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Understanding the Payoffs From Investing In Space Flight
A story at MSNBC.com explains how the technological benefits reaped from investing in the US space program are numerous, but often indirect or difficult to explain. Quoting:
"NASA has recorded about 1,600 new technologies or inventions each year for the past several decades, but far fewer become commercial products, said Daniel Lockney, technology transfer program executive at NASA headquarters in Washington, D.C. ... 'We didn't know that by building the space shuttle main engines we'd also get a new implantable heart device,' Lockney said. 'There's also a bunch of stuff we don't know we're going to learn, which leads to serendipitous spinoffs.' ... But some innovations do not appear as a straight line drawn from NASA to commercial products. The U.S. space agency may not claim credit for computers and the digital revolution that followed, but it did create a pool of talent that perhaps contributed to that transformation of modern life. NASA brought together hundreds of the brightest scientists and engineers in the 1970s to work on the guidance computers that helped the Apollo missions land humans on the moon. When the Apollo era ended, many of those people dispersed to private companies and to Silicon Valley."
If they were allowed to put their logo on everything they were involved in, then people would start to realize how important they are. Nothing garish, just something like the tiny UL logo you see on everything.
An ad campaign like the Army's would also help.
I wrote a paper in high school about how the Apollo space program and the space race in general lead to the development of the personal computer. Trying to fit computing power in such a small space for the win.
..is measured in what we won't produce and is therefore something we will never known.
NASA needs better propaganda to fight the screaming ferals who scream at every turn "but there is some kid starving with no blanket" , the trouble is it's very difficult to argue with this logical because those making those sort of arguements don't care about the empirical reality that without technology USA would be a mongolian swamp and not only that kid would have no blanket, but all his friends would also have no blankets.
Any Americans more in the know than me, what are the chances of saving the James Webb? I really get the feeling if that literally gets scrapped then it's more or less the end of NASA for several decades because it's the one incredible project in the works in terms of awe enspiring results it might bring.
From the article: "But signs exist all around us in daily life. For instance, NASA's need for smaller, lighter electronics in space has helped drive the greater trend toward shrinking smartphones and other miniaturized gadgets. " So, NASA invented Moore's Law, too?
I agree with NASAs contribution to research. However I don't agree with their day to day involvement with launches and maintenance of space vehicles.
We need NASA to continue doing research, creating cutting edge technology and building solutions like the Mars rover.
However the space shuttle didn't deliver on their main objective of affordable space launches.
The larger issue at hand is to end each and every lie to the cost of government projects. This applies to defense, space and other technology government projects.
If a project goes 20% over budget, there should be a huge fine that someone in the private sector pays for. Something that spells a full and complete end to cost overruns.
Trillions of dollars have been wasted in the last 20 years due to projects being priced at 50% or less of their real cost. This applies to the F-35 program, space shuttle, for instance.
The larger question is how to instill cost awareness into traditionally cost insensitive government workers.
There should be an end to all open cost projects. Everything should be fixed cost. Split it into stages.
One example of success is the SDB and SDB phase II bomb programs. The SDB bomb came on budget and ahead of schedule (something more like in record time) and is already completely functional helping the US military win the war on terror.
One example in the space arena is the SpaceX project that is almost ready to replace some of the space shuttle features to resupply the ISS. A contract that is completely fixed budget, with transparency standards that are causing serious concerns on the traditional space suppliers like Boeing, Lockheed-Martin and others.
I can think of a few NASA innovations, such as:
Edible toothpaste, Infrared ear thermometers, freeze dried food, scratch resistant and UV blocking eye-glasses, memory metal (flexible) eye-glasses & anti-scalding showers, silver ion bacteria-resistant home water filters/softeners, eco-friendly water treatment plants, carbon monoxide detectors, wireless headsets, air-chambered sole "athletic" footwear, liquid metal/metallic glass (stronger than titanium), temper foam, shock absorbing foam (for helmets, etc), cordless vacuums, high performance solar cells, the list goes on, and on...
