WTF Has NASA Done For ME???

"Rock Bottom" (rockbottom81) 07/30/2015 at 14:32 • Filed to: None

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This has been around for a while, but I feel like it needs to be circulated again. I keep hearing (generally uninformed) people saying “we waste money on NASA”. Here is a simpleton’s rebuttal:

http://www.wtfnasa.com/

Also, look at this chart.

That’s right. Around 0.5% of our national budget is spent at NASA. That’s our commitment to science and excellence. That’s how little we think of it. And don’t think that “we’re simply depending on the public sector to make up for it”. I used to work at NASA, now I work in the auto industry and I can tell you that big companies are NOT concerned with advancing toward the scientific horizon. They are concerned with making money and doing it fast. Real science often doesn’t pay off for decades, and that’s just not something these companies can sell to their share-holders. If management won’t see a positive return on investment in a year or two, they usually won’t bother. Example: I once executed a NASA test of a future rotorcraft control system that will significantly reduce the noise and fuel consumption of helicopters, but won’t be technologically mature for another 10 to 20 years. I don’t know of one company that would invest in a technology they can’t make money on for 20 years.

One last question: Why should we spend money at NASA (besides scientific advancement)? Simple: that money overwhelmingly stays in the USA and is often (though not always) spent locally, near the NASA centers. As a NASA engineering group lead, I had a several-million dollar annual discretionary budget, not including the payroll of my engineers. This money was meant to keep our specific test facility running at the bleeding edge of the scientific state-of-the-art and boy did it! And do you know where pretty much ALL of that money went? Small companies in the San Francisco Bay Area. We hired them to do all sorts of stuff from lead and asbestos abatement (this wind tunnel was built in 1944), electric motor refurbishment and maintenance, welding and fabrication, instrumentation calibration, and more. Even mundane tasks like lawn maintenance, roof repairs, and building painting were done by local companies. That’s all money that was injected right into the local economy. Did it eventually make it out of the US? Maybe, but it had to try that much harder to get out.

Bottom line: Funding NASA is good for science and good for the American economy. And they don’t just do spaceflight, either. That’s a painfully uninformed view of the organization. Look:

ly2v8-Brian > Rock Bottom 07/30/2015 at 14:40

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We need some competition to go against. That would light the fire again.

TheHondaBro > Rock Bottom 07/30/2015 at 14:41

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NASA was the result of the cold war space race. Now we have Virgin Galactic, SpaceX, and Boeing all investing in space travel. Having a government agency devoted to space travel is rapidly becoming a redundancy.

Baeromez > Rock Bottom 07/30/2015 at 14:45

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Jordaneer, The Mountaineer Man > Rock Bottom 07/30/2015 at 14:48

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Why are we spending so much money on other stuff like the military, I’m not saying it isn’t good to have one, but why do we send all of that money overseas? (We spend as much on our military as the next 9 highest nations COMBINED) We should be investing in better infrastructure (like our roads), education, and STEM.

Sir_Stig: and toxic masculinity ruins the party again. > TheHondaBro 07/30/2015 at 14:49

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But we use all sorts of technologies that have been developed by NASA, why not let them continue innovating?

Jordaneer, The Mountaineer Man > Rock Bottom 07/30/2015 at 14:50

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NASA is the only government agency that has an actual return on its investment and doesn't waste tons of money on stupid stuff, the question is why aren’t we spending more on NASA?

HammerheadFistpunch > Rock Bottom 07/30/2015 at 15:00

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I agree that nasa is valuable and underfunded but it’s certainly not the only place the government puts money towards the advance of science and excellence

ADabOfOppo; Gone Plaid (Instructables Can Be Confusable) > Rock Bottom 07/30/2015 at 15:00

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I despise the short-sightedness of our current society. Our collective “Fuck You. I’ve got mine.” attitude will ruin us as a species. We need to be working on making ourselves better, regardless of the costs involved.

So few people are tying to do this at all. Elon Musk is the most prominent, and even then his progress is hampered by the need for people to see a quarterly profit. We need to look at investing as the gamble it really is, and that if you give someone money, you are agreeing to be in for the long haul. If you want out, then you can sell, but you get whatever price the stock is at, not a guaranteed return. And you may not see anything at all from your investment, but your kids might if the company has a long-term project that finally pays out.

