NASA Budget vs Military Budget Infographic

I want to go to Mars. No. Really. When I was a kid, I was pretty sure I was going to be an astronaut or aerospace engineer. This was partly the result of seeing 2001: A Space Odyssey at the age of seven, which led me to study some pretty fancy math before I was ten. By the age of eleven or so, I could measure an object, figure out its drag coefficient  , and tell you how high it could go on X amount of thrust. My family basically lived in terror and amazement, always watching my rocket launches, but secretly wondering when I would weaponize them or otherwise bring ruin to the family farm by way of some tragic accident. But by the time I was a teen, the US space program was fizzling into the tin can in the sky called Skylab, followed by the arguably ill-conceived Space Shuttle. By the time I was in my teens, it was clear that there was no way in the world we’d be making regular visits in luxury passenger shuttles to one of those huge circular space stations in orbit by the year 2001. So my life veered off in other directions. But the passion for space exploration has always remained. And now that the space program seems to have new juice from the private sector, it looks like I would even stand a chance of being able to go to Mars if I wanted! Anyway, in spite of my frustrations with the way the space program evolved, I still always thought it was freakin’ awesome, and will vigorously defend any money the US government flings its way. So today, when I got in one of those pointless debates about defense spending vs. NASA spending with a friend, I briefly distracted him with a debate feint about how many golf courses the US military operates. Then I took about thirty minutes to whip up the graphic below:

(Click image for an even larger version)