Sure, throw a bunch of money at technology R&D and you get nice shiny things out. The problem is, if you invest all that space exploration R&D money straight into Earth-centric engineering and technology research you get a far better bang for your buck in terms of real, usable products. Now I'm a huge fan of space exploration for the scientific value of the research and because it inspires people to be involved in science but the neat little spin-off products are just a bonus, not the main reason for doing it. Not even remotely.
You can if you aren't constantly going to war and handing over trillions of dollars to any overstuffed suit who puts on a sad face.
No sig today...
"NASA brought together hundreds of the brightest scientists and engineers in the 1970s to work on the guidance computers that helped the Apollo missions land humans on the moon."
No they didn't. NASA contracted with MIT Instrumentation Laboratory to develop the Apollo guidance systems. (The Instrumentation Laboratory then turned around and based the design on one the USN had paid for - the Polaris guidance computer.) NASA's main contribution was oversight, review, and general bureaucratic paper shuffling. They didn't even program the damn thing - that was done by the Instrumentation Laboratory as well.
Not to mention, it's not really a MSBNC story linked to above - it's an MSBNC rewrite of what amounts to a NASA press release.
Space is fun, but it's not an efficient way to develop technology for terrestrial applications. Pour 100 billion into any technical project and you'll get some spinoffs. Pour 1 billion into a focused terrestrial project and you'll get tangible results. Heck, DARPA's $1 million grand challenge for automated cars made a huge impact that has resulted in google driving real cars in real environments in only 5 years. That's the comparison we need.
There are no payoffs; only neglect of the most vulnerable among us. Space 'investments' fund the aerospace industry and its wealthy owners. When we indulge the rich military industrial complex we starve our nation of the investments in education and healthcare it needs to be competitive.
Sometime around 350 AD the Roman Empire was in dire straights. The Emperor sent his young nephew to be Ceasar of Gaul. The first order of business for this young Ceasar was to smash pockets of rebellion, the second was to collect desperately needed taxes.
This young Ceasar did smash the rebellion. He also _lowered_ taxes, and focused on collected a reasonable tax from everyone. As a result, the Gauls loved him and paid their taxes. Tax revenue not only went up, it virtually exploded. This young Ceasar found himself both rich and loved by both his troops and his subjects, who pushed him to declare war on his Uncle and take over the empire. This he did, aided by his Uncle's untimely death just days before combat at the gates of Byzantium.
This new Emperor become known as Julian the Apostate by the Christians, or Julian the Helen by the Jews. Flavius Claudius Julianus knew more about taxation and running an empire than our current President, or the parent of this thread for that matter.
You have to look at the opportunity cost with things like this. All new research and development has unintended benefits. And NASA has been such a pork loaded boondoggle lately, it's hard to believe the money couldn't have been better spent. I realized today that the entire I405 improvement project cost as much as 1 space shuttle launch. And no new science comes out of launching the space shuttle, they've been doing that for 30 years. To put it bluntly, there's no way the cost of 115 space shuttle launches could have been worth benefits.
US military R&D has turned out more applications than NASA. Hell, I'd argue the manned space program was driven by PR and the desire for a successor to the U-2 spy plane. Since the SOVIETS launched the first satellite into orbit, the United States followed their legal precedent of putting satellites over enemy territory. Instead of a manned U2 spy plane, you had a manned spy space station, which was killed off when unmanned spy satellites did the job better.
Titanium use was pioneered by airplanes for the military. Missiles and jet fighters drove demand for early computers. A 1950s ICBM was probably the first compact, electronic computer. ARPANET was desired to work after a nuclear war. Materials science was driven greatly by demand for high temperature materials in fighter jets, jet engines, and demand for body armor, and tank armor.
One of the problems with this argument is it ignores the very simple concept of "opportunity cost". That is, what else could we have done with the hundreds of billions of dollars invested in the space program over the last few decades? If it's commercially useful technologies you want, for instance, I strongly suspect you'd get a whole lot more of them by simply giving the National Science Foundation a whole lot more money to fund scientific research, rather than funding the development of technologies specifically related to space flight, only a small fraction of which will find commercial applicability elsewhere. Space science and engineering, particularly that relating to crewed missions, should be funded or not funded on its own merits, rather than relying on arguments about better toasters and pacemaker batteries. They're a useful bonus, and advocates should treat them as such.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
What we will never know is what would have happened if the same money, talent, resources and political will had been used in directed towards stated, non-space related problems. Since we won't ever know, there's little point in speculating.
