So...I'm just curious because I'm a noob about this stuff. What was the net benefit of going to the moon?
The pictures and rocks, plus improvements in semiconductor/computer technology and rocketry.
http://news.cnet.com/How-NASA-helped-invent-Silicon-Valley/2009-11397_3-6211034.html
But the impact of the Apollo program on commercial technology goes far beyond such highly specialized equipment and missions. According to Bruce Damer, founder of the DigiBarn computer museum and a frequent NASA contractor himself through his company DigitalSpace, it's possible to draw a direct evolutionary link between the simple flight simulators NASA was using for the Apollo astronauts in 1967 and 1968--what he called "one of the first highly interactive computer environments"--and some of the early commercial video games. Similarly, NASA's work with wind tunnels at Moffett became so expensive that the agency decided to turn to supercomputers for more cost-effective simulations. And that, in conjunction with work done at Ames on tele-operations and telepresence--research that tried to simulate the interior of the space shuttle--led to the creation of 3D graphics, head-mounted displays and early virtual reality technology, all partially funded by NASA. "Starting in the 1960s, as the needs became more necessary...I think that drove the research on graphics tech and certainly computing in general," said Scott Fisher, chair of the interactive media division in the University of Southern California's School of Cinematic Arts, and the founding director of the Virtual Environment Workstation Project (VIEW) at NASA Ames. "When we built a real-time virtual environment system and the flow visualization guys used it to input their data, they were ecstatic that they could manipulate viewpoints into their data by just moving their head or walking around in the data as opposed to typing in a set of coordinates for each new viewpoint." Another technology to come out of NASA and later find its way into industry was the use of audio technology in pilots' computerized interfaces, said Fisher. "NASA did lots of work on finding the best ways to alert a pilot to some system problem," Fisher said. "Audio turned out to be very effective." Now, nearly 20 years later, the technology is making its way into video games and other off-the-shelf commercial systems, he said.
But the impact of the Apollo program on commercial technology goes far beyond such highly specialized equipment and missions. According to Bruce Damer, founder of the DigiBarn computer museum and a frequent NASA contractor himself through his company DigitalSpace, it's possible to draw a direct evolutionary link between the simple flight simulators NASA was using for the Apollo astronauts in 1967 and 1968--what he called "one of the first highly interactive computer environments"--and some of the early commercial video games.
Similarly, NASA's work with wind tunnels at Moffett became so expensive that the agency decided to turn to supercomputers for more cost-effective simulations.
And that, in conjunction with work done at Ames on tele-operations and telepresence--research that tried to simulate the interior of the space shuttle--led to the creation of 3D graphics, head-mounted displays and early virtual reality technology, all partially funded by NASA.
"Starting in the 1960s, as the needs became more necessary...I think that drove the research on graphics tech and certainly computing in general," said Scott Fisher, chair of the interactive media division in the University of Southern California's School of Cinematic Arts, and the founding director of the Virtual Environment Workstation Project (VIEW) at NASA Ames. "When we built a real-time virtual environment system and the flow visualization guys used it to input their data, they were ecstatic that they could manipulate viewpoints into their data by just moving their head or walking around in the data as opposed to typing in a set of coordinates for each new viewpoint."
Another technology to come out of NASA and later find its way into industry was the use of audio technology in pilots' computerized interfaces, said Fisher.
"NASA did lots of work on finding the best ways to alert a pilot to some system problem," Fisher said. "Audio turned out to be very effective." Now, nearly 20 years later, the technology is making its way into video games and other off-the-shelf commercial systems, he said.
Whenever you attempt a task which stretches the boundaries of current scientific understanding and application, there's a pretty good chance you'll discover something. Much of basic research is motivated by what's going to be discovered along the way rather than the destination itself.
More technical blahblahblah, if you're interested.
The purpose of going to the Moon:
Well those do seem like nice things I must say.
What was the price tag for all that?
About $200 billion in 2010 dollars.
Dr Stadler, paging Dr. Stadler...
