NASA's budget over a couple decades isn't anywhere near $1 trillion. It's a skimpy little agency, relatively speaking.

You don't think the budget will increase as they take on their biggest challenge yet, by a couple orders of magnitude?

Even the stupidest plan to get to Mars only got a price tag of half-a-trillion (over 30 years).

The same team that gave the sticker-shocking $300-500 billion price tag to the Space Exploration Initiative gave a price tag of about $30-$50 billion to a MarsDirect-style mission. Spread over 10 years, that's about 10% of NASA's budget.

Even if, incredibly, there are no huge cost overruns and the final tally is $30 billion, are you willing to pay extra taxes starting today so the money isn't borrowed from future generations who presumably would like to have their own space missions to enjoy in real time, rather than just read about them in the history as they struggle with high taxes to pay down the debt we ran up for them?

Yes.

Then kudos to you!

The average taxpayer pays NASA $55 per year.

I pay less for my Science Museum membership.

I would love to see NASA fixed (firstly) and fully funded (once its fixed).

Well you haven't paid a dime in NASA funding yet. All funding to date has been borrowed from people younger than you or not yet born. Presumably the gov't will borrow many times more to get to Mars, than it has for any previous mission.

You think that will pay for a human expedition to Mars and back?

If the US wasn't $17 trillion in debt, I could agree. Pretty sure all NASA funding to date fits into that debt amount. Since it's a "nice to have", I'd say the average taxpayer has never paid anything to NASA, not even interest on debt since we borrow to pay that.

We're already scheduled to spend a similar amount on simply maintaining our (US) nuclear deterrent. Not that I think we should abandon it or that it lacks strategic importance, but I do wonder about scale, in the same way that I wonder if NASA could find more efficient approaches.

So you're okay with paying extra taxes today so money needn't be borrowed from the kids (and their kids) for a Mars expedition?

Yeah, some, although I think that with 30 year t-bills at ~3% some of it should be financed by debt, as we're likely to develop multiple growth- (and thus revenue-) enhancing technologies over a 30 year period.

For perspective, Medicare and social security outlays over the same period are likely to exceed $50 trillion.

Okay, thanks for sharing your opinion on that. Myself, I'd rather see it paid off as costs are incurred, if we spend the money at all. If we weren't so in far in debt already (i.e. if future kids weren't so doomed), then we could take a chance on those revenue enhancements coming to fruition.

yes, and if weren't going to happen in my lifetime otherwise, 20-30k.

Wow, I applaud you for being among the very few people who can both support a space mission and be willing to pay for it!

don't take it as a personal demonstration, i mean it should be generally true for all

it's a small individual sacrifice for the most significant accomplishment yet of all known life

i can't think of anything larger or more important to support