Understanding the Payoffs From Investing In Space Flight 264
A story at MSNBC.com explains how the technological benefits reaped from investing in the US space program are numerous, but often indirect or difficult to explain. Quoting:
"NASA has recorded about 1,600 new technologies or inventions each year for the past several decades, but far fewer become commercial products, said Daniel Lockney, technology transfer program executive at NASA headquarters in Washington, D.C. ... 'We didn't know that by building the space shuttle main engines we'd also get a new implantable heart device,' Lockney said. 'There's also a bunch of stuff we don't know we're going to learn, which leads to serendipitous spinoffs.' ... But some innovations do not appear as a straight line drawn from NASA to commercial products. The U.S. space agency may not claim credit for computers and the digital revolution that followed, but it did create a pool of talent that perhaps contributed to that transformation of modern life. NASA brought together hundreds of the brightest scientists and engineers in the 1970s to work on the guidance computers that helped the Apollo missions land humans on the moon. When the Apollo era ended, many of those people dispersed to private companies and to Silicon Valley."
NASAs place in the budget constrained reality (Score:3, Interesting)
I agree with NASAs contribution to research. However I don't agree with their day to day involvement with launches and maintenance of space vehicles.
We need NASA to continue doing research, creating cutting edge technology and building solutions like the Mars rover.
However the space shuttle didn't deliver on their main objective of affordable space launches.
The larger issue at hand is to end each and every lie to the cost of government projects. This applies to defense, space and other technology government projects.
If a project goes 20% over budget, there should be a huge fine that someone in the private sector pays for. Something that spells a full and complete end to cost overruns.
Trillions of dollars have been wasted in the last 20 years due to projects being priced at 50% or less of their real cost. This applies to the F-35 program, space shuttle, for instance.
The larger question is how to instill cost awareness into traditionally cost insensitive government workers.
There should be an end to all open cost projects. Everything should be fixed cost. Split it into stages.
One example of success is the SDB and SDB phase II bomb programs. The SDB bomb came on budget and ahead of schedule (something more like in record time) and is already completely functional helping the US military win the war on terror.
One example in the space arena is the SpaceX project that is almost ready to replace some of the space shuttle features to resupply the ISS. A contract that is completely fixed budget, with transparency standards that are causing serious concerns on the traditional space suppliers like Boeing, Lockheed-Martin and others.
I can think of a few innovations... (Score:4, Interesting)
Edible toothpaste, Infrared ear thermometers, freeze dried food, scratch resistant and UV blocking eye-glasses, memory metal (flexible) eye-glasses & anti-scalding showers, silver ion bacteria-resistant home water filters/softeners, eco-friendly water treatment plants, carbon monoxide detectors, wireless headsets, air-chambered sole "athletic" footwear, liquid metal/metallic glass (stronger than titanium), temper foam, shock absorbing foam (for helmets, etc), cordless vacuums, high performance solar cells, the list goes on, and on...
Well, it didn't happen *quite* like that. (Score:5, Interesting)
"NASA brought together hundreds of the brightest scientists and engineers in the 1970s to work on the guidance computers that helped the Apollo missions land humans on the moon."
No they didn't. NASA contracted with MIT Instrumentation Laboratory to develop the Apollo guidance systems. (The Instrumentation Laboratory then turned around and based the design on one the USN had paid for - the Polaris guidance computer.) NASA's main contribution was oversight, review, and general bureaucratic paper shuffling. They didn't even program the damn thing - that was done by the Instrumentation Laboratory as well.
Not to mention, it's not really a MSBNC story linked to above - it's an MSBNC rewrite of what amounts to a NASA press release.
Re:Ah yes, overrated mods. (Score:4, Interesting)
Not a mod, but I can say that while not overrated, your proposition is, well, naive.
There is a reason why nearly all attempts at mass social engineering has failed utterly. There's also a reason why most attempts at marketing for world peace has failed.
The reason that social engineering has failed on a mass scale has to do with culture, tradition (folks do cling to those), and a total disregard for both by those who are out to build a 'perfect society'. 100 years ago, we had the likes of Lenin and the Bolsheviks who were trying to engineer a perfect society, and on the surface, it sounded ultimately equitable and fair ('from each according to his ability, to each according to his need', was a good summary of the ideal). Folks bought the ideal, but history shows the results, no? Now you're going to propose that we do something like that again? We also got to see, 80-some-odd years ago, what the other extreme brought (national/racial/ideological). Long story short, the biggest cause of human suffering and death in the 20th century wasn't famine, pestilence, or disaster... it was war and the internal miseries brought on by political experimentation gone horribly wrong. To be fair, maybe your political/social scientists might have a different idea altogether, but having seen where both extremes (communism and fascism) went, most folks are rightfully horrified at the idea, and prefer to stick with their imperfect-but-workable solutions.
The reasons that marketing for world peace has failed? Much simpler... most other folks have their own ideas, and it usually involves advantages gained at your expense. After all, it's drop-easy for the EU member state politicians and citizenry to preach about world peace and not really needing an army... they have more than sufficient security and backstopping provided courtesy of the US military. Same with Japan and South Korea, or numerous other nations.
Personally, I like the idea of not spending so much money on US military effort. We can start by proposing that we withdraw from all but a small handful of logistic-critical bases globally. Of course, every time the subject comes up, suddenly the population there isn't too keen on the idea. Even the most strident US-hating socialist cringes when the idea of defending themselves comes up (see also South Korea in the 1990's when the population wanted US personnel out of there... until the US began to consider the idea, leaving the whole peninsula practically defenseless against North Korea. Suddenly the South Koreans were all kinds of happy to see a US soldier in their neighborhood).
To sum it all up, things are a lot more complex than you propose, you know?