BlackAdder7 said:
Cerebus said:
I'm totally bummed that the space shuttle program is coming to an end. 
what exactly have we gained from the space shuttle program?
The first steps towards permanently getting off this rock. Which is eventually all that's going to save the human race (I believe).
The pure wonderment of exploration. The same as we get from exploring terrestrially.
Clues to the origins of Earth and proof that life exists(ed) off of our planet.
A new environment in which to experiment and research diseases and cures.
Just being able to say "We did it!"
Incredible images of any number of spacial phenomenon including the very edges of our universe, the beginning of time as we know it.
Tang!
Also, the US military budget for FY2010 ALONE was $663.8 billion dollars. One year. Nasa's was $18.7 billion during that same time (of which only a portion goes to space exploration). What did the military do for US Citizens in 2010? And I'm not anti-military - they're only doing what they are ordered to do. But post WWII the US military has been much more about world policing than anything that has to do with actually protecting the homeland.
Ben Bova says this: http://www.naplesnews.com..._rocks_an/
Ben Bova: NASA has given us much more than moon rocks and Tang
What has NASA done for you lately? Aside from returning a few hundred pounds of rocks from the moon, and enabling scientists to explore the universe in more detail than ever before, what has our investment in space produced for the common taxpayer?
Let's look at what NASA calls "technology transfer," the process of spreading technology developed by the space agency to private companies and universities.
Sometimes it's called "spin-offs." Tang, the powdered orange drink that accompanied our astronauts to the moon, has become a standard example, and often held up by know-nothings as an example of how little the space agency has done for the ordinary citizen.
But space technology has given us all a lot more than powdered orange juice. Take Teflon, for example. Originally developed as a material for spacecraft heat shields, Teflon was soon adapted for use as a nonstick surface for cooking utensils. Not world-shaking, perhaps, but since I'm the one who does the dishes in our household, I thank the engineers who developed Teflon every time I come across a greasy pot.
The sensors and instrumentation that keep patients alive in hospital intensive care units came originally from technology developed to keep astronauts alive in their spacecraft. The lightweight, nonflammable materials that we use in windsurfing, skiing, firefighting and a thousand other ways came out of space technology.
So did small, smart, rugged computers such as the laptop that I'm using to write this column.
The main reason that we seldom think of NASA's contribution to these items of everyday use is that they're not stamped "Brought to you by space technology." We see our tax dollars go into NASA by the billions. We don't see the trillions of dollars pumped into the American economy by space technology because those products — and the jobs that they produce — exist in the civilian sector.
All in all, though, our investment in space technology has been the best bargain the U.S. taxpayer has had since the Louisiana Purchase. Since NASA's creation in 1958, the space agency's total funding adds up to less than one year's worth of funding for the Defense Department or for Health and Human Services. Yet out of that investment has come the home computer and entertainment market, new medical technology, new materials — trillions of dollars added to our economic strength.
Technology transfer is an interesting process. New technology is almost always developed by "the big boys:" national governments or major corporations. Eventually it trickles down to the common citizenry.
Take gunpowder, for example.
Gunpowder was invented in China, possibly as early as the tenth century A.D. The Chinese used it for fireworks displays: the noise and color pleased them just as fireworks make us gasp with pleasure on the Fourth of July.
In the 12th century China was invaded by Genghis Khan's Mongols. The Great Khan quickly grasped that those colorful rockets and noisy explosions could have military significance. Within a few decades Mongols were using gunpowder in battle — with Chinese engineers handling the explosive stuff.
Europeans learned about gunpowder from fighting the Mongols and soon became quite adept at building cannons and muskets. By the 17th century, gunpowder weapons armed all the armies of Europe. But gunpowder and its technology was monopolized by the kings: you had to be a royal musketeer to get a musket. Private ownership was discouraged, if not forbidden outright.
By the 18th century, though, in the wilderness of the New World, private citizens began making their own muskets. Those inventive colonials even improved on the weaponry by rifling and elongating the barrels of the guns, making them much more accurate at ranges far longer than muskets could reach.
By 1776 colonists were armed with Pennsylvania rifles (later misnamed Kentucky rifles) and potted British Redcoats from Massachusetts to Georgia. It took a few centuries, but the technology of gunpowder weapons had "trickled down" from royal prerogative to the ordinary citizen.
