Spinoffs

I remember receiving a publication called "Spinoffs" over twenty years ago
--- I think I may have received it from NSS --- that touted the
side-benefits of NASA work. NASA and its supporters have pointed to
spinoffs as one method to justify NASA spending to the public.

Lately, I've become quite jaded about the whole spinoffs concept. I have
no doubt that NASA projects have resulted in commercial products that have
positive economic benefit. That's a good thing! But NASA's efforts are
spectacularly expensive relative to terrestrial alternatives. One must
always keep in mind that when a large amount of money is spent, that that
large amount of money could have been spent in other ways, with possibly
rosier results. This is the concept of opportunity costs.

Consider an example: One space shuttle flight equates to supporting 5,000
Ph.D. students throughout their entire Ph.D. programs.
Five thousand Ph.D. theses equates to a heck of a lot of research on
potatos! !

[Assumptions: 5 year Ph.D. program, $20,000/yr, $500 million shuttle
flight. --- if you don't like those assumptions, adjust them as you wish,
for it will still give you a big number]

Another example: $60 billion will be spent on ISS hardware and
construction costs. I'm quite convinced that higher-payoff uses exist for
$60 billion in research funding. For example, with $60 billion, we could
conceivably completely solve the problem of producing robust, high
temperature, superconductors, the associated economic benefits of which
would dwarf anything that is likely to come out of ISS. [And by the way
... having viable high temperature superconductors would have spinoffs in
the space sector, for example, making Zubrin's magsail concept viable.]

... and we shouldn't forget that $60 billion could have been left in the
pockets of taxpayers, for them to decide how best to use it.

In the long-run, space industrialization/commercialization ---- based on
the usage of extra-terrestrial but near earth resources such as the Moon or
NEAs --- will have an astounding economic impact. This is what is
exciting about SSI.

Ron Menich

"Bill"
ssi_list@...
02/22/01
10:08 AM
Please
respond to
ssi_list

This has always been the problem with the benefits from space. They
are all abstract research that show up as products totally divorced
from the space program. The average person doesn't realize how much of
the everyday products they use owe there existence to space research.

Bill

> Dynamac Corp., which you can learn about at
http://www.dynamac.com/ , is
> doing some work on growing plants in space. It is a wonderful
opportunity
> to learn more biology, for example they have a patent pending that
could
> increase potato production on Earth by 40 %. Possibly another
benefit for
> Earth from space initiated and based research.
> Sincerely, Jay S. Huebner at jhuebn@... (I am one of the
original
> L-5 members!)
...