Recently I was reading an article about the success of a for-profit company called SpaceX in linking with the International Space Station, and I started wondering—why do we have a space station, and who cares? Well, actually, I care, but it occurred to me that a lot of people probably don’t even know why it’s there or what it is doing. So I started writing a blog post about the space station, which in turn made me curious about NASA outputs—that is, what have we gotten for our investment in the space program?
I guess I knew that NASA didn’t invent Teflon (DuPont, 1938). But I was pretty amazed to learn that they didn’t invent Tang (General Foods, 1957) or Velcro (the Swiss,1940s) either. Nor did they invent bar codes, quartz clocks, or smoke detectors. So much for urban myths.
But if John Glenn did not invent Tang, what spinoffs have emerged from the space program?
Well, first, I guess we need to look at the input. That is, what has the space program cost the U.S.? So, adjusted for inflation, here are the numbers in 2007 dollars: During the first year,1958, it cost $488 million. The next year the annual cost reached $2 billion, and by 1962 it was up to $12 billion. Costs doubled to $24 billion in 1963, and from 1963 to 1970 the budget was always above $18 billion per year. Since 1970 the budget has been fairly stable, hovering somewhere between $11 billion and $17 billion per year, with .the grand total in 2007 dollars being somewhere in the neighborhood of $790 billion. Another way to look at the numbers is as a percentage of the U.S. federal budget. At its peak in the 1960s, the space program accounted for 4% of the federal budget. Now it is only 0.5%.
Now for the outputs—that is, what have we gotten out of the space program? Well, I’m not going to wax eloquent about aesthetics—though NASA’s photos ARE pretty cool. I’m especially not going to mention the famous Earthrise photo taken in 1968 by William Anders during Apollo 8, which gave us the first glimpse of our home as a blue ball hanging in the blackness of space and had a significant impact on our appreciation of the planet. Nor am I going to mention the thousands of children who became engineers or scientists as a result of the space program, though one survey said 80% of such folks were motivated by the walk on the moon. (I was not—when we landed on the moon I was knee deep in a swamp looking for raccoon tracks, intent on becoming a trapper.) And finally, I am not going to mention our increased understanding of the Universe.
So what were the outputs? First, most of that $790 billion investment was spent here in the U.S. We hired people, lots of people—400,000 NASA employees, scientists, and contractors from 1964 to 1967 alone. They in turn bought houses and improved school systems. An independent study showed that from 1958 to 1969 $25 billion (1958 dollars) were spent on space research and development, and returned an estimated $51 billion to the U.S. GDP. So for every $1 spent, economic output increased by $2. A 1976 study concluded that for every $1 billion spent on manufacturing, manufacturing output increased 0.1 percent, and in 1976 dollars that would be $153 Billion. That alone exceeds the total space program budget up to that time. Many studies have shown that research and development has positive economic impacts down the road, and there is no reason to believe NASA’s R&D would be any different.
But what about more tangible outputs?
There are lots and lots of such outputs. Products we all recognize and for which NASA deserves all or at least part of the credit include: light emitting diodes (LEDs), scratch resistant lenses, grooves in concrete to reduce skidding, radial tires, de-icing systems for airplanes, corrosion detection systems, video enhancement, “memory foam” now found in everything from pillows to horse back saddles and prostheses, fire fighting equipment, fire-resistant reinforcement for such things as buildings and aircraft (too bad the Twin Towers didn’t have this), freeze dried food, the “Dustbuster”, enriched baby food, solar energy panels, thousands of computer programs including software for designing cars and amusement park rides, mine safety. . . not to mention the first weather satellite technology. Oh, and the Speedo LZR Racer swimsuit, worn by Michael Phelps at the 2008 Summer Olympics. And another 1,600 products/systems.
For a very interesting look at the kinds of patents NASA owns (meaning that the underlying research was conducted by NASA or by a contractor that was funded by NASA), see their wonderful website showing what is available: http://technology.nasa.gov/. The list of inventions, all of which are succinctly described in easy-to-understand abstracts, covers everything from prosthetics to corrosion prevention. And in case you would like to have rights to any of these technologies, make your pitch to the contacts listed on the website. Best of luck!
Altogether, 6,393 patents are owned by NASA, of which 928 are active, meaning they have not expired (patents currently last 20 years from filing). An additional 1,241 patents were funded by NASA but are owned by somebody else. So if they have invested $790 billion and have produced 7,634 patents, it takes $103 million to generate one patent. To put that in perspective, at U.S. universities it takes about $3 million in research funding to generate one patent. By this measure, I guess you could say NASA is 34 times less efficient than U.S. universities at producing patents. Shame on them! Yea, sure. That is ridiculous—NASA does a lot more than produce patents.
