 a piece.

Are space rockets expensive toys for the big boys? In any case, they cost less than the $20.3 billion a year spent in the US on the human popular toy industry. One doesn’t need toys to play with when the most popular game is playing deaf and blind to the needs of the poor – provided one criticizes the waste in space.

Instead of betting on the future, Americans spend $586.5 billion a year on gambling. It is perhaps immoral to criticize one’s personal choice, so instead of kicking the habit and feeding the poor with this money, one should stop instead the enormous waste in space who stands at a scandalous amount of 40 times less than gaming tokens.

Speaking about personal choice, $31 billion go annually in the US on tobacco products — twice the NASA budget — and $58 billion is spent on alcohol consumption — almost four times the NASA budget. Forget space spin-offs -– here are genuine tangible benefits: $250 billion are spent annually in the US on the medical treatment of tobacco- and alcohol-related diseases – only sixteen times more than on space exploration.

In the eve of the launch of Apollo 11, a moving event occurred at NASA’s moonport. The Reverend Ralph Abernathy, president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and heir to Martin Luther King, Jr., came to Cape Kennedy together with several hundred members of the Poor People’s Campaign, to protest the money being spent on space exploration, while so many people remained poor. He was met by Dr. Thomas Paine, the administrator of NASA, who was informed that in the face of such suffering, space flight represented an inhuman priority and funds should be spent instead to feed the hungry, clothe the naked, tend the sick, and house the homeless.

Dr. Paine enlightened the good reverend that the advances in space exploration were child’s play compared to the tremendously difficult human problems of the society, and told him that “if we could solve the problems of poverty by not pushing the button to launch men to the moon tomorrow, then we would not push that button.”

Here are $976.3 billion dollars -– almost a trillion — spent every year in the US on pets, toys, gambling, alcohol and tobacco. It is 63 times the amount spent on space exploration – with the difference that NASA has not destroyed lives as the alcohol, tobacco and gambling did. It is not the exploration spirit that Americans need to give up in order to alleviate poverty. It is the consumerist spirit. . .”

However, when you come right down to it M.L., the bottom line isn’t the bottom line.

It’s not about the cost. It’s not about fixing all our problems at home first before we go either. For over 2,000 years, those problems have always existed and will therefore never end; it’s an impossible condition to attain.

It’s about giving those at home some relief from their daily problems by giving them some hope that there’s something worthwhile ahead, something to look forward to, a reason for working through the immediate problems, to surmount them and to go beyond them.

Out of pocket costs for each American taxpayer PER YEAR (Data from the White House and the American Association for the Advancement of Science.)

- Whole Federal Budget (FY2004) $7867.67
- HUD-Welfare Programs $129.79
- Medicaid (2003) $927.76

(“Medicaid cost $269 billion in 2003 for medical care, nursing homes and prescription drugs for the poor.” –USA Today, 3/1/2004 That’s nearly 18 times NASA’s annual budget and is money that only maintains Welfare recipients as they are without doing a thing to improve anyone’s circumstances.)

- Federal Research and Development Budget $437.82
- Space R & D (non-defense, all agencies) $33.94
- NASA’s entire budget $51.72
- Moon-Mars & Beyond (FY06 request) $6.24

NASA’s budget is only a fraction of the total Federal Research and Development budget; the rest is in other agencies. This is the funding that develops new technologies, or advances old ones to create new products that build new businesses which develop new jobs that can improve people’s circumstances.

Yet only 5.6% of the whole Federal Budget is devoted to Research and Development that will result in new technologies, new products, new companies and new high-paying jobs.

And the new Vision for Space Exploration is only a piece of that. . .

So the question you should really ask your elected officials should be this:

“Since the future of the U.S. Economy depends so much on new technologies, new products, new companies and new jobs, why is the R&D portion of the Federal Budget, especially for the new Vision for Space Exploration, so small?”

Humanity can not be bound to one planet. It needs to expand beyond the Earth as it has expanded beyond known frontiers into unknown territories ever since the human species first arrived on the planet. Someone will do it eventually; it doesn’t matter who from a human survival viewpoint, but we want the history books of the future to show that our country maintained its leadership role in continuing human expansion into the space frontier.

Research into how to sustain human life in space, on other planets and in other places considered hostile to us is really research into how our species works and what is needed to support it. This increased understanding results in huge benefits in medicine and other aspects of living. The full extent of these benefits are completely unknown and unknowable in advance because it is not possible to predict what paths creatively thinking researchers will travel.

Welfare programs are not the best way to pump up people’s income. At best, they just provide a floor to support the recipients at some minimum level. The best way to pump up an economy is with new technologies, products, companies and highly-skilled, high-paying jobs that result from the long-term pure R&D programs that only a government can afford to wait for.

Most publicly-held private (non-government) companies can’t do much long range planning, due to having to satisfy stockholders more frequently. Only totally private companies can do that — and there are many examples of their failures in recent years (Enron anyone?).

Perhaps the following facts will help your discussion with those critics who are still concerned about the costs vs. benefits of opening the space frontier:

NASA’s entire $16.5 billion FY2007 budget, if it were to be cancelled and used elsewhere:

— Would only buy 43,000 of the several MILLION homes built in this country — if the median price of a home was $350,000, or;

— Would only support 250,000 ailing seniors in an assisted-living facility — if the costs do not exceed $5000 per month.”