That's actually surprising that NASA only has 50% more budget than a single particle accelerator, given the huge number of cutting edge projects NASA is working on.

Money spent fighting a morally justifiable war with Russia that we aren't actually having to fight is money well spent IMO.

They have mostly given stuff they weren't going to use anymore worth that amount when bought new.

How many people has the moon killed? Cuz Russia has killed tens of thousands. They've lost on the order of 250k of their own guys, and probably inflicted roughly the same numbers on the AFU.

The moon doesn't kill old ladies sitting in their apartment.

This initial budget estimate is 44x the 500M initial estimate of the jwst for comparison. Jwst eventually ballooned to 20B, but I'm guessing this would similarly balloon over time as well.