For virtually creating the international semicondcutor industry, that's a pretty good investment.
Yeah I'm sold, seems like a bad fight to pick.
And that's why Newt Gingrich is a bad politician.
Did his mom name him after an amphibian on purpose?
In any case, he'll have to wait until 2016 or 2020- if he's still around by then- if he wants to be president. That and not take any more cards out of Clinton or Herman Cain's book.
For virtually creating the international semicondcutor industry
What a crock of steaming bullshit. I am an engineer for one of the largest tech companies in the semiconductor industry. Government did not bequeath us with semiconductor technology, not through Bell Labs, not through NASA. No one foresaw how important semiconductors would become. They weren't trying to miniaturize the vacuum tube, they were trying to make it solid-state. For a very long time after they were invented, transistors were the red-headed stepchild. Real electronics used vacuum tubes. The turning point was the advent of semiconductor-based memories which began to achieve very high densities at low cost.
Later on, interest turned to the CPU but it was the Personal Computer that really put it all together. At the time, the government systems (and university systems and corporate systems) were all mainframe-based. They did not anticipate the demand for compute power in the home. When ARPANet was invented, it was just a giant inter-mainframe wide-area-network. Again, they failed to anticipate (everyone did) the demand for point-to-point communication between personal computing devices. Dial-up bulletin board services sprang up across the country. There were entirely point-to-point networking systems that had nothing to do with "the" ARPANet. Only as people began using DNS-based, dial-up ISPs to access "the Web" did "the Internet" emerge. Yet again, they failed to anticipate the demand for mobile phone devices and mobile compute devices.
Look at the FBI's laughable "takedown notices" on "seized" DNS's. You can just type in the IP or use OpenDNS to access the website. Derp. These are the people that invented the transistor and the Internet? Give me a break.
It is difficult to explain to a non-specialist how ridiculously absurd it is to claim that any one entity - let alone the government - is responsible for transistors, semiconductors, computers or the Internet. I will give just one example to illustrate the point that a lot of what makes modern compute technology possible has to do with the solution of very non-fundamental technical problems.
There are two basic types of transistor logic - NMOS and PMOS (N-type or P-type Metal-Oxide Semiconductor). In the early days, you couldn't "dope" both types of transistors on the same silicon die (the tiny piece of silicon that contains your CPU), so you had to choose which type of logic you wanted. NMOS was slightly faster than PMOS, so most logic during the TTL (transistor-transistor-logic) era was NMOS. But both NMOS and PMOS have a problem... they are fast to transition their logic level in one direction but slow to transition in the other direction. Fortunately, the faster transition directions are complementary (NMOS transitions from high-to-low voltage quickly and PMOS transitions from low-to-high quickly). Once semiconductor fabrication technologies were developed that enabled doping of both N-type and P-type transistors on the same die, circuits could be constructed that took advantage of the relative strengths of each transitor type, giving us CMOS logic which is faster than either PMOS or NMOS and is the only logic type in use nowadays.
This development had a dramatic impact on computer performance. If we were still using the old logic, your iPhone would die after an hour and would have significantly less compute performance. Yet there was no hero who made the breakthrough, there was no single organization that brought the "the vision" to fruition. There were just a lot of people buying and selling and developing and researching and along the way the problems got knocked down one-by-one. This process continues today.
Clayton -
I wasn't saying that if it wasn't for Apollo, consumer electronics or something else would never have taken up the slack eventually and we'd all still be in the stone age. I'm just noting that the manned space program starting in 1959 was important to why the semiconductor industry developed at the time that it did. When you consider that the computer industry has been doubling about once every five years since then, with all its accompanying importance to science and the rest of the economy, even speeding things up by a few years makes quite a difference.
Well that is indeed quite interesting Clayton, but we're essentially arguing over what amounts to a drop in the bucket in today's dollars relative to the overall debt of the US government.
The real culprits are the safety net programs and the military expenditures overseas particularly in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Republicans can't trash talk a war we started and we can't go after social security and medicare because they're sacred cows so instead we've got Newt Gingrich talking about NASA.