If you want proof, just look at Earthrise.
And I guess I didn’t say much about the Space Station. Subject for later.
I guess I knew that NASA didn’t invent Teflon (DuPont, 1938). But I was pretty amazed to learn that they didn’t invent Tang (General Foods, 1957) or Velcro (the Swiss,1940s) either. Nor did they invent bar codes, quartz clocks, or smoke detectors. So much for urban myths.
But if John Glenn did not invent Tang, what spinoffs have emerged from the space program?
Well, first, I guess we need to look at the input. That is, what has the space program cost the U.S.? So, adjusted for inflation, here are the numbers in 2007 dollars: During the first year,1958, it cost $488 million. The next year the annual cost reached $2 billion, and by 1962 it was up to $12 billion. Costs doubled to $24 billion in 1963, and from 1963 to 1970 the budget was always above $18 billion per year. Since 1970 the budget has been fairly stable, hovering somewhere between $11 billion and $17 billion per year, with .the grand total in 2007 dollars being somewhere in the neighborhood of $790 billion. Another way to look at the numbers is as a percentage of the U.S. federal budget. At its peak in the 1960s, the space program accounted for 4% of the federal budget. Now it is only 0.5%.
Now for the outputs—that is, what have we gotten out of the space program? Well, I’m not going to wax eloquent about aesthetics—though NASA’s photos ARE pretty cool. I’m especially not going to mention the famous Earthrise photo taken in 1968 by William Anders during Apollo 8, which gave us the first glimpse of our home as a blue ball hanging in the blackness of space and had a significant impact on our appreciation of the planet. Nor am I going to mention the thousands of children who became engineers or scientists as a result of the space program, though one survey said 80% of such folks were motivated by the walk on the moon. (I was not—when we landed on the moon I was knee deep in a swamp looking for raccoon tracks, intent on becoming a trapper.) And finally, I am not going to mention our increased understanding of the Universe.
So what were the outputs? First, most of that $790 billion investment was spent here in the U.S. We hired people, lots of people—400,000 NASA employees, scientists, and contractors from 1964 to 1967 alone. They in turn bought houses and improved school systems. An independent study showed that from 1958 to 1969 $25 billion (1958 dollars) were spent on space research and development, and returned an estimated $51 billion to the U.S. GDP. So for every $1 spent, economic output increased by $2. A 1976 study concluded that for every $1 billion spent on manufacturing, manufacturing output increased 0.1 percent, and in 1976 dollars that would be $153 Billion. That alone exceeds the total space program budget up to that time. Many studies have shown that research and development has positive economic impacts down the road, and there is no reason to believe NASA’s R&D would be any different.
But what about more tangible outputs?
There are lots and lots of such outputs. Products we all recognize and for which NASA deserves all or at least part of the credit include: light emitting diodes (LEDs), scratch resistant lenses, grooves in concrete to reduce skidding, radial tires, de-icing systems for airplanes, corrosion detection systems, video enhancement, “memory foam” now found in everything from pillows to horse back saddles and prostheses, fire fighting equipment, fire-resistant reinforcement for such things as buildings and aircraft (too bad the Twin Towers didn’t have this), freeze dried food, the “Dustbuster”, enriched baby food, solar energy panels, thousands of computer programs including software for designing cars and amusement park rides, mine safety. . . not to mention the first weather satellite technology. Oh, and the Speedo LZR Racer swimsuit, worn by Michael Phelps at the 2008 Summer Olympics. And another 1,600 products/systems.
For a very interesting look at the kinds of patents NASA owns (meaning that the underlying research was conducted by NASA or by a contractor that was funded by NASA), see their wonderful website showing what is available: http://technology.nasa.gov/. The list of inventions, all of which are succinctly described in easy-to-understand abstracts, covers everything from prosthetics to corrosion prevention. And in case you would like to have rights to any of these technologies, make your pitch to the contacts listed on the website. Best of luck!
Altogether, 6,393 patents are owned by NASA, of which 928 are active, meaning they have not expired (patents currently last 20 years from filing). An additional 1,241 patents were funded by NASA but are owned by somebody else. So if they have invested $790 billion and have produced 7,634 patents, it takes $103 million to generate one patent. To put that in perspective, at U.S. universities it takes about $3 million in research funding to generate one patent. By this measure, I guess you could say NASA is 34 times less efficient than U.S. universities at producing patents. Shame on them! Yea, sure. That is ridiculous—NASA does a lot more than produce patents.
If you want proof, just look at Earthrise.
And I guess I didn’t say much about the Space Station. Subject for later.
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