The early boost in development of integrated circuits was tied to our ICBM development and NASA’s need for small, lightweight, low power demand, durable electronics. Others picked up the pace after they were developed enough to be economically feasible for consumer products. The computer you are using right now owes its existence to that development.

I notice that NASA developed the bar code to help keep track of inventory. That means every time you pass groceries over the scanner at the checkout counter, your time savings are tied to NASA. You save a lot of time and have a good record of what you bought and how much you paid. (and let us not forget the scanner and register are using those integrated circuits)

The same development which yielded rockets for space exploration yielded rockets for DirecTV, for weather satellites, for GPS. The lives saved by weather watch should have SOME value to you. We are still expanding the usage of GPS but it saves much money by keeping folks from getting lost and allows us to know exactly where a person needing medical attention is through use of cell phones. (which also use integrated circuits, I might add)

One of my personal favorites was the invention of ground penetrating radar developed to map the surface of Venus through that extremely dense atmosphere but when pointed at Earth on the way showed submarines 100 meters below the surface of the oceans, lost cities nobody had guessed. It can be used to find buried bodies, phone and pipelines. Its use should expand in the future.

The problem with doing a cost/benefit analysis is that the benefits will continue to roll in from now on, shrinking the ratio daily.

David listing a few

Go here to see some of what the space program has brought us:

http://www.ssc.nasa.gov/public/visitors/vt13.html

Space the final frontier………

Like what for instance Teflon and Velcro? These items private industry would have most likely invented on its own without spending countless billions of taxpayer dollars while playing around in space. The cost – benefits ratio for NASA and the space program is way out of proportion for the few spin off inventions that have been produced.

Well, that’s good enough for me. Must be true if you read it somewhere.

:-/