Call it a sci-fi, utopian ideal if you want, but I hate the rampant greed that runs our economy. I would love to know how much people like the Koch brothers like the taste of money, because at the rate we’re going, that is all they will have left. Having literally all the money does no one any good if they can’t eat or breathe.

Rock Bottom > ly2v8-Brian 07/30/2015 at 15:04

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The Chinese are coming... and the Russians are laying the groundwork to build their own space station again. Also, I like to stress the non-space things NASA is doing. If we want to compete, let’s kick the world’s ass with helicopters and airplanes!

Rock Bottom > TheHondaBro 07/30/2015 at 15:06

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You obviously need to re-read pretty much the entire post. The whole thing.

The point is that NASA keeps money in the USA that would otherwise leave, and it’s able to accomplish MUCH longer-term goals than private companies generally can.

You can tell a Finn but you can't tell him much > TheHondaBro 07/30/2015 at 15:07

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Technologies developed by NASA are either public domain or have very low cost licensing fees for companies to use. Anything Virgin Galactic, et al develop are going to be hidden away as trade secrets or patented and monopolized by the developing company for years.

There is a phenomenal amount of technology that we take for granted and use every day that was developed by NASA or came about as the result of NASA projects. NASA is not limited to space exploration. Their name in full is National Aeronautic and Space Administration. Beyond the technologies they have developed that are directly related to air and space travel there are a ton of supporting technologies to come out of NASA.

ly2v8-Brian > Rock Bottom 07/30/2015 at 15:09

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MURICA KICKS ASS ON ALL THE THINGS.

Rock Bottom > Jordaneer, The Mountaineer Man 07/30/2015 at 15:11

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I want to spend more at DARPA too, but most people seem to get all tin-foil-hatty about that...

Rock Bottom > Jordaneer, The Mountaineer Man 07/30/2015 at 15:13

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I wouldn’t say it doesn’t waste any money (it’s a government agency!), but it’s far better than sending that money to Airbus or Roscosmos or ESA or the LHC or whatever. And it doesn’t piss people off in the same way funding DARPA does (which is too bad, really).

Justin Hughes > Rock Bottom 07/30/2015 at 15:15

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The modern private sector space programs are literally reinventing the wheel, or in this case the rocket. Despite working with technology 50 years newer, they’re still figuring out how to launch unmanned rockets reliably before putting a human on board. They’re definitely making progress, but it’s basically the same thing NASA was doing 50 years ago. How much longer will it be until American astronauts don’t have to rely on a Soyuz capsule to get to and from space?

davedave1111 > Rock Bottom 07/30/2015 at 15:15

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It depends on whether you regard scientific research (and the other stuff NASA does) as a public good or not. You can argue that both ways, or even say a bit of both, when talking generally. Looking at NASA specifically, I’d say it’s an excellent example of research funding that works.

Arguably more important than government funding, though, is a well-functioning patent system. The Industrial Revolution wasn’t government funded, but Britain did have a good patent system at the time. That meant people could profit from a good idea, which is an excellent incentive.

Patrick Nichols > Rock Bottom 07/30/2015 at 15:19

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Shared over to Sigma Squared if you ever have the urge to do more math.

I like to look at tables and graphs while I mathturbate...

Rock Bottom > HammerheadFistpunch 07/30/2015 at 15:22

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DARPA is another great place to spend science money, but that generally pisses people off because they think it’s just like buying bullets and missiles. Same for the Air Force Research Lab (AFRL) and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL). University research is a small part of the puzzle, but the capacity to accomplish truly spectacular scientific feats is really not there. Stanford has the Stanford Linear Accelerator and lots of schools have things like research-sized wind tunnels, but you often need the full brunt of a NASA center to accomplish the big advances.

Rock Bottom > Justin Hughes 07/30/2015 at 15:26

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The Orion isn’t slated to carry humans until 2021: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Explorati…

My whole point is that it’s not just space flight that NASA is doing for us. They’re advancing science in all sectors. Click on the first URL in the original post and keep hitting refresh. There’s some real important and applicable stuff in there!

