In a recent discussion of Bezos's Blue Origin, a commenter made the point that
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[...] technology developed for space (1957-present) has made huge improvements in ground based life.
At its absolute peak the Apollo program consumed 4.4% of the US federal government budget.
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This was used as an argument that we should all be glad that Bezos is diverting some resources toward escaping Earth instead of saving it. That only makes sense if a comparable amount of money is being spent preventing climate change. In 2018, the federal budget was $4.109 trillion, and we don't know what the federal government spent on preventing climate change, but it was probably less than $15.0 billion, or 0.3 % of the budget. In other words, we're not making a serious effort to prevent climate change.
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[ 3.0 ms ] story [ 12.2 ms ] thread>>> [...] technology developed for space (1957-present) has made huge improvements in ground based life. At its absolute peak the Apollo program consumed 4.4% of the US federal government budget. <<<
This was used as an argument that we should all be glad that Bezos is diverting some resources toward escaping Earth instead of saving it. That only makes sense if a comparable amount of money is being spent preventing climate change. In 2018, the federal budget was $4.109 trillion, and we don't know what the federal government spent on preventing climate change, but it was probably less than $15.0 billion, or 0.3 % of the budget. In other words, we're not making a serious effort to prevent climate change.