Can Manned Spaceflight Save the Economy?

Barry asks: "Driving home last night I was listening to a particularly goofy AM talk station. Just before the syndicated UFO talk show 'Strange Days... Indeed' came on, the discussion turned to the Mars Rovers and George Bush's newfound love of space exploration. The interesting thought was that a large number of American political leaders were about to join Bush in endorsing a new manned space program because it would generate 'millions of jobs'. Given that manufacturing jobs are being shipped offshore, and high tech jobs are following, this almost made sense. A primarily unemployed population could mean big trouble. So I am wondering how many people were employed during the height of NASA's glory days, and what kind of economic impact would we expect if a similar program - a Mars mission for example - were launched today?"

Comments

Yes, it's the broken window falacy.

[GlenRaphael]

Or as Dave Barry puts it:

"See, when the government spends money, it creates jobs; whereas when the money is left in the hands of taxpayers, God only knows what they do with it. Bake it into pies, probably. Anything to avoid creating jobs."

It's nuts to assume that throwing money at some new boondoggle will help the economy. Yeah, throwing money into space might employ people. Or alternately, you could employ a lot of people in the hole-digging industry if the government simply funded a giant industry to dig holes and fill them up again. Why not do that? See the parent poster's link.