The 2015 space movie, The Martian—the one in which Matt Damon plays an astronaut-botanist—took in more box office receipts on its opening weekend than NASA’s daily budget. (BoxOfficeMojo.com. The movie took in $54.3 million on its first weekend. NASA’s daily budget is $52.8 million.)
It really wasn’t that long ago when the two greatest superpowers were vying to put satellites into space. Now, 50 nations have their own satellites in low Earth orbit. If you’re a Thailand, say, you can call Space Systems/Loral, a Canadian-owned company based in Palo Alto, California, and tell them you want to put a satellite into geostationary orbit for television broadcasting or military communications. You can have the thing in orbit 25,000 miles above Earth within two years.
