International Space Spending

It will not come as a surprise to most of you to learn that many countries have ambitious space programs. This report (Guardian - Global space spending up 11 pct to $251 billion) follows the money and finds that the U.S. enjoys a sizable lead:

Revenues from worldwide government and private spending on space projects rose to $251 billion last year, up 11 percent from 2006 despite slowing growth in many countries, an analysis released on Tuesday said. [...]Combined U.S. defense-related spending totaled $45 billion, or 71 percent of U.S. government space spending. [...] China's civilian space spending may have totaled $1.5 billion in 2007, the Space Foundation said, calling this a conservative estimate. [...] Russian space spending rose 49 percent to $1.32 billion in 2007 from a year earlier, driven largely by increased investment in Russia's GLONASS global navigation satellite system, the analysis said.

Comments

[www.actionforspace.com]

As the Pie gets bigger, the US share of the pie gets smaller. It seems like more and more people are voicing their frustration with this though. We have to put the legislators feet to the fire to get them to give NASA more money!

[Joel]

Thanks for your comment. I agree, we need to get more people advocating for a NASA budget increase.

The report I linked to though wasn't very informative. I noticed after I posted it that it didn't fairly compare international spending on space, as it contrasted civilian space funding with defense and military funding, but compared countries for which such data (on the defense/military side) is lacking. Still, it's good to see that the overall global trend is for greater funding of space projects (military and scientific).

I worry though that the U.S. will follow the Sputnik precedent and only get serious about the next stage of human space exploration after other countries plant flags on the Moon or Mars.