Now think about modern electronics technology and computers. In George Orwell's famous novel, "1984" (published in 1949) the dictatorial government of Big Brother controlled all the electronic media. TV sets were actually government spy-eyes that watched citizens in their own homes.
As recently as the 1960s, science fiction stories warned that governments would use computers and electronics to control their people. Even the best science fiction writers predicted a future in which the government controlled all the computers, and thereby all the information, in the nation.
Those dark forecasts were based on the knowledge that electronic computers were big machines that required special climate-controlled rooms and dedicated staffs of operators. Two things happened to change all that.
One of them was the invention of the semiconductor transistor, which made it possible to shrink the size of computers. The other was our quest for the moon.
While military and aerospace applications pushed for smaller, more rugged computers, it was the Apollo lunar program that made small, rugged, smart computers an absolute necessity.
Out of that necessity came the home computer industry, driven by private enterprise: bright youngsters starting new corporations in their garages.
Electronics technology "trickled down" from government monopoly to private citizens in a few decades, not centuries. The laptop on which I am now working is much faster and more powerful than the computers that Armstrong, Aldrin and Collins worked with on Apollo 11. My laptop is faster and more powerful than the IBM mainframe at the laboratory where I worked in the 1960s.
Today, thanks to modern computer technology, private citizens can watch their governments. Through the Freedom of Information Act any one of us can force the government to open its files to public scrutiny. The system isn't perfect: Governments give up their data reluctantly. But without modern computers there would be no such system in place.
Freedom. That's what technology produces. That's what NASA has contributed to us. Freedom, and trillions of dollars in economic strength.
And there's this from Answers.com...
How much money is spent on space exploration each year?
Space Exploration
The FY2010 NASA budget is $18.7 billion. How much of that is devoted to "space exploration" is a matter of debate (approximately $5-$7 billion), since NASA's funding is divided into aeronautics, operations, science and cross-agency support.
(see the related NASA link)
Other agencies also spend money on space, notably the National Reconnaissance Office, Department of Defense, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Agency, and the US Geologic Survey, but that money comes out of their own budgets.
The total worldwide cost is roughly equal to $35 billion dollars, which includes advanced programs in Europe, Russia, China, India, and Japan. This does not include satellites (many commercial) that provide services from orbit.
NASA's budget for Fiscal Year 2010 equates to a little over one-half of one percent (0.53%) of the total U.S. federal budget of $3.1 Trillion. In comparison, at the height of the Apollo moon landing program in the mid-1960s, nearly four percent (4%) of the total U.S. federal budget went into that endeavor. Even if NASA's budget were to be doubled overnight to $37 billion dollars, it would only amount to 1.2% of today's federal budget.
$18.7 billion for NASA works out to about $60 dollars a year which breaks down to $5.00 a month, or $1.25 a week, or $0.18 cents a day out of the $4,000 to $8,000 in taxes the average American pays every April 15th. That's less than what someone would spend for a Cheeseburger or a Double Mocha Latte at your neighborhood coffee shop.
For those who question the size of NASA's operating budget, in 2009 the US budget is split as follows:
National Debt Payment: $10.2 trillion (580 times larger than NASA's budget)
Department of Defense: $515.4 billion (29.3 times larger than NASA's budget)
Global War on Terrorism: $189.3 billion (10.8 times larger than NASA's budget)
Health & Human Services: $68.5 billion (3.9 times larger than NASA's budget)
Department of Transportation: $63.4 billion (3.6 times larger than NASA's budget)
Department of Education: $59.2 billion (3.4 times larger than NASA's budget)
Department of Housing & Urban Development: $38.5 billion (2.2 times larger than NASA's budget)
Department of Energy: $25.0 billion (1.4 times larger than NASA's budget)
If the above numbers are unsettling, consider the following: in 2009, the U.S. Congress passed a "stimulus" package of $787 billion for the Banking, Mortgage and Automobile industries for one year. That same amount of money could operate NASA for the next 42 years.