<sadly my suspicion is that it would just have been used for another pointless war, so for that reason alone the space programme was probably a good thing>
The one question that should be asked is "If we knew back when it all started, how much (or little) usable science and benefit to humanity would come out of the programme, would we have taken the same route?" But since we can't go back and ask that, the question is moot - as is trying to retroactively justify the programme on the back of some random discoveries and development it happened to make.
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
You can't run an empire with no gold
Empires are run off the gold of the subjugated peoples. That's the main reason for wanting them.
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
To get the alpha centauri victory of course!
"People don't want to learn linux" hasn't been a valid excuse since '03.
How about there being no empire? Just an idea... the same idea as when the country was freed from the empire it came from.
So what you're saying is that now that the Space Shuttle program has ended, we're going to reap the benefits because some bright people are finally going to come to Silicon Valley? And if we invest in more space flight programs, then it'll only be another couple of decades before we reap even more benefits?
If the astronomical funds are diverted from NASA to other research institutes, the result will be better.
We have no more space program. We spend more per year keeping our troops cool while they shoot people.
Priorities... Ours... are all fucked up.
Yes, NASA and the aircraft industry before it among other things. Moore just adopted it as a business plan later but the trend was already well under way before Intel existed. In fact Apollo 7 was in a late stage of assembly before Intel was founded (July 18, 1968) and Intel didn't have a commercial microprocessor until the Apollo program was nearly over (1971). Fred Hoyle had an evil megacorporation called Intel in a SF novel but that was long before the real Intel was founded.
NASA is not a for profit business. It's in part about research (mostly in theory).
Since research IS about discovery and invention you absolutely must include all the spin off techs in determining it's value, they're much of the point.
Mycroft
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Then stop spending all the fucking gold you bring in, plus more that you aren't bringing in. Spending more rather than spending wisely is a pretty fucking idiotic idea.
"America will continue to decline until "lavish spending promises" no longer win elections. You can't run an empire by spending more gold than you take in."
FTFY.
Also, don't confuse "tax rate" with "tax revenue" - they are not the same and do not move in lockstep. For a good example, see capital gains taxes: when the rate has been reduced, revenue has increased.
A commentator in Norway said that "American politics seems more like two groups of teenagers battling it out between each other, than two political parties", which I think sums it up greatly.
This is blinging
I'd take the definite payoff of lower taxes over some unmeasurable potential payoff!
Why should there be a an economic payoff? Isn't enlightening the world with new knowledge of our universe, and pushing the boundaries of what man can do and where he can go not reason enough? Plus how would Bruce Willis have saved the world from Armageddon if we hadn't had the technology to put humans in space?
You can run it on less gold then. Not as little gold as we currently collect, but less.
So, hey - it turns out that the problems of widespread rebellion and overtaxation are different in kind from the problems of under-taxation and repressive government policies. Who would have thunk that different problems require different solutions?
I mean, I could quote any number of irrelevant historical situations - but shit, who has the time for worthless endeavors. Short version - in our own history, the same trends we're seeing now (rampant power transfer to corporate entities, drops in collected revenue, reduced regulation) during the Gilded Age led directly into the worst depression the country has ever suffered. OH SNAP IT'S A RELEVANT HISTORICAL PRECEDENT! RUN! IT'S GOING TO GET YOU!
Well, you didn't bother to state what the tax situation was before this "young Caesar" went to work, so we have pretty much no idea if what you're stating is relevant or not. However, here's some simple logic: if taxes are too high you won't collect a lot of money because people will just not pay them. If taxes are too low, you won't collect a lot of money even if everyone pays because, well, taxes are too low. Go make everyone's taxes $20/year and I'll gladly pay them and even be thrilled about it. The country will go broke, of course. Now, since the right-wing answer to everything from inflation to deflation and booms to busts is to lower taxes on the rich, well, the current situation is unsurprising.
