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>The Apollo space program, which ended before most people were born (or thereabouts), affected our lives in a peripheral manner if at all. Tang, Velcro, and a b

by hguant 10y ago

>The Apollo space program, which ended before most people were born (or thereabouts), affected our lives in a peripheral manner if at all. Tang, Velcro, and a big swinging "if we can put a man on the moon, we can put an ICBM on your capitol" dick to show for it. Umm, thanks, I guess. Too bad there's no real follow-through fifty years later. This comment shows a lot of ignorance about the importance of the space program in general, and Apollo in particular. From this[1] answer on StackExchange: Here are some Apollo specific innovations: microchip, cordless tools, joystick, CAT scans, technology in MRI machines, modern shoe designs, freeze dried food, vacuum sealed packages, dampening material, retro-reflector (detects chemical leaks), water purification, silicon based storage of records, fly-by-wire, ground water cleaning, large fabric roofs used in landmark buildings, anti-tip rafts, insulation blankets, and countless others. Here's a link to the NASA spinoff technology data base: https://spinoff.nasa.gov/spinoff/database/ https://spinoff.nasa.gov/spinoff/database/ The iPhone was revolutionary in a particular field. The space program was revolutionary in a broad spectrum of fields, and the iPhone wouldn't be possible without the innovation required by NASA and the Apollo program. [1] http://space.stackexchange.com/questions/411/what-are-the-everyday-technologies-that-are-a-byproduct-of-the-apollo-program http://space.stackexchange.com/questions/411/what-are-the-ev...

maxerickson 10y ago
It doesn't exactly take a giant leap of imagination to stick a battery onto a DC motor. How many of those attributions were simply things that Apollo brought forward months or years and how many wouldn't have happened without Apollo?
kobeya 10y ago
As someone who once worked at NASA, I would take everything said by the spinoff office with a huge grain of salt. They count anything and everything even the most peripherally related to a NASA contract. EDIT: The spinoff office is a clever workaround for government regulations that prevent agencies from doing PR to voters, but it is essentially just that. "Support NASA because we make the economy grow." The problem is that as a PR / propaganda organization, the spinoff office really has absolutely no accountability for what they claim. NASA Watch, an unaffiliated news service and watchdog organization, routinely asks for clarification on many of these spinoffs which NASA is unable to justify. To give you an example of how this plays out, NASA-Ames bought a D-Wave machine. They don't really use it for anything, just a couple of researchers that found money in a budget for a toy, really. Nominally they are evaluating it to see if any NASA applications might benefit from using it. If D-Wave ever amounts to anything, or if it totally fails but some other quantum computer takes off I have no doubt that the spinoff office of 2027 will be claiming that "NASA's early investment in quantum computing technology helped birth the $X billion dollar quantum computing industry," if they haven't already.
mikestew 10y ago
This comment shows a lot of ignorance about the importance of the space program in general That comment also showed a lot of literary license to make a point. Of course we got more out of it than a breakfast drink and an alternative to show laces. But one must first convince me that your list of innovations would not have been developed without the space program. I argue it simply accelerated the process. But I still hold that whatever came out of Apollo effected my life in a peripheral way, if at all. The iPhone is an example. It was over ten years after Apollo 11 that I owned something with an integrated circuit (to my knowledge). 38 years until the iPhone. In contrast, it was a matter of a few years before the mobile computing device post-iPhone changed the way we communicate and gather knowledge. The mobile phone had a direct impact in many ways, and almost immediately. The space program had indirect impact, and took years in most cases. But I imagine we're both right in our own way, and just talking past each other. Like any other nerd battle in the vein of "Star Wars vs. Star Trek".
- hguant 10y ago
  > The mobile phone had a direct impact in many ways, and almost immediately. The space program had indirect impact, and took years in most cases. I think this temporal disconnect happened for two reasons. First, the NASA was involved with foundational research. The microchip is a prime example of this. NASA gave a lot of money out to companies to invent technologies that didn't exist before hand, and 10 or so years down the line, industry figured out how to make them affordable/found a market for them. Apple didn't invent anything new with the iPhone - smart phones and phones with touchscreens and computers existed before the iPhone. Apple 'simply'[1] did it better than anyone else. Second - technology moves faster now. Of course the iPhone is going to immediately move the market/general population forward because we have the infrastructure to build such things at scale. No such industry existed when NASA was doing its work Foundational research/technology takes forever to percolate into the markets. > But I imagine we're both right in our own way, and just talking past each other. Like any other nerd battle in the vein of "Star Wars vs. Star Trek". I know that feel. I apologize if I came off aggressive!
  - mikestew 10y ago

by hguant 10y ago

maxerickson 10y ago

It doesn't exactly take a giant leap of imagination to stick a battery onto a DC motor. How many of those attributions were simply things that Apollo brought forward months or years and how many wouldn't have happened without Apollo?

kobeya 10y ago

As someone who once worked at NASA, I would take everything said by the spinoff office with a huge grain of salt. They count anything and everything even the most peripherally related to a NASA contract. EDIT: The spinoff office is a clever workaround for government regulations that prevent agencies from doing PR to voters, but it is essentially just that. "Support NASA because we make the economy grow." The problem is that as a PR / propaganda organization, the spinoff office really has absolutely no accountability for what they claim. NASA Watch, an unaffiliated news service and watchdog organization, routinely asks for clarification on many of these spinoffs which NASA is unable to justify. To give you an example of how this plays out, NASA-Ames bought a D-Wave machine. They don't really use it for anything, just a couple of researchers that found money in a budget for a toy, really. Nominally they are evaluating it to see if any NASA applications might benefit from using it. If D-Wave ever amounts to anything, or if it totally fails but some other quantum computer takes off I have no doubt that the spinoff office of 2027 will be claiming that "NASA's early investment in quantum computing technology helped birth the $X billion dollar quantum computing industry," if they haven't already.

mikestew 10y ago

This comment shows a lot of ignorance about the importance of the space program in general That comment also showed a lot of literary license to make a point. Of course we got more out of it than a breakfast drink and an alternative to show laces. But one must first convince me that your list of innovations would not have been developed without the space program. I argue it simply accelerated the process. But I still hold that whatever came out of Apollo effected my life in a peripheral way, if at all. The iPhone is an example. It was over ten years after Apollo 11 that I owned something with an integrated circuit (to my knowledge). 38 years until the iPhone. In contrast, it was a matter of a few years before the mobile computing device post-iPhone changed the way we communicate and gather knowledge. The mobile phone had a direct impact in many ways, and almost immediately. The space program had indirect impact, and took years in most cases. But I imagine we're both right in our own way, and just talking past each other. Like any other nerd battle in the vein of "Star Wars vs. Star Trek".

hguant 10y ago
> The mobile phone had a direct impact in many ways, and almost immediately. The space program had indirect impact, and took years in most cases. I think this temporal disconnect happened for two reasons. First, the NASA was involved with foundational research. The microchip is a prime example of this. NASA gave a lot of money out to companies to invent technologies that didn't exist before hand, and 10 or so years down the line, industry figured out how to make them affordable/found a market for them. Apple didn't invent anything new with the iPhone - smart phones and phones with touchscreens and computers existed before the iPhone. Apple 'simply'[1] did it better than anyone else. Second - technology moves faster now. Of course the iPhone is going to immediately move the market/general population forward because we have the infrastructure to build such things at scale. No such industry existed when NASA was doing its work Foundational research/technology takes forever to percolate into the markets. > But I imagine we're both right in our own way, and just talking past each other. Like any other nerd battle in the vein of "Star Wars vs. Star Trek". I know that feel. I apologize if I came off aggressive!
- mikestew 10y ago