Gold$eek writes (A Fool and His Money):
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NASA's publication spinoff
Addendum: The space pioneers, James D. Hamilton
This year, 1971, is significant in another way...it marked the beginning of the space shuttle program. Since then, about $150 billion has been lost in space. Readers will remark that valuable inventions have come from the space program. For example, NASA spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on one of them: the “space pen.” It’s a remarkable writing device designed for weightless conditions. It will write on any surface from any position. The Russians used pencils.Interestingly enough, the NASA History Division has a very different story...
related items:
NASA's publication spinoff
Addendum: The space pioneers, James D. Hamilton
Mahalanobis - am 2005-09-21 03:01
HedgeFundGuy meinte am 21. Sep, 04:24:
what a waste
see the Straight Dope's take
gohai (guest) meinte am 21. Sep, 15:20:
I once read that NASA used the space pen even for the Apollo program and that this little thing saved the success of the Apollo 11 mission: When Armstrong finished his moon walk and entered the lunar module again, he broke a tiny toggle switch inside, that was most essential for restarting the engines in order to go back home. Armstrong is said to have fixed this by entering the top of his space pen into the casing of the switch and pushed it in the desired position. That's how the story goes..
Paul N (guest) meinte am 21. Sep, 21:53:
The funding for manned spaceflight makes me feel ill. I mean if you gave that money back to taxpayers, that'd be great. Let's say you want science to progress - if you instead used it to fund the NSF (NASA's budget is considerably bigger), you'd probably have a 1000-fold better return on investment. Even if you used it to fund non-manned spaceflight, it wouldn't be nearly as wasteful.At least with social security, the money's going to people. Even with medicare, some doctors and administrators are benefiting from our general loss. Manned spaceflight is like burning money. The most sickening of all is this "return to the moon" business - so in 2019 we can say "yay, we landed men on the moon, just like 50 years ago!"
Mahalanobis antwortete am 21. Sep, 23:41:
Kennedyesque manned space mission boondoggles & poison pills
Bob Park wrote a couple of days ago about NASA's plan to visit the moon in 2018:
2018? In 1961 John Kennedy promised the Moon "before this decade is out." From a standing start, America was on the moon in seven years. Now, after 44 years of "space progress," it's gonna take twice as long? What are we looking for? NASA says they'll find water, hydrogen and "valuable commodities." On the Moon? Go on! Maybe someone takes that seriously, but he's not writing this column. We've got robots on Mars right now. Put a few of them on the moon. They don't break for lunch, or complain about the cold nights, and they live on sunshine. Space exploration with humans is about over. The bills won't come due until Bush is safely out of office. Stick the next administration with an impossibly expensive and pointless program and let them take the blame for ending human space exploration. This is a poison pill.I didn't expect to start a discussion about manned spaceflight when making fun about people who still believe the space pen myth (and who do not know how to use search engines). I can't see the benefits of manned spaceflights which would justify these astronomical expenses either but I think the benefits of (non-manned) space exploration are underestimated due to the fact that some of them can't be measured in monetary terms. What's the value of the pictures taken by the Hubble Space Telescope? How many kids decided to become scientists after looking at an image of the stellar spire in the eagle nebula (pdf)? Unfortunately, I do not have time for unorthodox economic reasoning right now. ;-D
Paul N (guest) antwortete am 22. Sep, 00:54:
My intuition is that it's still pretty expensive in terms of relative results-to-funding, but at least non-manned space exploration gives us some things of value.Moreover, how many websites/blogs a day do you read, Michael? I've never even heard of Bob Park!
Mahalanobis antwortete am 22. Sep, 03:55:
Bob
Park was mentioned in the straight dope article... ;-D.I don't read too many blogs... not even half of our blogroll on a daily basis.
