For a very long time, NASA has been considered an innovator in both technology and space exploration, keeping the United States on the forefront of these areas. Despite its' storied history and the great accomplishments it has achieved as a government agency since its conception in 1958, NASA is not valued as much as it used to be. With the amount of monetary assistance that a program such as NASA requires from the government just to operate, the question can easily by raised of how important NASA really is to the current initiatives of the United States. This of course brings into question how NASA fits into the current government budget, which has been a topic of debate for years now, with the Funding of the agency deemed not worthwhile by some, and defended by others. The funding of NASA from the U.S. government should be kept at the same level, because space programs are being devalued by the government and public alike, parts of NASA can and should be privatized, and they should change their utilization of their funding to better match the needs of the U.S. 

The first reason as to why the US should consider keeping funding stable where it is is because of the American opinion of NASA and the space program. This is because when polled, the American people do not appear to be informed on the budget and its correlation to the actual results that they see from NASA. This is seen in a General Social Survey (GSS) conducted by the National Opinion Research Center, where Americans who participated in the survey are "consistently more likely to say that the U.S. spends too much on space exploration than too little" (Wormald) This feeds that notion that the general public doesn't value space exploration as highly as other things. We see the alternative places that people believe the government should be spending their money in a 2012 GSS survey that "Americans strongly preferred increased spending on programs closer to home, including education (76%), public health (59%), and developing alternative energy sources (59%)" (Wormald). Compared to the 20% of people who thought the government should increase spending on the space exploration of NASA, this gives you an idea of how the priorities of the American people are set. This could be partially attributed to the fact that many people only associate NASA with space exploration, and do not understand that of the half of a percent of the national budget NASA takes up, "the space exploration program accounts for roughly 22% of" (Wormald)

In the article "NASA ready to defend higher aeronautics spending", the authors give reason as to why NASA should receive the funding that is proposed in Obama's budget proposal. The first argument that they use is when they are explaining what they will say to try and get congress to approve that part of the proposal. It is that the "U.S. should take the lead in developing the next generation of civil aircraft or lose ground to international competition" (Warwick) This is arguing that the US government should fund NASA projects in order to avoid "losing ground to international competition". I do not think this argument is valid that international competition is a big factor in the determination of the space exploration budget. This is because the "international competition" that they claim we face isn't real. There is no actual competition in terms of further space exploration. This is because that space race mentality where all the most powerful super-power countries around the world were racing to try and get a manned mission to the moon first does not exist any more. With almost all major nations represented in space, whether through joint projects or ones from their specific country, they all are now in space, weakening the need for competition. All countries want to accomplish different feats of space exploration, such as deep-space travel with a manned spacecraft, or getting people to mars in anticipation of moving there due to earth's ensuing shift towards being uninhabitable. This argument is simply invalid because it overvalues the need for US space dominance, which is not greater than the need to remain fiscally sound as a nation.

While this hesitancy to spend on exploring the final frontier is prevalent within the public, the government has a more split view of the issue of spending on NASA. This is because the government will constantly maintain that they value NASA greatly and realize that it is the American way to remain on the forefront of space exploration. This mantra has been maintained by every president, with George W. Bush giving his plan for space exploration in 2004 at NASA headquarters in Washington D.C. in response to the Columbia space shuttle accident and to build up public morale about the space industry. In this speech he gives, he appeals to the people by saying that "America will "finish what it started," completing the International Space Station by 2010" (Bush) Over the rest of the speech, the president promised this and more, outlining his goals for the agency over the next 5 years. This is the same message that has been used by every president since the beginning of the space age. They claim that their administration is the one that cares the most about space exploration, and value the leaps in technological advances that the agency has accomplished for America. They build on the idea that continuing to be the best at exploring space would be the "American Way", or that staying competitive in this area is crucial for us to remain as a leader in the scientific field of exploration. The president states in this '04 address that "We choose to explore space because doing so improves our lives and lifts our national spirit. So let us continue the journey." (Bush) This is a powerful statement and full of emotion, but does he back it up and do what he says he will? In the speech, Bush promises to expand funding for his new exploration initiative, costing $12B with $1B of that being from added funding by the government. In FY(fiscal year) 2005, NASA's budget is roughly $15.6B, which does in fact grow to $18B by FY2010. This would seem to be a success for the president as he appears to completely hit the nail on the head by overachieving his goal to afford this project initiative by expanding the budget by not just 1 Billion, but by just under 2  one-half . While looking at those numbers may make it seem like the government reached their goal, that is not the case because while it has considerably grown in volume, it has not grown to reflect how the federal government budget has grown as well. This is because the NASA budget was 0.63% of the entire federal budget in FY2005 according to a 2014 report from the U.S. Office of Management and Budget, and shrunk to 0.52% by 2010 (Richard) This does not seem like a good way of backing your space industry, instead this example of the presidency doing just enough to accomplish their goals on paper without actually fully trying to assist NASA. It shows how the government maintains a facade of inspirational enthusiasm for this agency but doesn't actually value it enough to alter any other agenda for it.

