An Attack On NASA Is An Attack On American Innovation

While the notion of allowing the Russians to totally control manned-space travel is appalling, the even more disturbing idea of removing any clear-set goals for NASA is the truly damning aspect of the Obama administration’s plan. The Ares rockets and lunar-lander craft are scrapped. The Orion spacecraft will reportedly live on as an escape capsule for the International Space Station, but will never go to the moon. There is supposedly some far-flung plan to go to Mars, but it is set so many years in the future that it is unrealistic to expect it to be any real motivator for new technology. Most likely the Mars mission is simply a way to delay actually scrapping NASA’s R&D for deep space exploration all together. At the very least it constitutes a serious pause in the sort of technological innovation NASA is famous for. It is this sort of drive that American inventors and their companies need today, a mental stimulus that will assure our continued dominance of the technological arts. Where is NASA’s bailout?

If you think NASA having a budget at all is a waste, you really should read a little bit of history. NASA, along with the Department of Defense, is the reason for much of America’s technological prowess. NASA’s requirements for the shockingly complex mission to the moon brought on a renaissance of innovation in the private sector. It gave birth to the integrated circuit, a project of such startling expense that private contractors would never have undertaken it alone. Because of this cooperation between the private and public sectors, we created a breakthrough technology so advanced that the principals behind it utterly revolutionized computer technology. Without NASA’s Apollo program you most likely would not have a personal computer, cell-phone, or iPad, because the modern semiconductor would be little more than a fevered dream. Even if you think you could live without your phone or PC, think about how much innovation has occurred in every field (biology, chemistry, physics, etc.) because of the number-crunching power the x86 processor has given to researchers and designers the world over.