Putting NASA's Budget in Perspective

(Unless otherwise indicated, the dollar figures cited in this webpage were obtained from The World Almanac and Book of Facts 2000, World Almanac Books, PRIMEDIA Reference Inc., 1999, ISBN 0-88687-847-0.)

The federal government spent roughly $14 billion (B) on NASA in fiscal year 1999. That's a lot of money! But what does that mean? How much is $14B? For most folks $14B is merely an abstract concept.

This webpage aims to put NASA's budget in perspective by comparing this $14B figure with other governmental and private expenditures in the United States.

For example, in fiscal year (FY) 1999, total federal expenditures were $1,699,217 million (M) -- approximately $1.7 trillion! NASA's budget of $14B, thus, represented only about 0.8% of total federal expenditures during FY '99. In fact, since 1975 NASA's budget has varied only between 0.7% and 1.0% of total federal expenditures. NASA's highest ever share of total federal expenditures was 5.5%, which occurred in 1966. (Click here to see a graph illustrating NASA's share of federal expenditures for the past 40 years.)

Many other interesting comparisons can be made:

• Microsoft's corporate revenues in 1998 were roughly the same as NASA's budget that year.

• NASA's budget is roughly the same size as the budgets of each of the following states: Alabama, Connecticut, Kentucky, Louisiana, Missouri and Tennessee. 

• The federal government spends over 30 times as much money on Social Security as it does on NASA. 

• Americans spent over 19 times as much at restaurants in 1997 as the federal government spent on NASA that year. 

• NASA's budget represents approximately 0.2% of U.S. Gross Domestic Product.

What follows are a set of tables further illustrating how much -- or how little -- the federal government spends on NASA. Note that these comparisons do not necessarily imply a cause-effect relationship between the governmental or private expenditure in question and NASA's budget. These comparisons are meant merely to illustrate the size of NASA's budget.

Table 2 -- NASA's budget compared to various consumer expenditures

1997 data -- latest data available

Explanatory Notes 

The blue row near the top, illustrating NASA's data, is provided for reference purposes. Using consumer expenditures on groceries as an example . . . . Consumers as a whole spent about $494 B on groceries in 1997 (2nd column). NASA's budget, of about $14 B, was thus about 3% the size of what all consumers spent on groceries that year (3rd column). Put another way, consumers spent over 34 times as much money on groceries as they did on NASA* (4th column). Put yet another way, for every dollar the federal government happened to spend on NASA in 1997, consumers happened to spend $34.32 on groceries (5th column).