| | When you consider that the original Apollo Moon Program was 20 billion over 10 years ... 0.002 trillion per year for ten years, which would CPI/inflation and population adjust to about 0.03 trillion per year today, the payoff was well worth it.
Would microelectronics have advamced as fast or as far by today without that burst of focused national effort? Can we even calculate the global economic payback for that 0.002 trillion per year for ten years?
The argument to downshift the space program was something akin to "But we have so many problems to address right down here on earth." The Shuttle program was kind of a holding pattern, as NASA grayed, waiting for the nation to re-engage in JFK's once vision. For all its accomplishments, for the last 30 years manned flight has never been farther from earth than NYCity is from DC.
The nation never did re-engage. We are a dim, dark, small, fearful nation these days, fiddling with social networks and angsting about our free bandaids from government.
But compare JFK's 100B -- half of which was defense -- to today's 3800B. We can fairly adjust JFK's 100B for CPI/inflation (x 7.5) and population (barely x2) to 1500B today, but that still compares mind boggingly short of today's 3800B federal budget(not nearly explained by funding NASA.)
That is an extra 76 Apollo Moon programs above and beyond JFK's adjusted 1500B at the peak of the COld War...
How is that possibly explained, and more importantly, what is it that the federal gov't does today that inspires this nation for that extra 76 Apollo Moon Programs?
I asked my now 23 year old son that question a few years ago, and he just stared at me. It was a shameful moment.
It's not the pictures from Appalachia or Detroit once used to derail the nation's space program: those pictures look worse today, and all we did was replace stills with meth labs, and alcohol with crack.
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