NASA and Technology

Great article at TCS about NASA and the space program by Jack Raia written in response to a NY Post column by Steve Dunleavy, who criticized the agency for not giving a good return on the taxpayer's investments. Jack properly takes this to task and demolishes it. The only possible government agency that it could be argues has had a GREATER return on its investments than NASA is perhaps the Defense Department, and that is pretty debatable unless you include things like the value of keeping Western Europe, Japan and South Korea free for the last half century. Jack comes up with just a partial list of innovations that make life better for American citizens:

"Satellites orbit the earth and track storms, providing information to supercomputers on the Earth's surface that perform millions of calculations to arrive at the most likely outcome. Those satellites were placed in orbit by NASA and the computers performing the calculations are spin-offs of NASA programs. The latest models of Airplanes produced by Boeing and Airbus are made of lighter, stronger materials that were developed for the space program.

In medicine, though a cure for Parkinson's has proven elusive, ultrasound scanners provide more vivid pictures of infants in the womb and greater ability to diagnose problems. Cat scans are an indispensable tool in the detection of many maladies. Though not yet curable, research on osteoporosis, diabetes and AIDS has led to innovations in treatments. All are spin-offs of NASA. Flat-panel televisions, another NASA spin-off, have become accessible to most families. Runners wear shoes made of advanced materials that absorb the shock of running."

and then he gets DAMN serious and spanks this idea clean out of the ballpark, across the river and into the next state:

"Climate change prediction; satellite navigation and communication; satellite imagery; crop management and resource mapping; solar power electricity generation; energy saving air conditioning; food processing control; wireless alarms; long distance telephone networks; high density batteries; robot-guided wheelchairs; car chassis and brake design; firefighter breathing apparatus; protective clothing; thin super-insulating blankets; heart monitors; instantaneous infrared thermometers; laser surgery; automatic insulin pump; programmable pacemakers; international TV broadcasts; powerful micro computers; environmentally safe sewage treatment and water purification systems."

Of course, some of the problem lies with NASA itself - the agency does such a piss poor job of marketing itself that some people get the idea we aren't gaining anything from the work it does. It would be hysterically funny if it weren't so serious - if we'd made just a tenth (hell, even half that) of the investment in the space program over the last forty years as we've thrown away on foreign aid, federal spending on education and the drug war, we'd have a permanent lunar outpost and been to Mars and back already, and gained in in technological ways no one can probably even imagine.