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You don’t see how NASA has pushed technology and science forward? The inspiration it provides for people becoming engineers and scientists is alone probably wor
by dwaltrip 5y ago
You don’t see how NASA has pushed technology and science forward? The inspiration it provides for people becoming engineers and scientists is alone probably worth a non-trivial fraction of the US GDP.
- SiempreViernes 5y agoThat's not what they said, I doubt tshaddox questions the contributions to space flight that NASA has produced. What they do seem to question what immediate, house hold, benefit you get from putting people on the moon. Common examples such as vecro and teflon turn out to be wild hyperbole based on at most "NASA made their own version of existing technology". This is a fair remark and something I actually had in mind when I made the comment originally: science doesn't provide very much direct and immediate benefit, all the concrete examples are actually sort of boring things of the "this existing thing is now better (for a surprising reason)" type. But there are also lots of indirect benefits as you say, from the inspiration and philosophical satisfaction (tricky thing to put a monetary value on) to just the plain old developing of technical skill that transfers to other specialised areas of society.