Motors Blog

Good Answer AH.

Some people just refuse to open their eyes and minds. Does the OP really think that the race to the moon had nothing to do with the miniaturization of computers? With CR4 being an Engineering blog, I am insulted by this blog entry being posted here. I'm not sure if I should launch an automated flame assault to this entry and the OP's e-mail or just ask for this to be removed.

Good Answer. Some people do not wish to acknowledge that nearly every modern advancement has come, in some form or another, from that era of exploration.

And worse yet (to them) it was those terrible Americans that did it!!

Regards Dragon

Come on people... Don't shoot him... This is just a -rather philosophical- question and I don't see any "hint" about American people. Don't give any strange "extensions". A question is just a question and nothing more.

Nevertheless, I agree with you that the Apollo project (although extremely expensive) gave a lot of answers to a lot of questions. The knowledge and the technological innovations that came out of this were very important. The solutions that were given by the engineers to the several hundreds technological problems (that were arised during the implementation of this project) were amazing. This project gave us a lot of "know-how" and many applications (in a wide range: from rockets to telecom equipment). We just can't ignore all of these.

Point taken. My apologies if I offended. I had just come off of another site where I had a heated discussion with another individual on a similar subject.

Regards Dragon

One of the things I cannot understand about Apollo hoax believers: if the evidence that we staged the moon landing is so obvious that a lot of non-technical and non-media people can spot it, why didn't the USSR? If they had, they would have trumpeted it to the world in great detail. As you said, "it was at a time of intrigues and deceptions between the US & USSR"

Just Like the thousands if not hundreds of thousands that were involved were able to keep this a secret. for 40+ years, good luck.

Would you believe it if the exposure came from the USSR?

I whole hearted agree.

To compare a space program to auto mobile or aircrafts is too simplistic and it is misleading as the Apollo program was never launched to provide. "rockets in our garages and none of us can travel to the moon"

At the same time one cannot also run away from the fact that the full potential of space technology spin offs were not fully realized by US.

Greed and single track obsession with profits saw whole sale transfer of engineering manufacturing to China.

Obduracy of Detroit to face up to the challenge of Japanese for better design cheaper and reliable, saw the American auto leadership fading.

There is feeling, not with out reason that benefits of enormously expensive Apollo project never fully reached a common man..

Today no other country in world can match US excellent higher educational institutions and University fundamental research.

To reap the benefit of such an excellent foundation, it is high time for serious introspection to bring back the engineering and steel manufacturing and reassert American competitiveness in a global economy..

There are a lot of spin-offs from the Apollo program. Decent food in a pouch, computers, a lot on navigation, validation of a lot of physics theories. But there is a point that, in the grand scheme of things, space travel is still a very limited and somewhat dangerous undertaking. I still can't hop a hypersonic to Tokyo (and after 11 hours in a 747 I'm ready to get off, trust me) and travel to the planets is limited to unmanned equipment. We're not even close to the vision of "2001 A Space Odessey."

IF that is your metric of success the moon race did not deliver. That is probably why the NASA budget is so difficult to defend in front of the congresscritters.

We may not agree with the metric but a lot of the public does. If we can't succinctly justify the expense then space exploration will languish. I wouldn't pillory this guy, I'd thank him for posing the question that MUST be answered to justify the endeavour.

There are tons of things that we have now that can be directly traced to the research efforts into rocketry that begain in Germany, America, and Russia in the early part of the 20th century and continued in earnest in the 50's and 60's due to the pressures of the Cold War. As a nation, America spent an enormous amount of time, effort, and money on what amounted to basic research, the results of which can only really be grasped in hindsight. That is the problem with pure scientific research, because you can't tell what the benefits will be, so that it is very hard to quantify. If you can't quantify the benefits, then how can you do a cost-benefit analysis? Even today the basic research being done in space leads to improvements here on earth, such as the CCD's in digital cameras.

