US Officially Out of the Space Program

[RGBVideo]

Something tells me we could throw 10 times the amount of money that we do now and we really wouldn't be in any better shape than we are. It seems to me that the truly beneficial gains are those that take place incrementally and involves different players.

You said the thoughts I was thinking about better than I did.

[Solomwi]

The same government that successful completed World War II, created the first Atomic Bomb, created ARPANet, etc?

The same government which had its glory days 30+ years ago and is now just hanging around ****ing things up. I never knew the federal government was Brett Favre.

[Cort Haus]

:delurks:

OK, the article below is a bit old, but not so old in the context of the overall discussion. It appears to my primitive non-fizzicist mind to suggest that public-funded research *can* turn into commercial technological innovation.

And didn't the space program give us satellites?

Generally speaking, I'm in favour of the principal of abstract scientific inquiry and research, including looking out at the very big and looking in to the very small. This would probably be the kind of work that would not be commercially appealing in the short term, and therefore an appropriate candidate for public funding.

http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/story.asp?storyCode=107744&sectioncode=26

Fillip for state-funded scientists

12 June 1998
Julia Hinde

A THIRD of United States patents filed in 1996 cited scientific papers, 75 per cent of which were produced by public-funded research centres, such as universities or government laboratories, writes Julia Hinde.

"This is very strong evidence for publicly funded science as a means of generating corporate technological innovation," Diana Hicks, one of the researchers at CHI Research which did the analysis, told a conference in Cambridge this week.

The analysis showed that only a quarter of the papers cited came from industrial scientists. It also found a 15 per cent increase in patents citing scientific papers since 1985.

Dr Hicks told the Fifth International Conference on Science and Technology Indicators that she believes the analysis influenced the US decision to raise its science budget this year.

Grant Lewison, of the PRISM unit at the Wellcome Trust, said: "It's an important message, but this was for US industry. We have not done the same for British industry."

Dr Hicks said each country's patents preferentially cited papers from their own country by a factor of between two and four. For example, Britain produces 8 per cent of the world's scientific literature, but British companies' US patents citing scientific research called on UK work 23 per cent of the time. "It shows you have to do the research yourself," she said.

Sylvan Katz, from the Science Policy Research Unit at Sussex University, told delegates that as the number of scientific papers a country publishes rises, the number of citations it gets rises faster.

Ben Martin, unit head, said that Dr Katz's results contradicted research last year by Britain's chief scientific adviser Sir Robert May. This showed small countries, such as Switzerland and Israel, doing disproportionately well on citations. He said this could be because smaller countries tend to publish in international journals.

Sir Robert was also challenged by the National University at Canberra. Last year Sir Robert wrote that the international cost-effectiveness of UK research may be related to the high proportion carried out in universities rather than research institutes.

But Australian research found the highest impact was from institutes where staff researched full-time rather than from universities where people teach and research.

[KrazyHorse]

How would an atom bomb, or many other things, even be considered if not for the science that was funded (and not directly useful) in the previous centuries?

What makes you think that science wouldn't have been done except for the government? What makes you think that the market wouldn't have made better decisions in terms of when and in what order to fund stuff? Also, given that the basic science behind the atomic bomb was internationally public knowledge (and that global defence spending on things like nukes is a negative sum game...) what does this have to do with anything?

If you want to argue that science as high energy people generally think of it isn't useful, I would probably agree. Fundamental science has gone far far beyond applied science. But to say that fundamental science isn't useful at all, disagrees with history.

I didn't say that fundamental science is useless. I said that the science the gov't funds is, generally, FAR less useful than that funded by the private sector. Most gov't science funding appears to go to satisfy private intellectual curiousity rather than usable research.

It's not a question of NEVER DOING that science; it's a question of doing science NOW which could be put off until later (when it's closer to being useful).

Often fundamental science makes discoveries which 10-100 years later can be turned into applications. Look at the atom bomb, semi-conductors, AMO, etc.

