Space or Pizza?

This is an unlikely comparison if I ever saw one. According to ex-NASA Administer Mike Griffin, the US spends more money on pizza in a year than it does on the US space agency. If you thought that was funny, the best has yet to come…

…polls have concluded that most US citizens believe NASA receives 24% of the annual $3 trillion federal budget. In actuality, NASA receives… wait for it… less than 1% ($18 billion).

Now stand up, and stop rolling around on the floor laughing hysterically. No wonder people get so pissed with NASA when they think 24% of the national annual budget is invested into the exploration of space! No guys, 1%. Is that really too much to pay for the advancement of science, exploration, technology and human ingenuity? Fancy donating few percent of your annual pizza budget to NASA?

“What we do is huge, and we do it for chump change – less than the annual market for pizza,” Griffin said earlier in the week during a New York presentation to aerospace businessmen. The annual US market for pizza is $27 billion.

$27 billion? Wow.

I’ve always liked Griffin. He was a pretty strong leader of NASA and he’s a tireless manned space exploration advocate. He was also instrumental in the creation of the Commercial Orbital Transportation Services (COTS), thus stimulating the private sector to start pushing into space, carrying out NASA contracts to the International Space Station.

When the NASA budget is being dwarfed by the annual sales of a product consisting of a doughy base and three toppings, I can’t help but think commercial space options are the way forward…

Source: AL.com