Unfair to Compare Funding of Apollo, Shuttle Eras

摘要

In his Feb. 22 commentary ["NASA Needs a Destination," page 19], Robert Zubrin stated that "In today's dollars, NASA's average budget from 1961 to 1973 was about $18 billion per year. That is about the same as NASA's current budget." He made a similar claim in an Aug. 24, 2009, Space News commentary, and in an Aug. 5, 2009, presentation to the Augustine committee. This is a key element in his argument against NASA, but it doesn't ring true, so I did the calculation myself.