I'll bet that what the Romans DIDN'T have was a seemingly high tax rate on businesses (so you can say "we have one of the highest tax rates on businesses in the world") and exemptions and loopholes galore (so nobody actually paid that tax rate).
So here's some more logic: if you need to collect more money, THEN COLLECT MORE MONEY. If you do it by closing loopholes and lowering rates (like Kennedy) that works, or if you do it by keeping loopholes and raising rates, that works too. The current President understands taxation just fine. He understands that tax collections have been "redistributed" over the last 30 years so that the rich and especially corporations pay a much lower component of overall taxes than, well, pretty much ever. He gets that middle income people and small businesses have been shouldering more of the tax burden while the wealthy and large corporations gain most of the direct benefits. (Mining fees on federal lands that are so low they're almost nonexistant because the "free market" obviously doens't apply to We the People getting fair rates for our resources, the military protecting the business interests of multinationals overseas, low tariffs on foreign trade, over 50% of which is made up of US companies buying goods from their own offshore subsidiaries--keeping wages and domestic employment low. I could go on...) He also understands that what's going on right now is the rich paying their corporate owned news and talk show "talent" to rail against tax increases, even though the overwhelming majority of Americans and small businesses not only won't have to pay it, but have received tax cuts during his tenure in office. Getting the poor to take up for the rich is pretty much the goal of corporate propaganda machines masquerading as news outlets these days.
There's a lot the President doesn't understand, like how to reign in spy agencies and overzealous "law enforcement" and restore civil liberties, but especially he doesn't understand how to properly tell right-wing cranks to go to hell. Perhaps he'll learn. The odds of the other side learning anything are pretty much zero these days.
"NASA brought together hundreds of the brightest scientists and engineers in the 1970s to work on the guidance computers that helped the Apollo missions land humans on the moon."
Wow, they invented time travel.
They did a lot of amazing things over the last 30 years, but everything comes to and end. NASA is not the same agency they were. Today they're a bloated, middle-management heavy, risk-adverse organization that is a shadow of what they used to be.
I think they deserved a chance to re-invent themselves, but because a lot of you here thought Bush would make a fine two-term president, they didn't get that chance.
So we are where we are. NASA is a crumbling relic of past glory. Just like a fat, middle-aged guy looking back at his college days. Not only do we not have a space program, but the agency that's supposed to be running it is ill-equipped for the job because the previous 8 years the problem has been dictating the solution.
It's going to take decades to rebuild a space program and will never look like it did. Elections have consequences.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
You hit a point of diminishing returns after playing space trucker for so long. NASA needs to do some *NEW* programs with *NEW* mission objectives that benefit science.
No - that's why you need entrepreneurs risking their own money to fund stuff. Politicians don't want to do anything unless they see the immediate reelection. Accept donations from $SPECIAL_INTEREST and feel instant gratification. Do the right thing, and there might be something in 10-15 years being developed because of it. No, we can't trust the government (who are actually people just like the "public") to fund something that's 10-15 or even more years down the road.
FTFY
Set your phasers on "funky"!
Realistically its almost impossible to calculate the payoffs from raw science and entities like NASA that do it.
its so huge and pervasive.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Overrated is the last refuge of the incompetent shill. Nice to know I'm on the right track!
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Any investment of money in a big endeavor which has to push the tech envelope will generate payoffs as we are discussing. Spinoff tech and inventions came from military spending as well.
If Slashdot were chemistry it would look like this:Cadaverine
While those discoveries and innovations are nice, they were simply side effects of the primary intention, so can't really be used as a justification for it.
That's not how cost-benefit analysis works when the goal is scientific progress. Any scientific progress is benefit and should be weighed against cost. If your goal is to produce a very specific scientific development then your point is valid, but what is being argued here is the overall benefit, not just the benefit to space travel; indeed, it is the entire point of the conversation, and to ignore it is to have a different conversation. Why not try having this one with us?
