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What Won't Nasa Invent Next?

mises.org — In its 20 year lifespan, the shuttle program has a failure rate of around 1 in 50 launches, writes Tim Swanson. Yet with this abysmally low success rate, its ever-increasing budget requests are approved annually. Could you imagine the economic impact on the domestic airline industry if there was a 1-in-50 chance of your plane crashing?

Who dugg this? Made popular Jan 3, 2007

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  • inactive, on 10/12/2007, -11/+49Going into space is a LITTLE more complicated than flying from new york to la. Dugg down as the inaccurate uninformed post that it is.
  • zediker, on 10/12/2007, -3/+29NASA called, they would like you to return most of your modern conveniences. Please return all microprocessors/electronics, microwaves, polymers, ceramics, or anything else NASA or NASA contractors came up with that was discovered during research/derived from research for the space race. Thank you!
  • Recuso, on 10/12/2007, -7/+23Exactly, sonofdy.

    Additionally, that was some pretty awful writing. Honestly it just sounds like some frustrated republican (not using this in a derrogative manner) complaining about big government without giving concrete examples.

    A 98% success rate in leaving our PLANET? How is that not something to be proud of. Our efforts in this regard are not in vain. Anything we can learn about our universe and any space exploration is useful to us. Sure the pace may be slow but how can you not be excited by the possibilites of visiting new worlds?
  • xGORDOx, on 10/12/2007, -3/+17Don't forget your temperpedic mattress.
  • Dvoid, on 10/12/2007, -4/+15I don't know... privatized rockets = Billboards in the sky? Billboards in the sky crashing to earth as fiery McDonalds meteors?
  • cdlavalle, on 10/12/2007, -3/+12OK. From a Republican perspective....where would the race to control space and the weaponization of said theater be without NASA? Answer? USSRs lasers would be pointing at all of us! Now we have all sorts of real time satellite surveillance and early warning systems. Shuttle missions? While significant, there is much more going on at NASA. How many satellites do they put up a year? How much have we learned about our universe thanks to NASA? There is plenty of fat to cut in the gov't but NASA does a whole hell of a lot for relatively little.
  • sirloin, on 10/12/2007, -3/+11nasa doesnt just do science, it also does work with our military.
    If you dont like our soldiers being able to tell wtf they are in the middle of a desert
    so that you can sit hit on your fat ass and complain about the minuscule budget of nasa.
    You can move to a more boring country.
    besides for tv, and regular gps.
  • kschramm, on 10/12/2007, -5/+13Inaccurate as hell
  • punchingjudy, on 10/12/2007, -4/+11NASA, not Nasa. Sorry, that just bothers me.
  • brainwipe, on 10/12/2007, -1/+6Politics aside, I think there is a few orders of magnitude difference in the complexity of a Space Shuttle and an airline. Furthermore, there are many more airline flights than Space Shuttle ones so the knowledge is much greater.
  • Jugalator, on 10/12/2007, -2/+6"Private groups outperform NASA today in many areas."

    Well, we were talking the Shuttle program now, and I don't see much competition there.
    (how I see the Shuttle program -- getting up, doing service and/or research operations, and getting down)

    With how hard it is, I think 1 in 50 is pretty good actually, when we after all include the very first flights with highly unproven technology and the difficulties involved.

    I have nothing against private space companies entering the fray -- since space science benefit both our understanding of the universe and humanity itself from findings that indirectly find its way to industries, health and environmental science, etc, it's a field that should be kept alive IMHO. But I think we still need to keep those comparisons valid.
  • leemac, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4Once they unearth that they have made an anti-gravity conversion kit to make our cars look like ones from Back to the Future, then I will love NASA. As for now, I like em.
  • 0siris, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5and one can only imagine what they are doing but not telling us.
  • Gerz1219, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4To be fair, there have probably been about as many shuttle launches in the past 20 years as there were airplane takeoffs by 1906. And I'm sure that during the initial years of airplane contruction, the failure rate was worse than 1 in 50. Shuttle launches are vastly more complicated, expensive, and rare. I'm firmly in the "NASA is a waste of money" camp, but I also believe their failure rate is more a result of antiquated equipment than incompetence.
  • cracker42, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4I like how whenever someone mentions increasing (or even sustaining) NASA's ~16 billion dollar budget, someone else is guaranteed to suggest that the extra money come from education. Compare 16 billion to the insane amount of money spent on the Iraq war (which arguably achieves much less than a space program). The author even described NASA as "a monumental drain of capital resources to simply satisfy a nationalist ego"... if anything the U.S. government funds could be described like that, it's the war. Not NASA.
  • inactive, on 10/12/2007, -2/+6If it weren't for NASA, your life would be a hell of a lot less luxurious than it currently is. Besides a multitude of consumer goods that many people take for granted and that exist as a direct result of NASA research, your and your family's life expectancy would also be cut by several years, as a lot of modern medical equipment (like MRI scanners and a multitude of other things) was pioneered by NASA without realizing that these products and services might some day be profitable.