I think the space race invigorated the country's interest in science and engineering, and drove technical development just the way that video games have driven the technical development of computers. When we focus on learning more about the universe, whether in the vastness of space or the tiny realms where quantum physics dominates, our technology advances in ways we can't even image at the start. Physics rules!

I'm trying to be nice so I'll just say that this blog is just about as short-sighted as short-sightedness can be.

Just the advancements in micro-electronics, manufacturing, metallurgy, plastics, and on and on and on and on... were mind boggling to those of us who were there.

Hooker

Human space-flight is wasting money and gaining reputation, political people love this.

So do not await for big useful progress with humans in space.

If unmanned this situation is much better, if military interests existing still better as funding is easy.

So what to do?

RHABE

While we are all entitled to our opinions, I dispute your claim that human space-flight is a waste of money. With the exception of the precious metals consumed in the process of putting humans into space that could have been at one time coins (silver, gold, copper, nickel, etc.), all of the money spent to this endeavour went to people's salaries. The entire fifty year budget of NASA funding totaled to $416 billion dollars. In contrast Bernie Madoff alone squandered $21 billion dollars from investors in a fraction of the time. Granted human space exploration is considerably more expensive than unmanned exploration. But just because you would prefer this funding to be distributed differently does not make it wasted. NASA returned things to us that did not exist before, Bernie did not. NASA can be considered expensive, but Bernie is a waste.

Freeze frame back to "civilized" Europe in the 1400's:

Human sailing out of sight of land is wasting money and risks lives because they'll fall off the edge of this flat earth.

So, what to do?

Do it anyway. There'll always be naysayers.

Hooker

Your question / statement is too soon. Space travel is much more complicated than the automoble or air craft. In the future I believe man will be able to travel to and colonize other worlds like in Star Trek ( I believe everything in that series is posible with the exception of the transporter); but to answer your question what have we gain so far "TANG" and the Tempur-Pedic mattress. Please do not forget that we now have the ability to do scientific research and gravity free experiments on the space station that we can not do on earth to further our scientific knowledge. So to reply to your question all I will say is "BEAM ME UP SCOTTY, THERE IS NO INTELLIGENT LIFE HERE"

So many on this discussion seem to be victim to the classic logical fallacy: post hoc ergo proctor hoc. It came before this, is it caused this. Yes many of the inventions of the past half century have grown from work done trying to put humans beyond Earth's atmosphere. However, that does not mean that these advancements would not have been made for other goals.

Miniaturization of electronics is an excellent example. Electronics were made smaller and lighter to reduce payloads, but there has been far more advancement on this count by private companies seeking to provide better terrestrial products (e.g. PC's digital watches, cell phones, mp3 players). The computer I am using to write this is more a product of Intel, Microsoft and Dell than NASA.

I believe there is very little that benefits our lives in any practical way that could not have been discovered or developed if no human had ever gone higher than a few miles from the Earth's surface. To demonstrate the value of human space exploration, there has to be a result that is specifically attributed to space exploration itself, not to the work done getting out there and back. If I were to spend a million dollars and five years trying to understand squirrel chirps, and along the way invented a bed that makes itself in the morning, would that money and time have been well spent?

The greatest problem with NASA and similar organizations, is that it focusses many of our finest scientists on fantasies, and denies humanity of the value of their potential.

Hey Hooker,

It is safe to say he was never in Nasa or he would realize the importance.

NASA's true original purpose(to explore and possibly colonize space) has not made a enormous progress as of now, and the transition of shuttle to a newer space transport will slow things a bit. The positive externalities, however, are quite evident. Many technologies were created or improved as a side affect of the space programm. the aerosoft mattresses we have today were first used on the trip to the moon i believe.

NASA was originally NACA - National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics. The rename and inclusion of "Space" came much later in its history, and became a complementary responsibility.

So "true orignal purpose" is not quite right and describes only a portion (though highly visible by public whim) of its responsibilities.

NASA should not only be critiqued on its Space role.

Hooker