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Do you have any idea how many of our modern technologies were developed as a direct result of the space program? New technologies were needed to go into space a

Do you have any idea how many of our modern technologies were developed as a direct result of the space program? New technologies were needed to go into space and many of them have become essential for our lives. MRI, LEDs, Anti-Icing Systems, Artificial Limbs, Land Mine Removal, Firefighter Gear, Water Purification, Pollution Remediation, etc etc...the list goes on and on. Studies estimate a $7-$14 return on investment for every $1 of NASA expenditure. Source: https://spinoff.nasa.gov/Spinoff2008/tech_benefits.html https://spinoff.nasa.gov/Spinoff2008/tech_benefits.html

paulcole 9y ago
Everything from watchmaking to watch repair!
valuearb 9y ago
Wow, you are saying if you take a massive pile of money to hire a bunch of the smartest engineers away from private companies and pay them to solve problems, they'll do it? And if NASA didn't exist, and these engineers instead worked for less bureaucratic, more entrepreneurial businesses, they'd invent nothing?
- 0xffff2 9y ago
  Anecdotally, my group at NASA has seen several of our smartest engineers leave for the private sector in the last couple of years. They are all making heaps more money, but not one of them is doing the kind of innovative research that we do at NASA.
  - valuearb 9y ago
    Yea, their research will now actually ship.
    - sqeaky 9y ago
      NASA is obligated to share their work with Americans. Many products ship with tech NASA invented that probably would not have been shared if a private enterprise came up with it.
      - valuearb 9y ago
        Are you joking? The only point of doing private sector research is to build something out of it. We receive those advances as new products. And NASA doesn't gift it's advances to americans, it shares technologies with private companies that share them in the exact same way. You and I still had to pay for our Tang, it was never free. NASA is a huge inefficient bureaucracy hamstrung by a fickle and corrupt congress. As brilliant as it's engineers are, and they are very brilliant, their projects are extremely fragile, often getting canceled or not funded for ridiculous reasons, or having ridiculous conditions applied to them that slow development (such as parting work out to the less qualified across many congressional districts). The largest project NASA is investing most of it's resources in is the SLS. It's not revolutionary. It's not a significant advance. It's just a large launch system that's mostly re-using old technologies. It does nothing to lower launch costs. It does nothing to advance re-usablity. It's not a solution to making deep space manned space exploration economically viable. Any engineers who work on the SLS are engineers denied to SpaceX, Blue Origin, ULA, Sierra Nevada, or a dozen more cost-efficient space launch companies. NASA's competition for engineers raises engineering costs for everyone else. It's wasteful investment in a pork barrel project like SLS diverts revenues that could fund far more efficient launch systems at private companies, and give NASA far more manned launch capacity and much sooner. Right now engineers at private companies are doing far more to advance economically viable space travel than NASA. Let's thank NASA for the Saturn program, but realize that everything they've done since has been hugely wasteful of resources and detrimental to advancing the cause of space travel.
        sqeaky 9y ago
        Tang isn't a NASA invention, it was invented by Kraft. It tastes terrible and no one bought it until NASA used it[0]. But lets run with that. If NASA had invented they wouldn't manufacture and give it away, they would give away the recipe and entrepreneuring businesses could make it to sell if they wanted. This is exactly what happened with Memory Foam. A NASA contractor invented it as part of the contract so they couldn't keep it secret[1] and it worked its way into a ton of products. I think you are correct that SLS is not ideal. But I don't think that is really applicable, their inefficiency as business is perhaps understandable because they are not a business. They take their direction from Congress and congress told them to make a ship out of parts they had laying around and that was the SLS. If we wanted to look at their other missions, they have landed several things on mars and orbited distant planets. Feats no private enterprise has done (yet). All the research from that is available amateur astronomers routinely use to discover new things, like exoplanets in old data. Designs for things they made like their rocket motors is made available, and that is how Space-X started, by looking at NASA plans for their rockets and picking and choosing the parts they thought most practical. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tang_(drink) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tang_(drink) [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memory_foam https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memory_foam
  - valuearb 9y ago
    Please name any innovative research NASA is currently doing that will lower the cost of manned space travel. They are wasting $20B+ building a non-reusable launch system based on 1970s technology. The future of space flight has to be cost effective. It almost certainly requires re-usabilty. Nowadays, SpaceX and Blue Origin are doing far more important research and actual development than NASA is. Thank you NASA for all the core technologies you've developed. But now that you have become hostage to congress and massive pork spending, and focused on creating massively uneconomic systems like the SLS, please get out of the way.
- fsloth 9y ago
  The inventions did not arise merely from the minds of the engineers but of the problem constraints placed upon them. Space research has been beneficial for technological development because of the exotic problems which have created solutions with wide applicability. This is not to say they would have not arisen through land based research but invention needs inspiration as well, not just financial incentives.
- arcbyte 9y ago
  > hire a bunch of the smartest engineers away from private companies There would be no hiring away. That's not how the government works. They'd contract the private companies the engineers already work at.
  - valuearb 9y ago
    If NASA hires a bunch of private companies to build the subsystems for the SLS, they are hiring engineers away from Blue Origin, SpaceX, ULA, etc. Those engineers may not work for NASA, or have worked at SpaceX, etc, but it's the same end. And the SLS is a boondoggle, so the efforts of those engineers will be totally wasted.
- soperj 9y ago
  Where are the brightest minds of our generation now? What are they working on? Most are trying come up with better ways for you to click on advertisements.
- bencollier49 9y ago
  Well, one would imagine that they would instead be employed in finding new and more effective ways of making people click on adverts.
  - gorkonsine 9y ago
    Or in finding new and effective ways of selling shares of companies for profit. What's important is that these jobs (finance and advertising) are more valuable work to society than scientific research, as reflected in the pay differential.

paulcole 9y ago

Everything from watchmaking to watch repair!

valuearb 9y ago

Wow, you are saying if you take a massive pile of money to hire a bunch of the smartest engineers away from private companies and pay them to solve problems, they'll do it? And if NASA didn't exist, and these engineers instead worked for less bureaucratic, more entrepreneurial businesses, they'd invent nothing?