    I don't give a ***** how much you want to hold on to your tax dollars. You're living in a Democracy, and the people have decided that we SUPPORT spending our tax dollars on NASA. My income is only slightly above minimum wage, and I am glad that a part of my taxes goes into funding such a great organization with such great goals and fantastic results.

    A lot of what NASA does is pure research. The only way you'd get private companies to fund it is if they saw profits from the funding (or as a charity, which is unlikely with such expensive goals). Unfortunately, many of the profits possibilities from space exploration and accompanied research are side-effects and COMPLETELY unpredictable. This unpredictability will ensure that, while private businesses may start creating for-profit space travel (tourism, etc), they will likely never spend the money to discover what the origin of the universe is.

    A tiny percentage of your personal income spent answering the biggest questions humanity has ever asked is A SMALL PRICE TO PAY, and you're either intellectually bankrupt or completely devoid of philosophical contemplation if you think projects like NASA, or Europe's CERN (also a government-funded science operation) should only exist if they can make someone some cash, or that they would be handled better by a private business (never mind the fact that they employ the smartest, most educated people in the world).
  • ryanknapper, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3"In case you haven't noticed... the USSR isn't much of a threat anymore."

    Which is in part due to them going bankrupt whilst competing with NASA. If we let the USSR have space, they'd still be around and stronger than ever.
  • Steamy, on 10/12/2007, -4/+7It isn't NASA's fault.
    NASA is required to use shuttles (instead of cheaper & safer ways of getting cargo up in space, like French, Russian or Chinese rockets), NASA is required to support the pointless fiasco which is the international space station, and NASA will soon be required to build a pointless fiasco moon base.

    It's not by NASA's choice, it's by political earmark. If the politicians didn't earmark nearly every cent NASA gets, things would look a lot different.
  • metamorfoza, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3No, he is not missing the point . Comparing space flights (space shuttles) and airplanes is like comparing apples with oranges. The author is also using this comparison throughout the article as main argument against NASA "business model". I don't know much about 'business models' but i know that NASA doesn't have 10000+ flights per day (in past 40 years) and it can't just launch a space shuttle into the space to see how it will go. Just because the air travel today is the safest way to travel doesn't necessarily mean that that form of transport (and level of security) developed itself overnight.
  • Gerz1219, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3NASA's budget for 2007 is $16.8 billion, which I think comes out to 0.7% of the total federal budget. So yes, it's easy to claim that $16.8 billion is a mere pittance compared to Medicare, Social Security, and defense. The problem is that for various political and practical reasons, it's impossible to make any cuts in those three major areas. The amount of discretionary funding that Congress actually has access to is a pretty small chunk of the pie.

    I should not have to point out that $16.8 billion is a lot of money which can be appropriated to do a lot of things. My problem with NASA is that instead of pursuing only worthy, practical goals that can help us, they come up with crazy far-out impractical sci-fi projects to keep their funding at its current level. This is the downfall of large government agencies: once spending was raised to help us beat the Russians to the moon, a lot of self-serving bureaucrats had an interest in keeping the checks coming, long after such funding was necessary. If we slashed NASA's budget in half, they'd still be able to do things like send out unmanned probes, and monitor the environment. They just wouldn't be able to funnel billions into a completely unnecessary moon base, or a manned mission to Mars. The ONLY reason to do these things, as opposed to sending machines, is the "cool" factor, which they exploit to justify their bloated existence.
  • inactive, on 10/12/2007, -17/+20You're missing the point. Private groups outperform NASA today in many areas. Why should taxpayers be forced to fund NASA?
  • briguymaine, on 10/12/2007, -2/+5mmm... Tang...
  • brandon_w, on 10/12/2007, -2/+5I remember the days when the public was outraged NASA paid over 1 million dollars for a 10 GB harddrive.

