NASA used to be one of the best funded departments of the United States. Now today it's budget is less than (around $18) $20 billion. That may be a lot of money but space research and exploration is very expensive. Curiosity costed over $2 billion. If there 2012 budget was $17 billion they would have spent 11% of their entire budget on that mission. Now if you include all costs operating costs,bills, r&d, prototyping, and etc. Curiosity could have costed well over its $2+ billion price tag. NASA needs more funding. In 2017 I propose to raise their budget to $35 billion. Then after that every two years increase there funding by 12%. If we do this the benefits are innumerable simply because we don't know what NASA will find or discover in space or new technologies. Can we afford not to?



