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Originally Posted by dar512
(Post 610066)
I must have missed that bit of tw-ism. Yes, both Tang and transistors were around before the space program took off. It was the pressure of the space program that refined them.
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Maybe you should work in aerospace before assuming something. What kind of electronics go into space craft? Only stuff that has existed long ago. In satellites, only electronics that would no longer appear in any desktop or laptop is used. The old stuff.
What microprocessor is controls the Martian Rovers? 8086. Technology of the original IBM PC. Used in space are electronics that were long first refined in earth applications.
What did the shuttle use for its five major computers? Core memory. Iron rings. Semiconductors were introduced much later in the latter 1980s - only after semiconductor memories had been better understood by multiple decades of use on earth. Semiconductor memory was pioneered by Intel in the 1960s.
Space program did not advance other technologies by using them. The space program is a consumer of the most reliable and long proven technologies. A useful space program does science. And so we canceled eight earth study satellites for pennies while spending hundred dollar bills to do no science in the ISS. Where is the science? Almost all NASA science is done in the less than 10% budget that does not fly humans.
This point was made previously, repeatedly, and long ago.
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One final point. Science with telescopes - like most advanced science today - is best done without humans on site. Astronomers rarely go to the telescope anymore. Best work is accomplished remotely - with the telescope acting as a robot. Just another reason why Hubble - like the Martian Rovers - have been so successful.
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This is where space science is conducted:
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NASA's Earth Observing System was conceived in the 1980s as a 15-year program that would collect comprehensive data about the planet's oceans, atmosphere and land surface. ...
Landsat, a series of satellites that have provided detailed images of the ground surface for more than 30 years, is in danger of experiencing a gap in service. ...
... a satellite designed to measure rainfall over the entire Earth, the Global Precipitation Measurement mission, has been pushed back to 2012. But the satellite it is designed to replace, the Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission, can't possibly last that long. That means there will be a period of several years when scientists have no access to the accurate global precipitation measurements that help them improve hurricane forecasts and predict the severity of droughts and flooding. [how politically convenient]
... scientists working on the Hydros mission received a letter canceling their program. They were developing a satellite that would measure soil moisture and differentiate between frozen and unfrozen ground, an increasingly important distinction since melting of the Arctic permafrost has accelerated over the past several decades. The satellite also would have improved drought and flood forecasting.
... Deep Space Climate Observatory, a project he has led for more than seven years, would be canceled. ... The observatory would have provided valuable information about how clouds, snow cover, airborne dust and other phenomena affect the balance between the amount of sunlight Earth absorbs and the amount of heat energy it emits. And because it would have hovered between Earth and the sun at a distance of roughly a million miles, it would have been able to observe the entire sunlit surface of the planet constantly. Such observations could greatly enhance scientists' understanding how much the planet has warmed in recent years and help them predict how much warmer it will get in the future.
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The best science now does not deploy humans. Humans do not even go the ground based telescopes. Best science is done by machines and robots.
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In deep ocean research, Ballard also came to the same stunning conclusion while maybe a mile under the ocean. He suddenly noticed crew members would rather view outside on cameras rather than use viewing ports. Even deep sea research is better conducted by machines - not by man.
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Originally Posted by dar512
(Post 610066)
I think mankind needs a frontier. It would be sad if we gave up on space exploration.
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Which is what happened when we spent so much money putting man in space resulting in no research. The amount of science performed by $80+ billion on ISS could be written on the back of a postage stamp. ISS is scheduled to be decommissioned in 2014. Big bucks. Near zero science - because we deployed men - not machines. |
