Who Spends What — and Why It Matters
Government money still seeds almost everything in space. Even as the commercial sector has grown to roughly 78% of the economy, public budgets fund the science missions, launch infrastructure and defence programmes that the private market builds on. In 2024, global government space spending reached about $132 billion.
The United States dominates, at roughly $79.7 billion — more than every other nation combined. That splits into civil spending (NASA, ~$25B) and a much larger military and intelligence component run through the US Space Force and others. China is a distant but fast-growing second at an estimated ~$20B, with much of its programme opaque. After that the field tightens: Japan, France, Russia, Germany, Italy and India each spend a few billion, often routed partly through national agencies and, for Europe, the multinational ESA.
Absolute spending tells you who has the biggest programme; per-capita and share-of-GDP tell you who prioritises space. Sort the table above by those measures and the order changes sharply — small, space-focused economies rise, and giants with large populations fall.
Budget figures are the latest available full-year government space expenditure (civil plus defence/military) from Novaspace/Euroconsult, the OECD and published agency budgets, in current USD. "Per person" divides budget by World Bank population; "% of GDP" divides by nominal GDP. Multinational ESA spending is largely captured within its member states' national figures, so ESA is shown separately for reference and excluded from the per-country ranking to avoid double-counting.