Yes, and WHY WAS THE SCIENCE DONE SO EARLY? There is a cost to doing work too early! Not only the discount rate, but also the fact that science (as well as technology) is basically incremental and dependent on other work.

Just because it is actual applied science which makes the useful discoveries doesn't mean that the fundamental science is useless.

No doubt, but the fact is that we should avoid, when at all possible, doing the fundamental science TOO FAR IN ADVANCE! The fact that some types of fundamental science are so esoteric and so expensive that the only ones willing to fund it are people playing with other people's money should tell you something!

[Whoha]

40 years later how much cheaper would a manned mission to the moon be today?

[KrazyHorse]

Private sector will not fund fundamental, pioneering R&D because it'll turn into profit in too long a time (does anyone in here think that establishing a manned, habitable colony on Mars will be feasible with under 50 years of R&D?).

Space research is incremental too. There's lots of stops along the way. We already have comsats. What about orbital stations? What about lunar colonies? What about asteroid mining?

There's no reason to believe that the best use of resources is to do something so monumentally stupid as to focus on a "flag-planting" achievement like the Apollo program.

The Apollo program is symbolic of EVERYTHING THAT'S WRONG with gov't sponsorship of R&D. What, exactly, did we get from Apollo that was worth, present-valued, 150 BILLION DOLLARS? 12 people wandered around on the moon. The technology used to make that happen is now laughably obsolete, so much of it simply won't be reused next time. That's pure, unadulterated WASTE.

[Cort Haus]

The 'flag planting' of the Apollo Program is perhaps best understood in the context of the cold war. Not necessarily justified, but explained in terms of international dick-waving.

[Jon Miller]

Oh, I may have been thinking you were making a stronger statement than you were.

JM

[Sava]

Those were accomplished in a different environment - while partisan politics certainly existed during WWII, they were not allowed to measurably interfere with the war effort.

you should read about the 1940 election and roosevelt's struggle with the isolationists in the years prior because you sound like a complete idiot when you say things like this

well, this whole thread makes you sound like an idiot, but this in particular

[Sava]

no offense tho

[Sava]

The Apollo program is symbolic of EVERYTHING THAT'S WRONG with gov't sponsorship of R&D. What, exactly, did we get from Apollo that was worth, present-valued, 150 BILLION DOLLARS? 12 people wandered around on the moon.

velcro and tang

[KrazyHorse]

CortHaus, that's seriously a simple-minded analysis.

"Number of patents" is a ridiculous metric, as are citations. Not to mention the fact that 75% of 1/3 implies that only a quarter of patents derive AT ALL from gov't sponsored research. Given the amount of money that goes into gov't research (especially when you consider this amount as a STOCK of previously-done research)

[FrostyBoy]

Isn't mining the Moon dangerous to our health? I'm pretty sure we need that huge rock up there.

KH, aren't you underestimating how much valuable knowledge and experience NASA has provided over the decades?

I'm all for privatizing space, but, I think the government must play an important -controlling- role, perhaps in the military sector. Because we all know how companies **** things up. e.g. Healthcare.

[Asher]

velcro and tang

Velcro predates its use by NASA

[Elok]

Isn't mining the Moon dangerous to our health? I'm pretty sure we need that huge rock up there.

...are you suggesting that we would mine so much that we'd significantly decrease the mass, and therefore the gravitational effect, of the moon? Never mind that it'd probably be cheaper to synthesize whatever material is needed than to send out rockets at millions per launch; unless the moon happens to have a mantle of pure...hell, what's worth that much? I'd say platinum, but that's only valuable due to rarity. Something with a major industrial application.

Anyway, has anyone ever suggested colonizing the ocean floor or something, instead of space? It's a lot more cost-effective, being much less hostile and without escape velocity problems, and there's probably something worth mining/exploiting down there. Dunno what. More useful research, anyway. A better understanding of ocean ecology would probably help us with climate change.