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
On 1 - unless those individuals live off sunshine and rain (and discarded food and other items) and never EVER pay for anything.
They are paying taxes through the cost of items/services they pay for, which have their own taxes and levies included in the price, which is then pushed on to the final consumer.
Basically, if you are using the "coin of the realm" you are paying taxes - through the wonder of inflation.
On 3 - First problem with defining contribution to society is that it can't be defined no more than you can define all water everywhere simply by the H2O formula.
There is positive contribution, negative contribution, active, passive, voluntary, involuntary and coincidental etc. etc.
Then you can go through economic, sociological, biological, physical etc. ways of contribution and influence and "cross-join" that with all those mentioned above.
Only thing that is for certain is that EVERYONE contributes to the society by simply being there. Even just as the sum of all their molecules.
Most people contribute WAY more than that. Even when considered as simply "consumers", disregarding all other ways they influence the society.
What I'm saying is that it is not just "better to assume most people contribute to society in some way", it is a MUST.
Well... unless you don't mind operating with faulty logic, untruths and misconceptions.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
The metaphor of a cash result betrays the mindset that everything that costs must have a financial reward.
What happened to teaching that learning and discovery were valuable beyond reckoning?
I am embarrassed to say that even most religions have got at least this right.
Do we need metaphorical monks working in metaphorical scriptoria to investigate basic science?
Constellation was a joke created primarily as space industry welfare and Obama was right to end it.
Spacex has done more in 3 years in getting a new rocket system off the ground than NASA did in 10 years
at 1/10 the cost. I have every reason to believe that the Falcon Heavy demo flight will launch next year and dragon
capsule will be ready on time to supply the space station.
Obama has done nothing but scrap unrealistic uberexpensive programs and focus on what is achieveable with what we actually
have which is refreshing and can actually work.
Silicon Valley. Silicon valley owes its life to NASA. Now, if we can get this to happen all over again, we would be doing just fine. One approach is for the military to push their smart phone as needing to be produced in America.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
"If we knew what it was we were doing, it would not be called research, would it?"
The impact isn't necessarily NASA (which has a bad case of "Old Elvis" at this point), but the impact of the whole space race. This program fired up a generation, perhaps two, of scientists and engineers, some of whom worked for NASA but I'd wager that the majority ended up in some other science/engineering endeavour. However, over the past decade the best-and-brightest have become quants on Wall Street because that's where the money/bright lights are, and we all know how well THAT has worked out.
Yes, it can be argued that NASA has squandered a lot of money over the years, and that it's a horrible poltical and PR animal these days (somewhat self-inflicted), but it was part of a program that led to a lot of what Americans take for granted today. These days it's just a huge jobs program (read "welfare for whitecoats"), and unless it manages to reinvent and reinvigorate itself it will go the way of the Old Elvis. Sadly, I don't think a recovery is possible due to bloat and lack of political will (read "cojones").
Carl Sagan has something to say also on this subject http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3wJYpRJQVbo
MOD THE CHILD UP!
That's exactly it. I keep seeing arguments that the space program was justified by all the spinoff technologies. There's a similar argument, with more sinister implications, that most technical innovation comes from war.
The real lesson, it seems to me, is that if you provide lots of resources for solving a big technical problem, you're likely to solve that problem and invent a lot of other useful things along the way. And if that's the case, why not choose a big technical problem that we have a clear practical need to solve? That way, we may accomplish something important, whether or not there are any useful spinoff technologies.
There are plenty of good candidates for a big technical problem worth solving. Global climate stabilization comes to mind, or the related problem of sustainable energy production.
Article a little "off" on its time.
Because the argument that space exploration led to many useful spinoff technologies implies that space exploration was more likely to produce useful spinoff technologies than other projects that might have been chosen.
Another commentator said that "American politics seems more like two groups of psychotic badgers battling it out between each other than two political parties", which I think sums it up better.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
No person in the world makes a single influence on society. Or a single kind of influence. "Negative" OR "positive".
It is a highly complex chaotic system where one person continuously influences many other persons and objects (which in turn spread their own "influenced" influence further and so on, and so on...) in many different ways.
