I imagine designing and building space craft and paying top scientists a wage costs A LOT of money.
So do government programs make money or does it just use up tax dollars without much return?
Also how does a company like SpaceX, for example, make their money?
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A government space program isn’t there to make money. It’s to further science and for the betterment of mankind. Even then both Nasa and Space X do make money by lifting satellites into space. Launching a Satellite is very expensive for the person that wants the satellite up there.
The way NASA and SpaceX make money, is the same really. Both will launch satellites into space. Someone is paying for the launch of the satellites, and it is quite a hefty price tag to have things launched into space.
SpaceX is actually reasonably cheap as far as that is concerned, but the cost for launching a Falcon 9 is still close to 70 million USD. The customers who want their satellites in space pay for that.
Government space programs do not make any direct income. They get their money from the government and is funded entirely through tax money. However a lot of the research and education done as part of the space program helps build the economy which again increases the amount of taxes that can be collected. So they are generally considered a net positive for the national budget.
Companies like SpaceX, Orbital sciences, Boeing, Lockheed Martin, etc. are making their money by providing launch services to both the government and private. They will use a lot of the research done by NASA and the other space agencies to design and build launch rockets that gets sold on the open market. It is not uncommon for NASA to pay for the design and testing of projects they need but which would not have been completed otherwise, primary examples being the development of rockets and spaceships to carry astronauts to the ISS. But the same rockets are used for private actors to launch commercial satellites into orbit as well as space tourism.
A government space program isn’t there to make money. It’s to further science and for the betterment of mankind. Even then both Nasa and Space X do make money by lifting satellites into space. Launching a Satellite is very expensive for the person that wants the satellite up there.
Government space programs do not make any direct income. They get their money from the government and is funded entirely through tax money. However a lot of the research and education done as part of the space program helps build the economy which again increases the amount of taxes that can be collected. So they are generally considered a net positive for the national budget.
Companies like SpaceX, Orbital sciences, Boeing, Lockheed Martin, etc. are making their money by providing launch services to both the government and private. They will use a lot of the research done by NASA and the other space agencies to design and build launch rockets that gets sold on the open market. It is not uncommon for NASA to pay for the design and testing of projects they need but which would not have been completed otherwise, primary examples being the development of rockets and spaceships to carry astronauts to the ISS. But the same rockets are used for private actors to launch commercial satellites into orbit as well as space tourism.
The way NASA and SpaceX make money, is the same really. Both will launch satellites into space. Someone is paying for the launch of the satellites, and it is quite a hefty price tag to have things launched into space.
SpaceX is actually reasonably cheap as far as that is concerned, but the cost for launching a Falcon 9 is still close to 70 million USD. The customers who want their satellites in space pay for that.
NASA provides massive indirect boosts to the economy. They don’t make money through direct sales of anything. From a purely economic standpoint, NASA’s benefit is in pioneering entirely new industries. Their data and research goes to the public domain for a reason.
You can just take SpaceX as an example. SpaceX would not exist if it were not for NASA. NASA was responsible for shoving enough money in their direction to build the Falcon 9 rockets. Without NASA, SpaceX would have gone bankrupt years ago. SpaceX also draws most of their engineers from NASA. In fact, that brain drain has been a huge contributing factor to recent issues at JPL and their delays in recent projects.
Another example was the Apollo program which by itself supported huge amounts of high tech industries. For several years NASA basically bought the majority of transistors made, giving a huge boost to the advancement and adoption of transistors and computing technology.
And that’s to say nothing about what NASA has done for the aeronautical space. Passenger jets rely on a huge amount of technology and advancements that NASA drove. Be they high efficiency jet engines or wing designs or the testing/design capabilities that Boeing relies on. Pretty much all of them were pioneered by NASA and taken up by the private industry later on.
This is what people mean when they say that NASA generates massive returns on investment. Government spending on NASA ultimately drives private industry by pioneering new and risky technology and providing the knowledge gained to the public. As a result, we get numerous multi-billion dollar industries that employ a lot of skilled workers. And all of these pay taxes to the government.
NASA provides massive indirect boosts to the economy. They don’t make money through direct sales of anything. From a purely economic standpoint, NASA’s benefit is in pioneering entirely new industries. Their data and research goes to the public domain for a reason.
You can just take SpaceX as an example. SpaceX would not exist if it were not for NASA. NASA was responsible for shoving enough money in their direction to build the Falcon 9 rockets. Without NASA, SpaceX would have gone bankrupt years ago. SpaceX also draws most of their engineers from NASA. In fact, that brain drain has been a huge contributing factor to recent issues at JPL and their delays in recent projects.
Another example was the Apollo program which by itself supported huge amounts of high tech industries. For several years NASA basically bought the majority of transistors made, giving a huge boost to the advancement and adoption of transistors and computing technology.
And that’s to say nothing about what NASA has done for the aeronautical space. Passenger jets rely on a huge amount of technology and advancements that NASA drove. Be they high efficiency jet engines or wing designs or the testing/design capabilities that Boeing relies on. Pretty much all of them were pioneered by NASA and taken up by the private industry later on.
This is what people mean when they say that NASA generates massive returns on investment. Government spending on NASA ultimately drives private industry by pioneering new and risky technology and providing the knowledge gained to the public. As a result, we get numerous multi-billion dollar industries that employ a lot of skilled workers. And all of these pay taxes to the government.
It depend what you are talking about.
If it’s for simply exploration of space, then it’s usually governmental programs that will pay for it through taxes. It doesn’t make money, the end goal is to explore space, collecting data, making scientific research, etc. This can be done by the Space Agency, or they could pay a company to provide the services to achieve their goal, in that case the company will make money because the government pay them to do it.
Then you have the military. They have things like GPS, communication and spy satellites. In that case, they will pay a company to build and send their equipment just like they would do with a tank or a fighter jet.
Finally, you have purely commercial stuff. Satellite are used in communication, weather forecasting, television signal, internet, etc. Many stuff we use everyday need satellites to work and so the company that provide that service had to pay a space company to build and send that satellite in orbit and then that service provider recuperate their cost by selling their service to consumer.
NASA provides massive indirect boosts to the economy. They don’t make money through direct sales of anything. From a purely economic standpoint, NASA’s benefit is in pioneering entirely new industries. Their data and research goes to the public domain for a reason.
You can just take SpaceX as an example. SpaceX would not exist if it were not for NASA. NASA was responsible for shoving enough money in their direction to build the Falcon 9 rockets. Without NASA, SpaceX would have gone bankrupt years ago. SpaceX also draws most of their engineers from NASA. In fact, that brain drain has been a huge contributing factor to recent issues at JPL and their delays in recent projects.
Another example was the Apollo program which by itself supported huge amounts of high tech industries. For several years NASA basically bought the majority of transistors made, giving a huge boost to the advancement and adoption of transistors and computing technology.
And that’s to say nothing about what NASA has done for the aeronautical space. Passenger jets rely on a huge amount of technology and advancements that NASA drove. Be they high efficiency jet engines or wing designs or the testing/design capabilities that Boeing relies on. Pretty much all of them were pioneered by NASA and taken up by the private industry later on.
This is what people mean when they say that NASA generates massive returns on investment. Government spending on NASA ultimately drives private industry by pioneering new and risky technology and providing the knowledge gained to the public. As a result, we get numerous multi-billion dollar industries that employ a lot of skilled workers. And all of these pay taxes to the government.
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