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NASA 2018 budget is $20.7B. It is not in any way "second after military".

NIH 2018 budget is $37B, NSF is $7.8B. DOD budget just for R&D and test/evaluation is $88B.

At least there is the benefit of DOD tech trickling down to NASA tech at some point.

So, 3rd behind military and NIH then?

No, no, no. I just picked a couple of numbers of relevant research-related agencies as a general comparative. ("This is is the kind of league NASA is in.") Other comparatives might be DOE, NOAA, USGS, NIST.

The federal budget is about $4000B. Discretionary spending is about $1200B. NASA is so far down in the noise of this that it's not funny (20B/1200B ~ 1.7%).

As an example, Federal highway spending (not state) is $44B.

Health and Human Services was $1.7 Trillion, Social Security was $1.1 Trillion, Defense was $1.1 Trillion, NASA is pretty far down the list (~19th), at $24 Billion, .35% of budget:

https://www.usaspending.gov/#/explorer/agency

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