President-elect Donald Trump’s administration should double NASA’s budget in the coming years and make plans for a human return to the moon and Mars, according to billionaire space entrepreneur Robert Bigelow.
Bigelow called Trump’s election an “early Christmas present for the country and for NASA” and called for the new president to pour money into the space program. The billionaire’s company, Bigelow Aerospace has even publically requested more money for NASA on Twitter.
“I propose that NASA should have, beginning in fiscal year 2019, an annual budget equal to at least one percent of total yearly federal spending,” Bigelow said, according to Space.com. The Obama administration, in its fiscal year 2017 budget proposal, requested $19 billion for NASA, less than half a percent of the overall request.
Bigelow said that the new economic growth and technologies generated by the space program would more than offset the costs of increased spending. The billionaire wants most of the new money to be spent on returning to the moon and preparing to visit Mars, and pledged that doing so would create new oppretunites for businesses on Earth.