Justin Hughes > Rock Bottom 07/30/2015 at 15:28

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It’s true - people seem to forget that the first “A” in NASA stands for “aeronautics.” That’s like airplanes and stuff, which people use all the time and is very relevant to everyday life.

Nice site!

thebigbossyboss > Rock Bottom 07/30/2015 at 15:29

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I can see other people’s argument. It’s all great to be concerned about Pluto when you have the luxury but for a lot of us....we have a lot more immediate concerns than Pluto. Don’t get me wrong, I have been fascinated by this mission but for a lot of us our problems are much more immediate that worrying about a rock 5 billion billion’s miles away.

Rock Bottom > davedave1111 07/30/2015 at 15:30

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The problem with patents in The Internet Age is that less scrupulous producers (read: China) can make anything that we design, patented or not, and profit off the scientific advances of others and there seems to be very little we can (or are willing to) do to stop them.

pauljones > TheHondaBro 07/30/2015 at 15:31

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I’m not sure if you’re trolling or if you’re actually that astoundingly ignorant of fact.

NASA was not created as a result of the Cold War Space Race, though it certainly played a role in it. The core of what NASA is today got started in 1915 as NACA - the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics. NACA was merged with a handful of other, smaller government agencies in 1958 to form NASA, an agency to conduct non-military space and science activities. NASA is also about far, far more than space travel - it is, at its core, an institution dedicated to science.

Here’s NASA’s original, founding mission statement:

“To understand and protect our home planet; to explore the universe and search for life; to inspire the next generation of explorers ... as only NASA can.”

Virgin Galactic is little more than a crackpot’s pipe dream that has acheived comparatively little of value, despite taking the god knows how much money from the private investors, gullible celebrities, and tidbits of government programs. As for Boeing and SpaceX, while they certainly focus on aspects of launch systems, you know what they don’t do? Science . Science, along with exploration, is what NASA is about. Also, private companies do what they do for one reason, and one reason only: profit. NASA, despite actually being the only federal agency to well and truly return a profit, does not have profit as its over-riding goal - it does what it does for the betterment of humanity.

Here are a few quick Wikipedia pages to give you a brief overview of the practical, tangible, everyday benefits that have influenced - and continue to influence - your every day life:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NASA_spin…

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NASA_rese…

NASA is one of the greatest gems that United States of America has ever produced - learn more about it, and be more proud of what it is, what it has done, and what it continues to do.

Rock Bottom > Justin Hughes 07/30/2015 at 15:31

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I used to talk about the First A all the time and people would just look at me for a second and then go “Oooooohhh...”

DoYouEvenShift > Rock Bottom 07/30/2015 at 15:31

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I like to put it in simple terms to people. I ask them, do you like watching TV, talking on the phone, browsing the internet? Those satellites didn’t get up there by themselves. Even if it wasn’t NASA that put it into orbit, the science came from them. I know theres a lot more to it than that. But it gets people thinking.

thebigbossyboss > ly2v8-Brian 07/30/2015 at 15:32

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Not ice hockey.

FKA-RacecaR > ly2v8-Brian 07/30/2015 at 15:34

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Also, I do believe India has a blossoming space program.

HammerheadFistpunch > Rock Bottom 07/30/2015 at 15:34

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You’re not wrong, I just wanted to challenge the assertion that .5% of the budget is all that the government is putting towards STEM. Its not enough, but its more than just NASA

TheHondaBro > pauljones 07/30/2015 at 15:39

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I'm open to changing my views based on fact, but I'm not crazy about being insulted in the process.

davedave1111 > Rock Bottom 07/30/2015 at 15:40

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That’s not a problem at all. People who are very poor copy because their own IP isn’t worth protecting - but they have no money to pay royalties anyway. As they get richer, they start to want the benefits of IP protection for their own work and so bring in a proper IP protection system. That’s actually happened/ing with China.

Agrajag > Rock Bottom 07/30/2015 at 15:42

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Sometimes I wish we could decide to which programs our tax money is allocated.

I’d give at least a whole penny.

