Each time a rocket clears the launchpad, a familiar moral equation surfaces online: what if we simply redirected space funding to the world's poorest? A new study from researchers at UC Berkeley, Stanford, and UC San Diego answers that question with precision — NASA's $24.4 billion budget covers less than one-thirteenth of the $318 billion needed annually to lift 533 million people from extreme poverty, revealing not that the problem is hopeless, but that it has been measured against the wrong yardstick all along. The more clarifying discovery is that $318 billion represents just 0.3 percent o
NASA's Budget vs. Poverty: Why the Math Doesn't Add Up the Way You Think
533 million people currently living in extreme poverty globally would benefit from targeted aid reaching $2.15-$3 per day thresholds.