In defense of NASA: was Re: Wirin' up blinkenlights

From: Hans Franke <Hans.Franke_at_mch20.sbs.de>
Date: Fri Jun 9 17:45:30 2000

Ahoi Dick,

> > Yeah, things like the Space Race and WWII did nothing for rapid
> > technological evolution and development, the least of which benefitted
> > from this was computers.
> So many of these major discoveries were made purely by accident. Accidents
> which might not have happened if Engineers and Scientists hadn't had the
> freedom, and the funding, to take time with this or that strange phenomenon
> observed in conjunction with an accident.

Seriously, I doubt that any usefull development has been done by accident.
None of these technologies have been invented because of the space race,
it's plain old hard work to do it - and this will have happened anyway.
Of course the space exploration did bring a vast amount of new knowledge
about nature and the universe, but no new technology that wouldn't have
been developed at all. Don't get me wrong, I'm 100% pro space exploration,
we just should be smart enough to see marketing schemes when they creep
around.

> I certainly hope you're joking!

He is :)

Gruss
H.

--
VCF Europa 2.0 am 28./29. April 2001 in Muenchen
http://www.vintage.org/vcfe
http://www.homecomputer.de/vcfe
Received on Fri Jun 09 2000 - 17:45:30 BST

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