Is NASA's budget too small for a Moon program?
Data from The Planetary Society suggest that the space agency could be underfunded for its objectives
Dear readers,
For this edition, DaNumbers explores an under-reported issue (at least on this side of the Atlantic Ocean): the costs of the American Space Program. Using data from The Planetary Society, I tried to figure out the problem with NASA after two failed launch attempts of the Artemis I mission. The problem, data suggest, could be easier to solve than it looks: it is, simply, money.
BRUSSELS -- NASA failed to launch the Artemis I mission twice. Despite the efforts of Kennedy Space Center’s crews, the 111-meter-tall SLS rocket didn’t leave the launchpad because of technical glitches. Although the issues of the Artemis program were broadly discussed in the press, the real problem NASA is facing is not just a U.S. Congress-designed program but, more importantly, a chronic budget deficit that forces the American space agency to operate many different programs without focus on a specific policy item. Looking at budget data, one argues if NASA and the U.S. government are serious about going back to the Moon in the first place.
Although NASA does not publish its financial statements in an open format, The Planetary Society offers a handy Google Sheet-based dataset that allows multi-year comparisons and inflation-adjusted estimations of how much NASA costs. One good metric to understand the relevance of NASA over time is how much of the federal budget goes to the space agency. How relevant is NASA? The following chart answers.
The above chart shows the share of federal spending by NASA, with annotations about significant events in the U.S. manned space program. The chart already tells some uncomfortable truths. The first is that, in the ‘60s, the budget of NASA was 4 percent of the Federal spending, whereas, in 2021, it was only 0.3 percent.
The impact of disasters like the Challenger or Columbia is debatable. On the one hand, it looks like the 1986 disaster put the space program higher on the agenda. After the Columbia disaster, though, space lost relevance in the U.S. budget, starting a declining trend partially reversed only in 2021. This chart offers no information about what this decline means for NASA. The following will explain the point better.
Here we see how much the NASA budget changed every year. The chart shows how much momentum NASA gained in the ‘60s, with a lack of enthusiasm at the beginning of the following decade. Despite a new, theoretically exciting program, Skylab, NASA failed to grow its budget significantly, and, after the inception of the Space Shuttle program, the NASA overall budget remained constant in 2021 U.S. dollars terms.
Positive variations are evident in 1987, one year after the Challenger fell into pieces at launch. The NASA budget shrunk immediately afterward, though. The 2003 Columbia disaster failed to ignite a wave of interest in the fate of the U.S. space program. George W. Bush announced the Constellation program in 2005. The following administrations failed to launch any crewed deep space missions. Slight budgetary increases were posted right after SpaceX's first commercial crew flight to the ISS.
The question that arises from the data is how serious the U.S. is about getting back to the Moon. Data, so far, say that the agency was the hostage of what the U.S. Congress gave it in the budget. This is highlighted because NASA rarely gets more funding than the White House requests. As the following chart shows, this is so rare that it did not happen, even during the Apollo hey-days.
Once more, data show how important was the Challenger disaster of 1986. In 1987 NASA got 35.6 percent more than the White House asked for. There are plus signs scattered over the last two decades, between 3 and 9 percent of the demand. The years when the commercial services started transporting astronauts and goods to the International Space Station saw the U.S. Congress giving slightly more money than requested. In 2021 and 2022, COVID-19 and other priorities distracted money from space. In 1959, NASA received 22.4 percent less than it requested.
The data do not always offer a grim picture. One of the possible interpretations of the data is that Looking at this data is that the American civilian space agency and lawmakers found a modus vivendi with unwritten rules and predictable outcomes. What does it mean? The following chart will answer.
In 1959, in 2021 U.S. dollars, the NASA appropriation was 58.7 billion. The following year it was 58.4. After, it did not move beyond the 20-30 billion range after 1990. In particular, the NASA budgets following 1990 speak of an established federal agency that knows more or less how much money it needs to work and, more importantly, what D.C. can give in return.
The comparison with the Apollo program is excruciating. In 1969, the year of the Moon landing, in 2020 U.S. dollars, the expenses for the Apollo program were 34.1 billion dollars. How does that compare to the current situation? The following chart explains.
Here DaNumbers shows the NASA major programs as aggregated by the Planetary Society. Data show that NASA, for 2022, appropriated 7.6 billion for the Science Missions Directorate. For deep-space human flight 6.8. The chart also shows that Low-Earth orbit operations still have a firm place in the money NASA appropriates at around 4 billion. The appropriation for human exploration is growing as LEO operations decline.
Data suggest that NASA is a delicate ecosystem where the budget has to be stable and where different programs compete for funding against each other. Science saw its appropriation increase in the last decade, whereas human spaceflight-related activities seemed stable in their overall budget. Is it the case? The following chart will give more hints on that.
Here, DaNumbers calculated the share of the money that goes for the extensive seven programs as identified by The Planetary Society since 2008. Here we see that NASA became a Swiss Army knife for civilian space exploration without much clarity on the mission it must run. For example, science constantly occupies almost one-third of the NASA allocation.
The chart also represents a grim reality regarding human spaceflight. Although the numbers support the notion that NASA is spending around 45 percent of its allocation on human spaceflight, it looks that the LEO and deep space programs are pitted against one another. Even assuming that NASA will leave Low Earth Orbit to commercial operators, the fact that LEO missions still represent 17 percent of the budget might show that the Moon is not the number one priority for the U.S. space program.
NASA and the American space policymakers are at a crossroads now: they can decide to be serious about their Moon program and unleash investments or risk lagging behind the competition. It is no longer technology, human capital, or testing problem: it is more about the political will to send people on the Moon again and give NASA the money it needs. Otherwise, the U.S. space program will be only a mockery of what it was more than 60 years ago.