Budget of NASA - Public Perception

Public Perception

As with most projects and public and government funded programs and business the will and opinions of the people can have a major effect on the future of those projects and businesses. As Abraham Lincoln once said "With public sentiment, nothing can fail; without it nothing can succeed." NASA is one of the major government funded programs that is under close scrutiny by the public. The budget of NASA tends to fluctuate with the public opinion and previous failures and successes that NASA has had. During the mid to late-1960's was the highest NASA has seen with it being 4.41% of the U.S budget. With the near disaster of Apollo 13 in the early 1970s the budget of NASA took a turn for the worse and started on a steady decline till it was about 1% of the U.S budget from 1970-1990. When the crash of the Space Shuttle Columbia occurred in 2003 the budget for NASA dropped below 0.75% of the U.S budget and is below 0.5% in the current year (2012). The American public perceives the NASA budget as commanding a much larger share of the federal budget than it in fact does. A 1997 poll reported that Americans had an average estimate of 20% for NASA's share of the federal budget, far higher than the actual 0.5% to under 1% that has been maintained throughout the late '90s and first decade of the 2000s. It is estimated that most Americans spent less than $9 on NASA through personal income tax in 2009.