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You think "space" and "everything you listed" are mutually exclusive? Not so. Products and technologies from space development end up benefiting us right here
by dstorrs 15y ago
You think "space" and "everything you listed" are mutually exclusive? Not so. Products and technologies from space development end up benefiting us right here on Earth.
Medicine? The software that was developed to do image-sharpening on the Hubble pictures turned out to make MRI machines significantly more useful without requiring a change to the hardware.
Social net? NASA has produced a crazy amount of research that would be useful to disaster victims, people in shelters , and assisted living. A couple of examples from the top of my head: safe, stable, long-term storage for high-nutrition meals; long-term emotional impact of environmental factors (colors, scents, etc).
Police: Most forms of wireless communication (including police radios) use SOMETHING that was developed by NASA -- extended-life batteries, transmission protocols, etc.
Even leaving aside the benefits to be head, "$10 billion for NASA" is NOT real money. It's an unnoticeable fraction of the waste in our budgets.
- luigip 15y agoThis argument is often trotted out, but it doesn't hold water if you think about it. There may be some examples where the technology has been re-used, but what's their value in terms of useful research quantitatively, rather than hand-wavingly? Even if it's as high as 20% that can be re-used, you could get 100% of that value by researching image-sharpening, disaster shelters, food storage, wireless comms and all the other things you mention, directly. So you still have to justify the remaining 80% in other ways, the side-effects already accounted-for.
- burgerbrain 15y agoA government agency running at 20% efficiency? That is a fucking miracle.