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| ▲ | AceJohnny2 an hour ago | parent | next [-] | | 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. | | |
| ▲ | walrus01 2 minutes ago | parent [-] | | 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. |
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| ▲ | whatever1 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Why is the space force budget relevant? The US has had spy satellites decades before the clown made the space force for his family and friends to feast. | | |
| ▲ | r3trohack3r an hour ago | parent | next [-] | | We have organizations chartered for land, air, and sea superiority. It seems fairly reasonable to have an organization chartered for space superiority, instead of leaving that adhoc across the other forces. | | |
| ▲ | Loughla an hour ago | parent [-] | | Air? I know it's splitting hairs, but there was already a branch with much experience of launching and flying things. | | |
| ▲ | jayGlow 25 minutes ago | parent [-] | | every branch has experience launching and flying things but we still have an air force. |
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| ▲ | jandrewrogers 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | The Space Force has existed for decades before Trump. It was part of the Air Force and is still organized under that Department. They have been slowly increasing its independence as a branch of the military for a long time. It isn't much different than how the Air Force was eventually carved out of the Army Air Corps. | | | |
| ▲ | dmix 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | From google: > NASA's total enacted budget for fiscal year 1996 was approximately $13.9 billion > a 1996 bipartisan commission report noted that the NRO possessed "by far the largest budget of any intelligence agency," and contemporary experts track the broader military space budget at roughly $10 billion to $11 billion annually for the NRO alone So pretty similar budgets. The NRO imaging lens used in Nancy Grace was manufactured in 1999 but planning started in 1996. |
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