50% for the military? All the figures I can find say it's 16% of federal spending.
Edit: As others have pointed out. OP may have been suggesting we redirect 50% of the military budget to space not that the military budget is 50% of the national.
Entitlement programs like SS and Medicare/Medicaid are raised on a separate tax (you can see it on your paystub), and have zero discretion in how they're spent. It's determined by statute and is automatic, not part of the budget process, and the money never really mixes with the rest of the federal budget.
If you take those out, and take out interest payments which we also don't have much choice in, military spending is 54% of the money that's actually at issue when Congress makes budget decisions.
https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0177/6150/t/2/assets/Death...
Astronomy funding stagnates when its about rocks and geology. Bring real evidence of aliens into the mix and you've defined humanities focus for the next century.
We could develop our own alien life right on Earth within that timeframe.
E.g. Breakthrough Starshot can get us to many exoplanets within 20-30 years: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breakthrough_Starshot
It is ~4 ly away. If you're willing to go ~10 ly, you get 6 more stars to look at. And it gets far worse from there.
So that's 7 or more planets. That's many.
I agree with the text of your message; it just isn't an appropriate reply to what I said. In fact if such a thing was discovered I'd say all bets are off in terms of the response.