The amount of time and energy that it would take me or any other unitiated noob to research NASA's history and various exploits would be significant and I probably wouldn't understand much of it anyways as I'm not exactly tech savvy.
So instead of talking about the real problems, we've got our politicians harping on programs that are publicly popular and ultimately irrelevant.
Makes me a sad panda.
the manned space program starting in 1959 was important to why the semiconductor industry developed at the time that it did.
This kind of sweeping claim simply cannot be proven or disproven. How much did it speed things up? How much sooner did the space program make the development of the personal computer? What specific foresight did the gubbermint have that others missed? Is it simply that the public sector is filled with optimistic dreamers who see possibilities where the private sector is filled with apathetic, unimaginative Luddites? Please give us some kind of cause-and-effect reasoning to help us follow how A led to B?
Well, anything's certainly possible, and maybe, just maybe, the semiconductor industry was totally unaffected by NASA. But if you want some more information on just how much of a role government funding played in starting it up, I can talk about that instead.
http://er.jsc.nasa.gov/seh/economics.html
Direct and indirect financial support for R&D by space and defense programs constituted an important factor in the development of the semiconductor and computer industries. Direct financial support for semiconductor R&D totaled $66 million between 1955 and 1961. These government grants encouraged semiconductor firms to greatly expand production capacity during this critical six-year period. In addition to direct R&D funding, semiconductor firms received indirect federal R&D support by serving as subcontractors for weapons systems prime contractors. The Department of Defense estimated that the R&D subcontracts awarded by such prime contractors more than equalled direct R&D expenditures. By the end of the 1950s, total direct and indirect government-financed R&D represented approximately one-quarter of total semiconductor industry R&D expenditures. Federal agencies, particularly the military services, provided strong financial support for every major U.S. computer development between 1945 and 1955. The Army funded the development of ENIAC (the first electronic computer), for use in trajectory calculations. During the first ten years of electronic computers, major technical advances were achieved as part of the effort to create large computers which met the specifications set by military and other government agencies. Most of these advances subsequently were incorporated into the medium and small scale computers designed for the commercial market. The large U.S. government outlays for computer development during this period dwarf those of other countries, such as Great Britain, and help explain the early dominance of U.S. firms in the computer industry. Second, federal space and defense programs influenced the computer and semiconductor industries by generating huge markets for such products. Space and defense demand constituted a major factor in the growth of the U.S. semiconductor industry, as learning economies proved essential. Learning economies resulted in dramatic decreases in semiconductor prices; the average price of an integrated circuit dropped from $50 in 1962 to $0.63 in 1973. During the early years of second and third generation component technology, the space and defense market accounted for a substantial part of the sales volume that made these learning economies possible. Space and defense demand represented at least 35 percent (and as much as 45 percent) of semiconductor sales each year between 1955 and 1961 and over 70 percent of annual sales during the first four years of integrated circuit production. The market for military data processing systems reached the $200-million level before Remington Rand delivered the first Univac for business data processing in 1954. The space and defense market accounted for over 60 percent of all computer sales during the industry's first decade, and the sales of commercial computers did not overtake space and defense hardware sales until 1962.
Direct and indirect financial support for R&D by space and defense programs constituted an important factor in the development of the semiconductor and computer industries. Direct financial support for semiconductor R&D totaled $66 million between 1955 and 1961. These government grants encouraged semiconductor firms to greatly expand production capacity during this critical six-year period. In addition to direct R&D funding, semiconductor firms received indirect federal R&D support by serving as subcontractors for weapons systems prime contractors. The Department of Defense estimated that the R&D subcontracts awarded by such prime contractors more than equalled direct R&D expenditures. By the end of the 1950s, total direct and indirect government-financed R&D represented approximately one-quarter of total semiconductor industry R&D expenditures.