Butterfly flapping its wings can cause a hurricane somewhere else - or a new iPhone to be produced.
A "bad, bad, BAD" person may commit a series of crimes and be killed or jailed for that (or not) - but his/her actions may trigger a change in law enforcement, justice system or locksmithing that would prevent such acts in the future, maybe saving lives in the process.
Which may lead to increase in population, causing crime rates to rise etc. Or not.
Only thing that is certain is that the system (society, civilization, humanity...) still keeps working - with continuous mending and upgrades.
Remember, slavery used to be all the rage at one time. Or feudalism.
Or treating people from another village like beasts.
And yet we got to where we are now. Not an utopia, but not that bad either.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
Obama for eliminating thousands of jobs
For those who approve of science, as opposed to guesswork, this has been studied. Military and NASA R&D generates civilian spinoffs, sure, but it's only equal to about a 20% payback. So if the government would fund civilian R&D (especially basic research, leaving the development to the commercial sector) we would get much more for our money than by funding moon shots and stealth fighters and letting trickle-down give us a few drips of civilian benefit. But the Horseshit Express rolls on...
I understand the compelling need to look for a short-term revenue reward.
However, that sort of thing is precisely what business is GOOD at.
It's the long-term, vague "specific monetary value to individual"-value stuff like highways, armies, and SPACE PROGRAMS where governments need to participate.
Raw material shortages? A single decent-sized asteroid would provide more metals in a single go than have been mined in human history.
Energy shortages? On any human scale, the energy available in space is infinite.
Further, any reasonable view of the history of this planet shows that as time passes the ultimate survivability of any species approaches zero. Eggs in a single basket, if nothing else.
No, none of this puts revenue in a corporation or even perhaps a government's pocket.
However, the scale of value to humanity as a whole of getting OUT of this gravity well, OUT of this solar system, and sustainably among the stars is truly incalculable
-Styopa
Actially the quote covers the 1960's but the original post left that bit out for what ever reason.
And yes, as an instrument of the Cold-War NASA did ist best in the '60s and '70s and has been
sucking air ever since.
The time is now over.
Even Harrison H. Schmitt, Geologist and Frm Apollo Astronaut and Frm Senator, has called for
NASA to be disabilished, done away with, given to the wreckage pile of the 20th century.
Good riddence ... NASA! Sleep Well. Die Even Better.
--//
The biggest issue with nasa is what could have been done with that money. Unmanned landers for every planet, space telescopes to watch for objects heading for earth, alternative power so we can stop sending money to middle east terrorists, a fast and convenient national transit system to eliminate the car, a cure for cancer- there are lots of things that could have been done. The USA has been the worlds police for decades, i suggest ending that. Your gov/country might get more credit for what it does, and/or you'd find the world more cooperative when you do. And you'd save Trillions in the meantime. Of course that won't happen as the reason you're spending so much time/effort/money on policing the world is so you can force the world to play by your rules (to your financial/political benefit).
Not only is NASA a "non-profit", it is an expression of some of the best qualities of human nature: "going where no man has gone before" (ie. exploration and study of the space environment), curiosity, and the willingness to take the risk to satisfy human curiosity. The unmanned space program has produced some of the most amazing science man has ever produced. Think of the two rovers on Mars and all we have learned about Mars because of them. The question is, Is space flight a good thing in and of itself? To me the ansewr is an obvious yes, as it satisfies the yearning to learn about the places we have not been before and things we have never tried before. You must recall the entire space program to see how far we have come - from the Mercury program, through Gemini and Apollo, to the shuttle and the space station.
Wow, and to think no one ever noticed that amazing historical parallel before. Oh, that's right, it's because there's absolutely no fucking similarity at all.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
It is hard to do anything without some positive outcome.
However, that doesn't mean that thing was worth the cost, that it returned more than the cost.
I find it very unlikely that government programs of any size return net benefits. Corporate R&D programs, which are generally much more focused on economic benefits, have a hard time meeting that standard, which is why they are always starved for budget.