According to a November 2003 report by Barna Research Group and the Baptist Press, Americans are spending -- in ONE year -- an average of:
$586.5 billion on gambling;
$80 billion on illegal drugs;
$58 billion on alcohol consumption;
$31 billion on tobacco products, and;
$250 billion on the medical treatment for the above related issues
Additionally, during 2003, Americans also collectively spent:
$224 billion to eat out;
$191 billion on personal water craft;
$67 billion on frozen dinners;
$25 billion on gardening;
$22.1 billion on hunting;
$21.3 billion on extravagant pet products, and;
$15 billion on junk food snacks
All things relative -- even in the financial meltdown and economic retrenching of 2008-2009 -- the cost for space exploration in the United States is neither a significant tap on social programs, nor a drain on the overall $3.1 Trillion Federal Budget or $14 Trillion U.S. economy.
Nevertheless, trying to estimate the economic value of the space program to the U.S. is surprisingly easy. A 1971 NASA study by the Midwest Research Institute concluded:
"The 25 billion in 1958 dollars spent on civilian space R & D during the 1958-1969 period has returned $52 billion through 1971 and will continue to produce pay-off through 1987, at which time the total pay off will have been $181 billion. The discounted rate of return for this investment will have been 33 percent."
This statement is plausible since those were the years when NASA's spending on the Apollo program was at its height, but NASA also invested in other programs and they are included in the mix, so the conclusion is not as definitive as one would like.
Also, a 33 percent return on investment is not really big enough to make the normal venture capitalist go wild -- but for a government program, however, a 33% ROI is quite respectable.
A short article in the prestigious British science journal, "Nature" (January 9, 1992, pgs. 105-106), reported:
"The economic benefits of NASA's programs are greater than generally realized. The main beneficiaries (the American public) may not even realize the source of their good fortune..."
Some other statistics:
Confirmation that "Space pays" may also be found in the 1989 Chapman Research report, which examined just 259 non-space applications of NASA technology during an eight year period from 1976-1984 and found more than:
- $21.6 billion in sales and benefits;
- 352,000 (mostly skilled) jobs created or saved;
- $355 million in federal corporate income taxes
Other benefits, not quantified in the study, include state corporate income taxes, individual personal income taxes (federal and state) paid by those 352,000 workers, and incalculable benefits resulting from lives saved and improved quality of life.
These 259 applications represent only 1% of an estimated 25,000 to 30,000 space program spinoffs. These benefits were in addition to benefits in the space industry itself and in addition to the ordinary multiplier effects of any government spending.
In 2002, the aerospace industry contributed more than $95 billion to U.S. economic activity, which included $23.5 billion in employee earnings, and employed 576,000 people -- a 16% increase in jobs from three years earlier (source: FAA, March 2004).
Our nation can afford whatever it values enough to pay for. All rose-colored glasses wishing aside, social welfare and other desirable programs have to win congressional support on their own merits; they will not necessarily be given NASA's $18.7 billion budget for FY2010 if the agency was completely terminated tomorrow.
For one final comparison, one can look to a report on NBC Nightly News (Saturday, Nov. 24, 2006). Americans collectively spent $8.9 billion in ONE day during the post-Thanksgiving holiday shopping event known as "Black Friday".
That's half of what NASA's budget is . . . for an entire year.
$457.4 billion in retail sales were rung up by shoppers during the 2006 holiday season, buying 42-inch plasma/LCD HDTVs, Sony PS3s, Nitendo Wii's and other extraneous items -- supposedly all in the name of "Brotherhood and Peace on Earth." Another $25 billion in gift cards were also sold in that holiday season alone.
Despite an economy struggling to emerge from a recession, according to a recent report in the Baltimore Sun newspaper, Americans are still projected to spend about $6.9 billion for Halloween in 2009. Nevertheless, critics will still insist on saying "we should stop spending on space exploration" because "it's a total waste of finances or resources," or "we can't afford it," or that we're "wasting our money."
The real value of space exploration to our nation's economy will be a subject of debate among experts for many years to come. Like the Apollo program, its impact will be hard to measure, but will be evident in the new industries that will spring up around it.
The politics of a technological project with a clear goal and self-evident success or failure are much simpler to deal with than any plan to conquer poverty, rebuild the cities, or clean up the environment.
Supporters of space exploration have long known intuitively that the investments America has made in space technology have helped maintain the country as the world's number one technological superpower.
The infinitely complex nature of economic decision-making in a free market system may mean that no one will ever be able to show a direct cause and effect relationship -- but that does not mean that it is not there.
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I had a stellar peanut butter and banana sandwich for lunch today.
You'r not going to distract me with name calling that I had to look up first before I understood you were dissing me. 