The next reason for the NASA budget to be kept at the same level is because there are areas of the agency that could and should be privatized. This means that a private sector company that has the means of constructing spacecraft can be contracted by NASA to build and launch rockets into space. This is advantageous for NASA because it saves them money by eliminating the need to employ their own team to design and build the rocket while still allowing them to be involved. This is also beneficial for the agency because it reduces the risk of large losses from failed launches and projects due to the responsibility of the project not being entirely on them. Allowing NASA to continue exploring space is the most important aspect of privatizing the industry. There simply are no more American spacecraft left to do it since "the United States lost [its' domestic crew-launch capability] when the space shuttle fleet was grounded, in July 2011" (lewin) This move to ground the space shuttles was a financially driven decision by NASA to change their spending to reflect their diminished budget. It is because of this issue that we have been depending on Russian spacecraft to take American astronauts to and from the International Space Station. While it may seem that giving NASA the necessary funds to reboot the operation of the spacecraft may seem to be the easy idea, it is not feasible because the crafts are all old and weathered, having spent the last 30 years on duty. Also, just throwing more money at the agency and increasing their budget would not solve this problem as well as just allowing NASA to privately contract their rockets for their missions. This is where private contracting is implemented by the U.S. when NASA contracted two companies involved in aeronautics, innovative inventor Elon Musk's SpaceX, and the jet company Boeing, to each construct a rocket capable of domestic crew-launch. This project aims to finish in 2017 and will expand the capabilities of NASA's space exploration programs, and most importantly allow them to begin researching in this area again. It is projects like this that make the privatization of the space exploration industry a viable idea, and prove how essential it is to NASA's financial stability as well. Even in the event of failure (which is the case for many ambitious NASA projects), privatized projects are still the best option. The first privately-contracted NASA project was in 1996, when NASA funded an aeronautics technology company called Lockheed Martin to design, construct, and launch an x-33 rocket that would redefine space travel. This project was a failure, with the rocket never reaching completion. This is where the privatization comes in, as the expected losses for NASA would have been massive, but in this case they were shared with their contracted partner. In the end, "the failure of this program caused monetary losses of approximately $922 million and $357 million for NASA and Lockheed Martin, respectively" (Magno) Although this particular project did not work out in the end, not many NASA projects do, and being able to share the monetary loss for the failure represented by both organizations is what allowed NASA to remain somewhat financially sound in this situation. Allowing NASA to privatize more and contract more missions would improve the quality of the missions because of the reduced risk, as well as obviously making it easier for the agency to continue its initiative of space exploration by enabling them to outsource some of the design and work for the projects.

The last reason for the level of funding NASA receives to stay the same is because the downfalls of NASA have not been completely because of a lack of funding, but also because of the funds that they do have not being budgeted right and not being utilized properly. This is detailed by Charles F. Bolden in his scientific journal entry NASA Must Make Tough Funding Choices in which he discusses the hard choices that NASA needs to make regarding their funding budget and what to spend it on. They must decide between balancing it around throughout their various programs. These include human spaceflight, science, aeronautics, and technology development. He states that NASA executives have not been spending their money right, and should be geared toward projects that have a more guaranteed yield of results coming from them. For example, he believes that the International Space Station "should remain operational as long as it can be productive without being constrained by an arbitrary, budget-driven termination date" (Bolden) This is saying that the officials at NASA should allocate more money to the important projects that they handle, such as the International Space Station, because while they may be feeling the decrease in funding, they need to make the "tough choices" that Bolden is talking about in his article. The current situation of NASA funding may seem like it is making it hard to fund NASA, but it really is just forcing the officials to make hard decisions about where to allocate fund to. NASA has a plethora of programs that waste money, or just really do not pan out to anything profitable for the organization. Not to mention the amount of failed projects that can cause humongous losses, such as the previously-mentioned failure of the X-33 spacecraft made by Lockheed Martin when they were contracted by NASA to do so. As I also mentioned before, the cost of that was offset thankfully due to the fact that it was split between both parties, but in total still was an overall loss of about $1.3 Billion. This is a huge hit to NASA, as it is nearly 6% of the overall budget for the fiscal year lost to the failure of this one project. It is losses such as this one that put in perspective the magnitude of the decisions that these people make, but if they do not begin to make good ones and allocate their resources to the most important fields of their industry, they will dwindle away all their remaining funding with little to nothing to show for it.

When considering the other projects that NASA could be working on instead of throwing money into space exploration, I look to the article Fear of the Unknown by Lee Billings. This article is about a NASA project to find Near Earth Objects (NEOs) and the fight for funding of an infrared space telescope to find them called NEOCam. These NEOs are really giant asteroids that are coming or are projected to come close to the Earth during their orbit around the Sun. This is important to know so that we can deter or destroy these asteroids to avoid a collision. I thought that this was very interesting because even though these NEOs were considered enough of a threat for NASA to be congressionally mandated to catalog them in 2010, for some reason their goal of using this NEOCam telescope to complete a database of all NEOs by 2020 is not recognized as important enough to be government funded. This is ridiculous because of not only the importance of this project, but due to the pitfalls of the other projects that NASA has experienced recently. The failed projects in the space exploration aspect of NASA has given them a big financial hit to take, and with the budget getting tighter and no real evidence of results from them, it would make sense to put their money into something that we know can make a difference.

In conclusion, the funding of NASA is the responsibility of the United States, but it is not the place of our government to overspend on an agency like this. That is why the best course of action for the U.S. regarding funding would be for it to remain at the same level. This is due to the balance of public disinterest and feigned attention of the government, the misuse of funds given to NASA, and the potential that privatization brings to future missions. These factors all point towards the issues that NASA faces, and the influence these issues have on the agency's future. This is fate of this agency, hanging in limbo between being valued for it's achievements when it produces good things, and being treated as a novelty government agency when it does not. While there are no guarantees in the space industry, these changes to the way NASA is funded and handles their funding would keep NASA as a valued agency for the future.

