According to The Space Review, a recent study indicates that the average citizen is clueless when it comes to how much money the government allocates to NASA. The median estimate was a far out 24%. Thankfully the percentage of the United States budget earmarked for NASA is only 0.58%, but that is still 16.25 billion dollars more than it should be receiving from the standpoint of those who think NASA should be privatized.

When told how much NASA actually received in comparison to his bloated guess, one survey participant responded by saying, “No wonder we haven’t gone anywhere!” Well, money is not the reason we haven’t gone anywhere. One of my friends that works at NASA once told me that each year he had mandatory Microsoft Office training. There are many past examples we can cite showing that throwing money at a problem doesn’t necessarily fix it. Maybe if NASA could handle the funds they get better, they wouldn’t find themselves complaining about the lack of budget support.

NASA’s images is also wanning with the American public who don’t see its benefits. They view this a communication problem with the public. The two top responses when asked how NASA could gain a better standing with the public were:

“(1) NASA could become more relevant by better communicating what it does and the benefits of those activities; and (2) NASA could become more relevant by actually engaging in activities that are perceived to be of value to respondents—including activities that involve members of the public directly, particularly young persons.”

Privatizing NASA would force them to do what all successful companies need to: produce something that benefits the public and get the public to recognize that. “The majority of respondents in a recent national survey cannot identify specific programs or endeavors other than a general identification of NASA with space.” Maybe this is in part because they aren’t producing anything that is benefiting the public. Finding life in outer-space doesn’t necessarily benefit me. Private space programs such as the X-Prize have already proven successful. Removing government funding of NASA and making it a private company would increase incentive for other companies to enter the field and innovate, creating a boom in the space industry that can only put us light-years ahead of where we are now in our search of the unknown.