Quote:
Originally Posted by chemgear
Sorry but I gotta totally disagree.
The advances and research just from trying are massive. This is a relatively poor website, but it lists some of the things that we've gotten out of the endeavor (pardon the pun.)
http://www.thespaceplace.com/nasa/spinoffs.html
Hell, Hubble itself was totally worth it.
If you're worried about all the cost, we should go raid all the loot in the Vatican - they're hoarding more gold, valuables and money than most countries. |
Overall I'm in favour of the space program, but I want to play devil's advocate here. To me, the issue is not money. It's that a lot of the most brilliant scientists and engineers in the world are working for NASA, when they could be working on 'real-world' problems. Obviously the problems that they are working on will result in some interesting real-world applications - sometimes that will result in something revolutionary like the whole concept of solar power... other times it will result in the ribbed swimsuit. Interesting, but not really of benefit to society as a whole.
Even with a technology like solar power, NASA is really only interested in the bleeding edge of the technology. Concerns like making solar panels inexpensive and mass-produced are beyond them; yet these are the issues that are keeping solar-power in the category of novelty when it could be a globally transformative technology. So we've got a number of companies working at making this next breakthrough, but so far it's still a long way off. Let's say that we threw the problem back to NASA and tasked them with developing solar panels that reached certain benchmarks in cost and efficiency, and tie additional funding to these developments. Could they come up with a solution faster than the private sector? I suspect they could.
Or let's say that you ran NASA like Google: every NASA engineer is encouraged to spend 20% of their time on projects that interest them, with an emphasis on projects that could result in significant real-world applications. It might slow down the mission to mars, but it could also make NASA far more productive at solving more pressing science and engineering problems.
I'm in favour of keeping NASA, even increasing their budget (if that funding comes at the cost of DoD funding), and encouraging them to pursue manned flights to mars and other ambitious projects. I just wonder if we're getting the maximum benefit from our best and brightest.