Expert: Ed - 6/1/2004

Question
Dear Ed I am student at Tesel center in Saint Mary's university in Halifax, Canada.I have a research about is it worth while to spend money for finding life in universe or not.My question is How Much Money Does NASA Spend for Space Research untill Now?and also How Much Money Does NASA Spend Every Singel Year.
Thank you very much Ed  

Answer
Dear Hamed,
This is a very interesting question.  I personally think it is worth spending money to find life in the universe, but some people disagree.

AllExperts doesn't really like it when we do peoples homework, but if you look at these links, I can make your homework MUCH easier for you to do yourself.

First of all -- you are interested in money.  This is a very nice website to help you put NASA's budget in perspective.  It is a few years old, but it is still useful to look at.
http://www.richardb.us/nasa.html

Here is a terrific website, with lots and lots and lots of helpful information about NASA's yearly budget.
http://www.nasa.gov/about/budget/

NASA spends money in the search for extraterrestrial life in various ways.  The most famous project in this area of study has been SETI, the Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence.  Their budget is usually about 4 million dollars per year.  NOTE******  SETI has been private since 1993.  Here are websites about their budget:
http://www.zeitlin.net/OpenSETI/Budget.html

There are some other projects related to the search for life on other planets.  For example, many scientists still have hope that we will find some kind of very simple life on Mars, or on Jupiter's moons Europa, Callisto, or Ganymede, or on Saturn's moon Titan.  Any probe that is being considered, or that has already been sent to any of these places, should be considered to be searching for life (at least partly!).  Probes sent to these destinations will have many other important scientific goals, of course, but the search for life is a significant part of the reason for sending probes to these locations.
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/jimo/

This is an interesting website that you might enjoy.  The Cassini-Huygens probe was launched in 1997, and it will arrive in the area of Saturn (and Titan) in just a few weeks, in July 2004.  It will look for signs of life.
http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/overview/index.cfm
http://www.bbc.co.uk/science/space/exploration/missiontimeline/cassini-huygens.s...

Both the Cassini-Huygens probe and the JIMO probe cost tens of millions of dollars.  You also need to consider the salaries of hundreds of scientists all over the world, who will work on interpreting the data from these probes.

I hope this is helpful to you.  Keep looking up!
--Ed