Thread

1. Almondsetat · 1790809198 · focus · HN ↗

   The incredible and futuristic technologies the US managed to deploy decades before the competition reminds me of the story of how the NRO gifted NASA a couple of their old decommissioned satellites in 2012 and they turned out to be basically upgraded Hubble telescopes pointed at earth. The US from the 90s to the 2000s had multiple Hubble-level telescopes just for spying while NASA was fighting for scraps to study the entire cosmos.

   1. corvad · 1790809683 · focus · HN ↗

      I mean NASA's budget was/is minuscule in comparison to defense spending so I am not surprised.

      1. deepsun · 1790810217 · focus · HN ↗

         How? NASA budget is around 20-30bn in recent years, same scale as US Space Force department budget (26bn in recent years, 40bn in 2026). Comparable, but not minuscule.

         1. AceJohnny2 · 1790814268 · focus · HN ↗

            Just to spell it out:

            > in comparison

            The total 2026 US Defense budget is 1.06 Trillion dollars, or ~1,060 Billion dollars. NASA's 2026 budget is 24.5 Billion dollars, or 2% as much as the defense budget.

            You chose to single out the Space Force, which has the smallest budget of the 5 branches of the US military. For contrast, the Navy's budget alone is 235 Billion $, close to 10x NASA.

            For further comparison, the R&D budget of a single private company, Apple, was $34B in 2025.

            1. walrus01 · 1790817775 · focus · HN ↗

               It's hard to say specifically that the exact figure of the Space Force budget is the entirety of what the US military spends on "space" annually. Additional large amounts of funds will be committed through programs which are under the umbrella of the NRO or NSA or NGA (aka NGIA) agency budgets.
            2. deepsun · 1790830952 · focus · HN ↗

               But why do you compare all the defense budget (e.g. pensions) with NASA? What's the point?

               I propose to compare aerospace with aerospace.

               1. AceJohnny2 · 1790879164 · focus · HN ↗

                  For one thing, because the parent you were responding to did not make that distinction, and it wasn't clear why you chose to make it. For another thing, limiting US defense space activity spending to just the Space Force budget is naive. All departments of the military operate space activities, and have not and will not hand all of that over to the Space Force (see also: military intelligence vs CIA). We can't know the exact budgetary amounts of each department, and then there's the NRO (National Reconnaissance Office, managing space-based spying), infamous for donating [1] its obsolete telescopes to NASA, which were of comparable performance to Hubble.

                  [1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;2012_National_Reconnaissance_Office_space_telescope_donation_to_NASA" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;2012_National_Reconnaissance_O...

Unofficial Hacker News client; not affiliated with Y Combinator.