For Sweden > Rock Bottom 07/30/2015 at 16:01

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I work in aerospace so I think NASA is very neat, but I wish people would also demand greater funding for other research agencies, like the CDC.

ly2v8-Brian > thebigbossyboss 07/30/2015 at 16:14

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Let you have one thing and you have to be an ass about it.

ly2v8-Brian > FKA-RacecaR 07/30/2015 at 16:15

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But do we hate them like the soviets? No

Rock Bottom > thebigbossyboss 07/30/2015 at 16:19

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Exploring Pluto is important for the same reasons Apollo, Gemini, and Mercury were: Inspiration of the next generation. If children grow up dreaming of exploring the cosmos, then they will be motivated to learn the sciences and push themselves to become great. Nobody ever looked at a toilet paper factory (which is actually an incredibly advanced machine) and say “Gee, I really want to make something of myself so that I can work with this!”

Racescort666 > Rock Bottom 07/30/2015 at 16:53

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What’s your problem with the Large Hardon Collider?

Racescort666 > Rock Bottom 07/30/2015 at 17:12

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SSTO that works PLZ, KTHXBI

f86sabre > Rock Bottom 07/30/2015 at 20:27

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Most of what would say has been said. NASA should be given more as it generally returns more. As someone who works in commercial aviation I can say, without a doubt, that we stand on the shoulders of NASA/NACA research.

Also, Internet high five to a fellow aerospace engineering manager. It is a challenging gig.

Rock Bottom > For Sweden 07/31/2015 at 09:14

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They need to polish up on their Zombiepocalypse Preparedness Guidelines: http://www.cdc.gov/phpr/zombies.h…

Rock Bottom > Racescort666 07/31/2015 at 09:14

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TOO MUCH FRENCH

Rock Bottom > Racescort666 07/31/2015 at 09:15

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You of all people know the engineering challenges associated with that!

Racescort666 > Rock Bottom 07/31/2015 at 09:35

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I didn’t say “hadron”

Racescort666 > Rock Bottom 07/31/2015 at 10:04

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Honestly, that’s the reason I think NASA should be working on it. I understand the arguments critical of the commercial launch systems: they’re rehashing what NASA did in the 60s but they’re also streamlining the process and cutting costs. Being profit driven does have advantages. Yeah, “they’re not doing anything new” (I somewhat disagree with that statement) but they don’t have to do anything new because they’re doing what they know works.

The commercial launch services are doing the day-to-day activities for space travel. NASA is for doing the “outside the box” activities. SSTO is one of those. We don’t know if it works or the best way to make it work. Could you have a dedicated ramjet/scramjet combined cycle rocket launched from a catapult make it to orbit with a meaningful payload? I don’t know! But it could work and it would take a long time and be expensive to develop.

I don’t doubt that the idea that started the shuttle program will be revisited. Reusable SSTO is too useful to abandon but it’s a huge development risk so it probably won’t be a commercial company to carry the ball.

Rock Bottom > Racescort666 07/31/2015 at 12:44

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godamnit

Rock Bottom > Racescort666 07/31/2015 at 13:10

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This is all wandering really far away from my original argument that NASA is not only a space agency, but a science agency and we should be doing more to fund science in America (some of which will inevitably involve spaceflight). Is there value in SSTO? Sure. But I believe there’s more value in rotorcraft research and programs like the ERA Program ( http://www.aeronautics.nasa.gov/iasp/era/index… ). These are places where we are advancing at an astonishingly slow pace ( http://oppositelock.kinja.com/a-short-discus… ) and the industry has been very slow to pick up the ball and run. Oh sure, Bell and Sikorsky (and occasionally the clowns at Eurocopter) do innovate a little once in a while, but it’s often only been with NASA or US military funding. The glaring contradiction would appear to be the Sikorsky X2, but we all really know that was only a stepping stone to the S-97 Raider, which has the potential for bringing in a TON of money in a couple years.

Regardless, if I were king, I would do two things: Pump a bunch of money into long-term improvements to rotor-wing and seized-wing aircraft efficiency and performance using NASA as the technical organization that converts that money into science, and also spend real money getting us into space more efficiently (whether that’s SSTO or other tech). These two items would improve the flying environment and science environment for our kids, but probably not do much for us. And that’s my whole point here. We need to think about how to make things better for generations after ours, and that won’t happen unless we spend the capitol today. I want them to have better machines and, more importantly, I want them to be inspired to reach for more than we have today using tools we prepare for them. Better tools than I have.