It’s a tale of two numbers. And while each number is a news story in itself, who would suspect that together they would be so revealing?

The first number is $70 Billion. That’s what the Pentagon is spending this year on the war in Iraq. And the second is – relatively speaking – a paltry $17 Billion. That would be the 2007 NASA budget that the Bush Administration has submitted to congress.

So, we’re spending $70 Billion for freedom or folly, depending upon your viewpoint, and $17 Billion for pushing the frontiers of space, science and innovation. And you should also know that the $17 Billion NASA number is a bit deceptive. Science spending is actually reduced, since the shuttles must continue to fly while work on the next generation “Crew Exploration Vehicle” must begin.

So, are these two numbers connected? I say, “Yes, they are.”

On May 25th, 1961, President John F. Kennedy addressed a special joint session of congress on a matter of what he termed “urgent national needs.” It was here that Kennedy laid out the vision for sending a man to the moon, complete with a deadline … he said, “Before this decade is out.”

He asked for and received $10 billion – in 1960’s dollars – $10 billion to achieve this ambitious goal. And he included two very important elements in his speech which were necessary in this mission – space satellites to ensure worldwide communication and weather satellites to ensure global weather observation.

The result has changed our lives forever.

The formula is quite simple: Without Kennedy’s bold vision and the complete financial commitment of Congress behind it, there would be no cellphones, no Internet, no google, no iTunes.

NASA is the place where the scientists meet the engineers, and the result is unprecedented innovation. With goals, mission and money, there’s no telling what can be accomplished and what ancillary technologies and unexpectedly scientific discoveries will be spawned. The fact that the US leads the world in innovation is no fluke. America invested in bold innovation in the 1960’s, and it’s been living off it ever since.

Since then, NASA has been funded in fits and starts. Its budget has been cut, devalued and compromised, and we’ve even developed such rationales as “We’ll get commercial enterprise to foot part of the bill, since after all, they benefit.” Such logic is flawed. Innovation even partially funded by commercial concerns must necessarily be for their own benefit. And NASA must operate for everyone’s benefit. In addition, commercial concerns aren’t in the business of funding science, unless it can be turned to revenues in the foreseeable future.

NASA goals suggesting “we’ll do more with less” ring weakly in the shadow of Kennedy’s vision – especially when there is apparently so much money to spend. And that’s why the two numbers are connected – we can drum up $70 billion dollars for an effort we couldn’t imagine 5 years ago, and now we’re spending it? A number five times the budget of NASA?

This Bush Administration is not without a clue. It has rightly recognized that innovation is key to our economic future, and it assembled a President’s Council of Advisor’s on Science and Technology. Its 2004 report states that “scientific and engineering talent lies at the core of the Nation’s innovation ecosystem” and it “calls for action at each stage of the science and engineering workforce pipeline.”

Well-intentioned, but flawed again. It’s like recruiting and training more and better slaves because we need more pyramids.

What we must remember is that innovation breeds innovators. Lead with a grand vision of innovation. Spend the money. The innovators will follow.

I'm Moira Gunn. This is Five Minutes.