Greetings and Felicitations,

There have been several posts made in the science and technology sub-forum which question what good is NASA and space exploration. If you want to get a good lesson in what kinds of things are utilized by NASA and some things that are spinoffs directly from NASA projects there is a website you can go to.

Nasa Tech Briefs :: Nasa Tech Briefs

You can even get a free magazine delivered to your door which chronicles the changes for some fun at home reading. At least its fun for me:

NASA Tech Briefs - Free Subscription Form

Sincerely Yours,
C. David Neely

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Any fairly serious study of the subject will reveal that man’s exploration of space has yielded big dividends for the advancement of science and technology. The only other human endeavor that has yielded as much, if not more to the technological advancement of human society is warfare – it’s too bad that death and destruction has to accompany it.

I think the reasons why many people question the relevance of NASA and space exploration in general boil down to few key things as follows:

Not necessarily listed in order of importance
1) Decline in science curriculum taught in school (or at least that is in American schools)
2) Changing priorities from one administration to the next. For example Bush tasked NASA with getting to the moon and Mars, but Obama seems to care less and has cut funding if I’m not mistaken.
3) Decline or lack of national pride in America’s accomplishments (when America went to the moon in the 60s many Americans were galvanized and proud of the fact, especially seeing how we beat the Russians to it)
4) NASA, in my opinion, doing a piss poor job of promoting itself, the science and technology spin offs and America’s overall need to get into space.
5) General, overall apathy by the American public.

I am well aware there are allot of other very, very important issues facing this country that is in need of our money and attention, but if we stop exploring, we will wither and die.

Just my thoughts - maybe I’m missing something from this list, but if anyone cares to add to it. . .