Mesmerizing, Ain't It?
NASA's 2010 Fiscal Year budget = $18.7B and cancellation of the constellation program and end of the space shuttle.
According to budget documents obtained from the Government Printing Office, the national budget for 2007 totals about $2.784 trillion. At $16.143 billion, spending on NASA accounts for 0.58% of this. Compare this to NASA's allocation during the mid-1960s when, despite the pressures of the war effort in Vietnam and President Johnson's Great Society programs, NASA spending made up more than five percent of the federal budget.
For every $1 the federal government spends on NASA, it spends $98 on social programs. In other words, if we cut spending on social programs by a mere one percent, we could very nearly double NASA's budget.
And that was before the current president proposed his current plan, which is 3.8 Trillion dollars for 2011, including a one year further deficit of 1.85 trillion, cumulative to over eleven trillion dollars by 2020, conservatively.
NASA's budget of approx $18 billion, divided by 3.8 trillion dollars = .0047. Less than zero point five percent.
So for those who think we need to be "taking more care of things on this planet," there are your numbers for proportional consideration.