    One day, we'll look back and say, "Man, what were they complaining about? The shuttle was cheap."
  • RocketSeason, on 10/12/2007, -2/+5NASA can do more than a private company could do at this point in time.

    it takes billions of dollars to do anything of significance with regards to space. It sucks, but lets just suck it up and spend a little more money untill the technology and economy catches up with our spirit of exploration.
  • brandon_w, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Which is exactly why NASA is ditching the shuttle in exchange for a disposable launch vehicle. They can stop worrying about maintainance, and start focusing more on research.
  • VolatileWhimsy, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2They've already revamped their space program, they have brought the FAA on board to help. So it shouldn't be that bad this go around :/

    Would like to point out to everyone that alot of the conveineces we have are from these trips....
  • NanoStuff, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2"Don't forget your temperpedic mattress."

    That overpriced POS? Well, I'll admit, it's nice. But equivalent polyurethane with a thousand dollars more in your pocket is much nicer.

    Anyways, yes, NASA :)
  • mrussell, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3I'm probably going to get beaten up for saying this, but if it's an acronym you can pronounce, (like Nasa, because we don't say N A S A) then you can capitalise it like a proper noun. Round my way at least.
  • inactive, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3"Private groups outperform NASA today in many areas."

    so far there have been what, two successful private launches? both of them within the last year or two? and they barely even get into space?

    I kinda remember NASA landing on the moon almost fourty years ago (or did they?)- while privitized space flight has potential, right now its useless. It's a very expensive tourist trap.
  • cdlavalle, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2"In case you haven't noticed... the USSR isn't much of a threat anymore."
    Yes, I know but they were our main space supremacy rivals if you remember, that's why I used them as an example.

    "I thought the bankruptcy was because of a flawed economic model that couldnt sustain itself."
    It couldn't sustain itself because of trying to keep up with American spending on programs like defense (the arms race) and space exploration. Otherwise they were doing fine (well as fine as a top heavy bureaucratic mess could do, but they were sustainable). Look at Cuba. Miserable but still existing.

    Private industry has a way to go in the space arena, I'm afraid. The way the system is set up right now rewards short term gains and thus discourages infant technologies and long range research. Besides, I doubt, say, the Hubble program could've been funded by private interests. What would they do? Sell postcards and screen savers? Doubt that would cover it. But who can argue that humanity isn't better off for having Hubble around allowing humanity to glimpse the awesome universe we inhabit?
  • GiggleStick, on 10/12/2007, -0/+21 in 50 eh. Sample size anyone?
  • STKD, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Try submitting an article like this again once they land an airliner on the Moon. Then we'll talk relative success rates.
  • kdehead, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2somewhat inaccurate as it misses the point that NASA went were no private company would dare go - high-risk, experimental space flight.

    look at NASA as providing the foundations - the infrastructure and tech of a future space economy. Nasa takes the risks, future private companies will reap the benefits. We're seeing the beginnings of that with Virgin Galactic and SpaceShip One.

    another good example is the government funded ARPANET - which lead to the commercial internet.

  • IceSabre, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2This is just stupid. Leave it to an Aggie to manufacture such a truckload of manure. I don't ever remember reading any material from NASA touting the inventions listed in the article. So how is it their fault urban legends attribute them with "inventing" them?
    And comparing 1 out of 50 flights failing with commercial air traffic.... where to even begin shooting holes in this lame comparison.

    This article is almost bad enough to the point of being comical. Are we sure this is even meant to be serious?
  • zediker, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2I thought the bankruptcy was because of a flawed economic model that couldnt sustain itself.
  • rhawk301, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2"And while some urban legends claim the original purpose for ARPANET was to allow institutions to communicate with one another in the event of disastrous war, this is a myth."

    Although the DARPA project itself was not started for this reason, the packet switched network design was developed by Paul Baran at RAND just for this reason.

