Wasteful, useless, pointless – and many other colorful words have been used to describe the budget allocated to the US National Aeronautics and Space Administration, NASA. You could almost make 24 stacks of dollar bills tall enough to reach space with the $17.5 billion allocated this year alone. It's a staggering figure at first glance, I admit, but there's a lot more return to NASA's work that many fail to see. NASA is best known for its achievements in space exploration, but the positive ripples from the effects of its discoveries have touched so many different industries in our country. Since 1976, in fact, NASA has published an annual publication called “SpinOff” which highlights what is defined as “A commercialized product that incorporates NASA technology or expertise for the benefit of the public” (Lockney). Republican lawmakers have been attacking this argument for some time. During this period of extensive budget cuts, NASA's budget remained relatively stable. Departments such as Transportation, Treasury and the Interior Department already have significantly smaller budgets and are subject to significant cuts to reduce the deficit. They argue that NASA should be subject to the same cuts as all other departments under the Budget Control Act of 2011 (Moskowitz). If NASA funding were reduced, the effects would hinder progress in areas such as public safety, transportation, energy, the environment, and even industrial productivity. To start, let's look at the hard numbers. Over the past decade, NASA has managed to: create 18,000 jobs, save 444,000 lives, reduce costs by $4.9 billion, and generate $5.1 billion in revenue. If that doesn't make you feel good about NASA, try... half paper... dollars; they have kept our society abreast of the times. In fact, they kept us abreast of the times. America is the home of innovation and progress, and NASA is at the forefront of this. Again, I agree that the budget is big, but Michael Griffin, former NASA administrator, said it best during a presentation to aerospace leaders in 2009; “What we do is huge, and we do it for pennies – less than the annual pizza market,” whose market at the time was $27 billion (Spires). Space exploration benefits everyone. I'll leave this for you to consider the next time you're waiting for your GPS app to load on your phone (powered by NASA technology). The moon is an abundant source of helium-3. Helium-3 produces a clean nuclear reaction, without toxic waste. Why would you reduce funding to an organization that does research on this topic?