Federal agencies, particularly the military services, provided strong financial support for every major U.S. computer development between 1945 and 1955. The Army funded the development of ENIAC (the first electronic computer), for use in trajectory calculations. During the first ten years of electronic computers, major technical advances were achieved as part of the effort to create large computers which met the specifications set by military and other government agencies. Most of these advances subsequently were incorporated into the medium and small scale computers designed for the commercial market. The large U.S. government outlays for computer development during this period dwarf those of other countries, such as Great Britain, and help explain the early dominance of U.S. firms in the computer industry.
Second, federal space and defense programs influenced the computer and semiconductor industries by generating huge markets for such products. Space and defense demand constituted a major factor in the growth of the U.S. semiconductor industry, as learning economies proved essential. Learning economies resulted in dramatic decreases in semiconductor prices; the average price of an integrated circuit dropped from $50 in 1962 to $0.63 in 1973. During the early years of second and third generation component technology, the space and defense market accounted for a substantial part of the sales volume that made these learning economies possible. Space and defense demand represented at least 35 percent (and as much as 45 percent) of semiconductor sales each year between 1955 and 1961 and over 70 percent of annual sales during the first four years of integrated circuit production.
The market for military data processing systems reached the $200-million level before Remington Rand delivered the first Univac for business data processing in 1954. The space and defense market accounted for over 60 percent of all computer sales during the industry's first decade, and the sales of commercial computers did not overtake space and defense hardware sales until 1962.
Sorry if that's all tl;dr or irrelevant to your point, but I'd like to see some evidence that private firms were just waiting to jump on semiconductor tech if it wasn't for government computer projects taking up a fraction of a percent of GDP.
I don't give a crap about what an Establishment blowhard like Gingrich talks about. My posts are in response to these nebulous claims "but for the government, we wouldn't have ________" being floated by mustang. The government does do some things that need to be done. So what? I'm supposed to be filled with joy and thankfulness because the government doesn't just collect all our tax money into a big pile and burn it? Which, by the way, I would actually prefer as a matter of policy to what they actually do. What they actually do with the money - start wars and subsidize childbirth among the poor and bad financial decision-making by businesses and those saving for retirement... - is much worse.
subsidize childbirth among the poor
The US is one of the hardest countries in the civilized world to get an abortion in. On top of everything else the Republicans do, you aren't even guaranteed a free abortion. Putting funds into Medicaid abortion and contraceptive coverage would do a lot to address this.
But whatever, major tangent/derail.
Boy, we're just going in circles - the government does do some things that need to be done. It even pays people to discover and invent new things, particularly things that it intends to use for war or increased domestic regimentation. Why did the government invest in silicon valley at that time? Who was the visionary in the government that had the insight that this was "the next big thing" and that money needed to be poured into it?
It is true that the government poured lots of money into Silicon Valley. Turns out that they didn't do it out of the goodness of their hearts. Steve Blank explains the secret history of Silicon Valley in this eye-opening talk:
In this lecture, he basically all but comes out and says that he knows that Google has intelligence-agency connections.
What I'm saying is that some fights are worth skipping. We're arguing over peanuts. And for what?
You and I both know your libertarian paradise is unlikely to spring up tomorrow and if it does it probably won't be because people are just sick and tired of NASA.
mustang19: On top of everything else the Republicans do, you aren't even guaranteed a free abortion.
On top of everything else the Republicans do, you aren't even guaranteed a free abortion.
OH, how absolutely terrible. (had to snip an f-word there) To think that you should pay for the medical intervention you require... I hear in some non-european countries you're not even guaranteed free shoes and food. You actually have to pay for stuff, rather than just bringing a bag into a store and grabbing what you want.
If it wasn't for republicans, abortions and apples and all manner of goods would simply appear as if by magic, completely free of charge.
I didn't see him cite the claim that the private sector spends more on pure science than the government does. He stated that it has a high return for businesses, implying that they should in theory.
Funding =/= results. He gave the example of the Wright brothers spending $1,000 compared to $67,000 for the state funded airplane (which never succeeded). Gubmint in general pays far more than the private sector for the same things. He says earlier that the OECD studies find a correlation only between private research and economic "growth". Neo-classical types love statistics.