    Paul Baran's research led RAND to the 1964 report which then intrigued DARPA to find a practical application for the research.

    http://www.rand.org/about/history/baran.list.html

    So in fact, the Internet WAS created out of the government's need to find highly survivable and distributed packet switched networks in the case of a large disaster. This should not be misled in any way.
  • JimXugle, on 10/12/2007, -2/+2Was ist das?!
    A small-governmet, conservative article on the front page of Digg?!
    The end of the world is near!
  • sirloin, on 10/12/2007, -2/+2NASA is also one of the few government agencies that has very little beurocracy and always is rated by the gao as the numer #1 agency in terms of spending. Meaning we give them money and it goes to projects they finish(mots of the time) and is used wisely. Where as you give money to say the dept of ed and it disappears into the pockets of beurocrates, or the military where itd disappears in such enlightening projects like heather we can reportedly people yet.

    This just sems liek flame bait, there are far more unproductive, costly, government programs with no return.
    ANd about the nasa inventions, they were invented for nasa, if nasa did not commission them for the inventions the corps that worked on them would have less reason to invent them.
    why invent powdered drinks it is not like peple are going into spae. ;)
  • kdehead, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1me neither.

    i would guess that pretty much every geek knows that it was something to do with the military rather than NASA.
  • ninsei, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1Don't forget food in a sac :-)

    http://www.thespacestore.com/realamspacfo.html
  • inactive, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1Thanks for that mental image of the movie Airplane II: The Sequel
  • Jugalator, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1"I'm firmly in the "NASA is a waste of money" camp"

    I don't really understand why that's such a common opinion, when there are true giants in the budget in comparison. NASA has also done so much to actually applicable science/tech beyond the at least to me non-neglible understanding of what place we're living in, in the first place. Yes, even to health and environment science, and much more. They also do something that would be very hard to do for too many others, as space science is involved.

    I think among the things NASA need to prioritize in the future is information, information, information, to the public as for what the heck they're actually *doing*. I have no doubt most today believe they're just running a "ridiculously expensive" Space shuttle program and tosses out some Mars rovers and satellites or something, when that's only part of their budget that many other government-level organizations would consider constrained.

    Here's at least a place to start:
    http://science.hq.nasa.gov/earth-sun/applications/theme1.htm ...
    I recommend clicking through the "National priorities" in the box to at least get an introduction of some things they're doing. :-)
  • dmw16, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1This story is just plain dumb. If you were to look at early attempts at flight (since the author chose that as a comparison) I think you'd find a much higher failure rate than NASA experiences. I don't understand why people equate going to space with flying to visit their grandparents.

    Beyond that there is a need to avoid the total commercialization and privatization of space. It is there for all the world, not for companies that want to just put whatever crap they care to up there.
  • stonewaljacksn, on 10/12/2007, -1/+0I presume you saw the Nikola Tesla article/bio thing on here yesterday. Unless the space program captured him from some alien planet, I'm pretty sure that the vast majority of our modern conveniences can be discovered here on earth.
  • Wonderkind, on 10/12/2007, -2/+1"It sucks, but lets just suck it up and spend a little more money"

    A little more money. I like that. A little more money. We'll just divert it away from the schools and go from there.
    A few billion here, a few billion there, pretty soon your talking real money.

    "until the technology and economy catches up with our spirit of exploration."

    Get me Captain Piccard on the horn. He's got thirty days to get his ass home!
    NASA will NEVER slow down. There are too many people making way too much money to let it slow down.
    It just ain't gonna happen.
  • NoseDive, on 10/12/2007, -3/+1Who here thought that NASA invented the internet? Not I. This story is ridiculous.
  • ed2hip, on 10/12/2007, -2/+0oh yeah, who wouldnt want a late 80s ford probe with huge plastic bits on it!
  • JimXugle, on 10/12/2007, -3/+1In case you haven't noticed... the USSR isn't much of a threat anymore.

    The point of this article was to point out that NASA isn't cost-effective when it comes to space exploration and innovation.

    Are you one of the large-government Republicans? My idea of a small government is one that doesn't have unnecessary money-eating Agencies.

    @0siris

    NASA is completely public... it's the Air force that would be doing secret things.
  • stonewaljacksn, on 10/12/2007, -3/+0yeah it sucks that they use our moeny but...how important is it really that we know the composition of the planet Neptune and stuff like that? That all may be interesting and give us pretty pictures, but people apparently people watch too many Star Wars type movies. SO WHAT if a man walks on Mars? It doesnt help us at all. I'll happily sacrifice a nice chunk of NASA's funding for say...universal healthcare?
  • Junkey, on 10/12/2007, -11/+5NASA is leet.
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