Definitely. I've been in a number of discussions (read: arguments) about NASA's state of funding -- with some preferring to claim Trump has raised NASA's funding for space exploration substantially.
It takes 5 minutes on Google to find historic data of % of spending budget. To get to the moon ("and the other things") Kennedy/LBJ-era funding was between 1.19% and 4.7% if I recall correctly. During Obama's admin I think it reached a low of 0.46% after the recession. Trump raised that to 0.5x% I believe. Not exactly a windfall on NASA's scale...
I know I'm using relative figures here, but maybe somebody who's more informed can assess the reliability of a % of budgetary spending's impact on r&d in these cases vs. hard dollar figures which are probably a bit easier. USA budgets are not my strength. I just want to see Mars happen ("and the other things").
It takes 5 minutes on Google to find historic data of % of spending budget. To get to the moon ("and the other things") Kennedy/LBJ-era funding was between 1.19% and 4.7% if I recall correctly. During Obama's admin I think it reached a low of 0.46% after the recession. Trump raised that to 0.5x% I believe. Not exactly a windfall on NASA's scale...
I know I'm using relative figures here, but maybe somebody who's more informed can assess the reliability of a % of budgetary spending's impact on r&d in these cases vs. hard dollar figures which are probably a bit easier. USA budgets are not my strength. I just want to see Mars happen ("and the other things").