He then goes on at 52:00 to say that "governments love funding science," and gives his explanation about why its a bad thing.
Politicians like to look "progressive" and "cutting edge" by throwing money at anything with the "science" in the name.
Speaking of the Wright Bros., he told the story of how the U.S. had no air force until 1917, when they passed a special act allowing free use of airplane patents, because the Wright Bros became full time patent trolls. lmao
I think I know which OECD study he's talking about (The Driving Forces of Economic Growth), which provides a pretty isolated finding, that public R&D does not increase innovation. Another OECD study looking at R&D investment specifically and controlling for country-specific factors and endogenity (i.e., do countries spend differently in the first place depending on their growth rates?, etc.) finds that public R&D does increase per capita GDP levels.
Considering the particular instance of the United States, there does appear to be a pretty significant role for the government in R&D. Looking at agricultural R&D gives especially interesting results, as in this paper including a calculation of shadow prices (covering opportunity costs of any sectoral crowding out that occurs) and input/output indexes.
The model fits the data reasonably well, with a system R2 of 0.896 and adjusted R2 for each estimating equation greater than 0.8. ... All in all, even if we provide estimates of the rate of return to public R&D in agriculture lower than previously suggested, an average return of 29% on public funds is still impressive compared to the 9% and 12% average returns of the S&P500 and NASDAQ composite indexes during the same period.
...
All in all, even if we provide estimates of the rate of return to public R&D in agriculture lower than previously suggested, an average return of 29% on public funds is still impressive compared to the 9% and 12% average returns of the S&P500 and NASDAQ composite indexes during the same period.
Both scientism and progress are bunk in the way they are being used.
"Scientific prgress" has no more imperative than "society acts" - or "we all need 15 green tomatoes in our home"
All "progress" can mean, if it is to have any worthwhile meaning at all, is that the past has no relevance as a "thing" and is just used as a "necessary fiction" to make useful some current task at hand with a specific context; but this is not the way most people think to use the word - they use it as a rather peculiar objective value.
"As in a kaleidoscope, the constellation of forces operating in the system as a whole is ever changing." - Ludwig Lachmann
"When A Man Dies A World Goes Out of Existence" - GLS Shackle
mustang19 Troll:In terms of "opportunity cost", government science spending in the US takes up about 1% of GDP, less than private research spending, and the crowding out between the two is not large. Funding these scientific advances hardly requires a major cost to the rest of the economy.
First glaring flaw from the paper you linked to:
Two of the most often mentioned rationales for government support are both based on the market imperfections that lead to underinvestment in private R&D.
This implies that there's an objectively optimal level of investment in private R&D. You already admitted elsewhere that there's no such thing as objective optimality in investment. Hence this is a matter of you and your ilk wanting to impose your own, necessarily subjective, value judgements on the rest of us, as I already mentioned earlier in this thread.
The keyboard is mightier than the gun.
Non parit potestas ipsius auctoritatem.
Voluntaryism Forum
mustang19 Troll:Yeah, by correlating what happens when the government increases/decreases spending, but we are talking about one percent of the economy responsible for rocketry, nuclear power, and transistors. http://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/0905/0905.4272.pdf
http://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/0905/0905.4272.pdf
As I said before, correlation does not imply causation. (Please note - if you haven't already - that I'm using "imply" to mean logical implication.) Statistical regression can determine the probability distributions of dependent variables as functions of independent variables, but that in no way establishes a causal link. All it can do is help one make more accurate forecasts. Otherwise, one must conclude that reducing the number of pirates over time has been a, if not the, cause of (alleged) global warming.
Note that the above doesn't take into account any flaws with the variables under consideration (such as GDP, in the context of econometrics).
I found another methodological error in the paper. The authors restrict their investigation to only whether government R&D funding "crowds out" private R&D funding. I see no reason to make this restriction. There are all sorts of other economic activities that at least could be "crowded out" by government R&D funding. Indeed, the "crowding out" issue doesn't concern spending at all - it concerns taxing.