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The thing you overlook is, billions people mindlessly sharing their photo on phone, are the ones actually providing economical and in turn technological advance

The thing you overlook is, billions people mindlessly sharing their photo on phone, are the ones actually providing economical and in turn technological advances that enabled such high tech missions. I really doubt we could reach sub 10nm chips only with government funding without such strong demand for consumer products. So a bit late is much better because it gave us time to actually improve technology at micro level, instead of just building larger rockets.

TangoTrotFox 8y ago
I'd certainly agree in a way. Consumerism along with the backing of private telecoms is one of the big reasons private companies like SpaceX can even exist. And I do expect that the first rocket to land people on another planet will not come from a government, but a private company. Such a comment would have seemed quite sci-fi in the 60s when there was no private space industry to speak of. But at the same time, these are tangential achievements. Miniaturization and greater processing speed will certainly be nice tools. But the things that are really needed are effectively 0 fail rate self sustaining habitation, life support, energy production, and food production in extremely hostile conditions. We still have not entirely solved these and they are things we could have been working on decades ago, but as human space flight died so did their necessity.
- iamgopal 8y ago
  You will be amazed how much side effect / cross improvement this had created in. For e.g. Because Semiconductor industry need precise high vacuums, large vacuum pump companies invested in technology of high speed rotating device at near zero vacuum scale. Which in turn enabled them to create ultra compact flywheel technologies for transportation. Or on socioeconomic side, because of higher wealth and more leisure times, there are tons of nutrition research which in turn created single food all vitamin products and superfoods.
visarga 8y ago
I doubt 10nm chips would be useful on Mars. These rovers use special chips that are shielded against radiation. Cutting edge chips are much more fragile. They only work in ideal conditions.

TangoTrotFox 8y ago

I'd certainly agree in a way. Consumerism along with the backing of private telecoms is one of the big reasons private companies like SpaceX can even exist. And I do expect that the first rocket to land people on another planet will not come from a government, but a private company. Such a comment would have seemed quite sci-fi in the 60s when there was no private space industry to speak of. But at the same time, these are tangential achievements. Miniaturization and greater processing speed will certainly be nice tools. But the things that are really needed are effectively 0 fail rate self sustaining habitation, life support, energy production, and food production in extremely hostile conditions. We still have not entirely solved these and they are things we could have been working on decades ago, but as human space flight died so did their necessity.

iamgopal 8y ago
You will be amazed how much side effect / cross improvement this had created in. For e.g. Because Semiconductor industry need precise high vacuums, large vacuum pump companies invested in technology of high speed rotating device at near zero vacuum scale. Which in turn enabled them to create ultra compact flywheel technologies for transportation. Or on socioeconomic side, because of higher wealth and more leisure times, there are tons of nutrition research which in turn created single food all vitamin products and superfoods.

visarga 8y ago

I doubt 10nm chips would be useful on Mars. These rovers use special chips that are shielded against radiation. Cutting edge chips are much more fragile. They only work in ideal conditions.