0xffff2 9y ago
Anecdotally, my group at NASA has seen several of our smartest engineers leave for the private sector in the last couple of years. They are all making heaps more money, but not one of them is doing the kind of innovative research that we do at NASA.
- valuearb 9y ago
  Yea, their research will now actually ship.
  - sqeaky 9y ago
    NASA is obligated to share their work with Americans. Many products ship with tech NASA invented that probably would not have been shared if a private enterprise came up with it.
    - valuearb 9y ago
      Are you joking? The only point of doing private sector research is to build something out of it. We receive those advances as new products. And NASA doesn't gift it's advances to americans, it shares technologies with private companies that share them in the exact same way. You and I still had to pay for our Tang, it was never free. NASA is a huge inefficient bureaucracy hamstrung by a fickle and corrupt congress. As brilliant as it's engineers are, and they are very brilliant, their projects are extremely fragile, often getting canceled or not funded for ridiculous reasons, or having ridiculous conditions applied to them that slow development (such as parting work out to the less qualified across many congressional districts). The largest project NASA is investing most of it's resources in is the SLS. It's not revolutionary. It's not a significant advance. It's just a large launch system that's mostly re-using old technologies. It does nothing to lower launch costs. It does nothing to advance re-usablity. It's not a solution to making deep space manned space exploration economically viable. Any engineers who work on the SLS are engineers denied to SpaceX, Blue Origin, ULA, Sierra Nevada, or a dozen more cost-efficient space launch companies. NASA's competition for engineers raises engineering costs for everyone else. It's wasteful investment in a pork barrel project like SLS diverts revenues that could fund far more efficient launch systems at private companies, and give NASA far more manned launch capacity and much sooner. Right now engineers at private companies are doing far more to advance economically viable space travel than NASA. Let's thank NASA for the Saturn program, but realize that everything they've done since has been hugely wasteful of resources and detrimental to advancing the cause of space travel.
      - sqeaky 9y ago
        Tang isn't a NASA invention, it was invented by Kraft. It tastes terrible and no one bought it until NASA used it[0]. But lets run with that. If NASA had invented they wouldn't manufacture and give it away, they would give away the recipe and entrepreneuring businesses could make it to sell if they wanted. This is exactly what happened with Memory Foam. A NASA contractor invented it as part of the contract so they couldn't keep it secret[1] and it worked its way into a ton of products. I think you are correct that SLS is not ideal. But I don't think that is really applicable, their inefficiency as business is perhaps understandable because they are not a business. They take their direction from Congress and congress told them to make a ship out of parts they had laying around and that was the SLS. If we wanted to look at their other missions, they have landed several things on mars and orbited distant planets. Feats no private enterprise has done (yet). All the research from that is available amateur astronomers routinely use to discover new things, like exoplanets in old data. Designs for things they made like their rocket motors is made available, and that is how Space-X started, by looking at NASA plans for their rockets and picking and choosing the parts they thought most practical. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tang_(drink) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tang_(drink) [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memory_foam https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memory_foam
- valuearb 9y ago
  Please name any innovative research NASA is currently doing that will lower the cost of manned space travel. They are wasting $20B+ building a non-reusable launch system based on 1970s technology. The future of space flight has to be cost effective. It almost certainly requires re-usabilty. Nowadays, SpaceX and Blue Origin are doing far more important research and actual development than NASA is. Thank you NASA for all the core technologies you've developed. But now that you have become hostage to congress and massive pork spending, and focused on creating massively uneconomic systems like the SLS, please get out of the way.
fsloth 9y ago
The inventions did not arise merely from the minds of the engineers but of the problem constraints placed upon them. Space research has been beneficial for technological development because of the exotic problems which have created solutions with wide applicability. This is not to say they would have not arisen through land based research but invention needs inspiration as well, not just financial incentives.
arcbyte 9y ago
> hire a bunch of the smartest engineers away from private companies There would be no hiring away. That's not how the government works. They'd contract the private companies the engineers already work at.
- valuearb 9y ago
  If NASA hires a bunch of private companies to build the subsystems for the SLS, they are hiring engineers away from Blue Origin, SpaceX, ULA, etc. Those engineers may not work for NASA, or have worked at SpaceX, etc, but it's the same end. And the SLS is a boondoggle, so the efforts of those engineers will be totally wasted.
soperj 9y ago
Where are the brightest minds of our generation now? What are they working on? Most are trying come up with better ways for you to click on advertisements.
bencollier49 9y ago
Well, one would imagine that they would instead be employed in finding new and more effective ways of making people click on adverts.
- gorkonsine 9y ago
  Or in finding new and effective ways of selling shares of companies for profit. What's important is that these jobs (finance and advertising) are more valuable work to society than scientific research, as reflected in the pay differential.