Ice on the moon a "game-changer"

[tw]

Originally Posted by dar512

Just a couple of the many sites documenting the payoff from the space program.

And the myths live on. A few innovation that already existed.

Infrared thermometer
Launched to market in 1991, the device weighs only eight ounces and gives a reading in just two seconds.

Reality. It used the same component sold by Hamamatsu in the 1980s (and maybe earlier). How do I know? I designed a device using the same technology to detect a human body by remotely and passively detecting emissions (temperature) from warmer human skin. Same technology used in proximity switches that detect the human body, turn on lights, and detect motion in burglar alarm systems - in the early 1980s. What better promotes new products and innvoation (using your reasoning)? Crime.

In a Hitachi factory in the mid 1980s (during a fire alarm), we were playing with a device that measured infrared emissions and reported temperature. We (Americans and Japanese - some of whom could not speak English) were playing with it; measuring each other's body temperature from across the room.

Of course, in a million discoveries, we could find one or two had some basis in the space program - or would have happened anyway. Meanwhile, how many hundred discoveries were stifled because we were spending $billions on space programs that did no science? More rediculous are these electronics advances - that you are no longer preaching now that someone who actually did the stuff provided reality. Did you forget how many hundred new ideas could have happened if billions were actually being spent on science?

$8 billion for a Super Collider to actually do science in TX. Instead we killed science to spend $80billion keeping three men in space. Notice the longer list of innovations not existing because so many productive people were wasting $80billion doing no science. After $80billion, we could have a thermometer in 1991 that was doing what we were already doing in semiconductor fabs in the 1980s? You call that an innovation by simply ignoring that it already existed?

What is doing the best (productive) science? What creates far more innovations? The less than 10% of the space program that launches no humans. How many Hubbles could have been launched for the price of one year’s worth of shuttle launches? Many. Too many. The Martian Rovers alone do more science than any mission to the ISS over the last ten years – using only 8086 processors, standard solar cells, orbiting communication satellites, and electric motors - and no humans.

What was Columbia doing when it disintegrated? Columbia remained in service because it was the only space shuttle that could do any science - had no other mission. So we gave science the shittiest space shuttle. Did they forget to mentino that since propaganda rather than science is the purpose?

The best science means no humans, lots of machines, remote sensors, and robots. Same applies to undersea as well as outer space. So many innovations that do not exist because we wasted so much money putting man in space.

Who are the leaders in space launches? French. Russians. Why? Because the biggest spenders wasted so much good money and labor on something that provides so little science and innovation: manned space flight. So mismanaged is space research for a political agenda that we will soon be completely dependent on the Russians (and maybe the French) for access to the ISS. A reality when propaganda rather than reality and science pervert the exploration of space.

"Man to Mars" is a code word for one of the dumbest administrations in American history. An adminstration with so much contempt for science and innovation as to even have science papers rewritten by White House lawyers. Where is the best (almost all) science ongoing? Unmanned probes, sensors, and robots. Things that are productive and not hyped by myths. Things also subverted by that administration that only saw *glory* in "Man to Mars".

How to create so many new products and innovations? Using their reasoning: increase crime. Then lie about the infrared thermometer. Those who actually know better are not their target audience.