Benefits of space exploration

[MFFL]

veruca salt asked this question a couple of days ago



<< what's space exploration ever done for me? >>



Here's some benefits

From pacemakers to braces, the medical benefits of space exploration
From Medical Correspondent Dan Rutz
November 2, 1998
Web posted at: 4:53 p.m. EST (2153 GMT)

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- What do you think blast-off does to your blood pressure? When Alan Shepard became the first American to fly in space 37 years ago, Project Mercury scientists had to invent an automatic measuring device to find out.

Today, you can find the device in just about any drugstore for an instant check-up. It is just one of an ever-growing number of medical spin-offs from space.

Scratch-resistant lenses for eyeglasses are straight from the stars. NASA needed something to protect satellites from getting nicked by space debris.

Speaking of satellites, how do they spring open after being cramped into a rocket for the ride up? The key is nitinol, a medical alloy with an almost magical ability to spring back into shape from the tightest contortion.

Nitinol makes wearing dental braces just a little easier.

&quot;It allows me to engage every tooth in the mouth pretty easily,&quot; said Atlanta orthodontist Moody Williams. &quot;Put it in and it works for a very long time. It never loses its activity.&quot;

NASA's chief historian, Roger Launius, said great ideas from America's greatest adventure are a bonus.

&quot;The spinoffs are essentially serendipity,&quot; he said. &quot;The primary mission of the agency is to fly in space.&quot;

In the early years of the space program, little was said about applied science or medical spinoffs. In those days, NASA got its clout from the space race with the Soviet Union.

&quot;In that sense, it was a cold war agency,&quot; Launius said. &quot;It emerged as a direct aftermath of Sputnik.&quot;

After the moon walk, in the 1970s, NASA started to make more of the medical achievements it helped foster.

Neurosurgeon Richard North of Johns Hopkins Medical School was a student then, collaborating with space physicists and medical engineers.

&quot;They had this expression -- 'Launch it,' -- as a point of time at which one would have to rely on remote programming and interrogation to control this device.&quot;

Both a satellite sent into space and an electronic pain-control device implanted in a patient are out of reach and adjustable only by telemetry born of the space program.

With less effort than it takes to change channels, a patient with the electronic pain-control device can find relief thanks to miniature electronic components inside the body.

Heart pacemakers work through electronic monitoring similar to that used to operate satellites orbiting the earth.

&quot;We thought going to the moon or going to the heavens, but what will it do for me?&quot; Rabbi Sholem Kowlasky, one pacemaker patient said. &quot;Most people did not know, especially the laymen.&quot;

Sam Zaccari, 56, a volunteer at John Hopkins Diabetes Center, has also come to appreciate the medical spinoffs from space. The implantable insulin pump that has kept his diabetes under control since 1986 borrows from the mechanical robot arm on the first Mars Voyager probe.

&quot;It's wonderful because without this technology that we got today I wouldn't have the control I have and maybe I might not be here,&quot; he said.

[MFFL]

Here's some more

FS-JSC-95(08)-004
August 1995
NASA TECHNOLOGY SPINOFFS:
Bringing Space Down to Earth

Do you feel like an astronaut when you go to the grocery store? How about when you set your watch?

The next time you reset the smoke detector in your home, take a minute to imagine it as part of your own spacecraft's caution and warning system. Because before they saved lives on Earth, that's where smoke detectors were found on spacecraft designed and built by NASA.

Although NASA's most visible achievements have taken place in space, the technologies that put men on the moon, launched space shuttles and will build a space station have found their way into everyday life on Earth.

These common secondary uses, called space spinoffs, have continuously enhanced the lifestyle of Americans and strengthened the U.S. economy since the 1950s.

The technologies that led to the computer bar codes in retail stores, quartz timing crystals and household smoke detectors were originally developed for NASA.

NASA technology has provided many benefits to the medical field. The pacemakers used to treat cardiac patients as well as the remote monitoring devices for intensive care patients were derived from the telemetry systems that first monitored astronauts and spacecraft. Much of the portable medical equipment carried aboard ambulances has its roots in NASA's needs for such portable equipment in space.

These are but a few of the more than 30,000 secondary applications of space technology providing daily benefits in Earth-bound hospitals, offices and homes.

In the past, such spinoffs often happened by chance a coincidence when practical uses of new technologies were found.

NASA is now seeking to make the spinoff a part of the product itself.

Working jointly with private industry to develop technologies that have a use in space and on Earth lessens the cost of development for NASA, and, ultimately, the taxpayer.

Technologies developed for NASA to meet the challenges of space exploration have found more than 30,000 secondary commercial uses in products ranging from tennis shoes to medical equipment, bar codes, pacemakers and sunglasses.


PAST NASA SPINOFFS
Fabrics
NASA's use of aluminized materials to serve as insulation for satellites and spacecraft helped lead to a revolution in reflective insulating materials ranging from survival blankets to wraps for water heaters to new types of interior home insulation. Extremely strong fire-retarding materials that were developed for use in the pure-oxygen air of early spacecraft have led to a host of cloths, such as Beta Glass, used in fireproof clothing, accessories and firefighter's suits. Other spacecraft materials have included teflon-coated fibers with extremely light weight but great strength that have been used as roofing material for such structures as the Detroit Silverdome and the Jedda, Saudi Arabia, Airport.

Materials
Composite materials, a mix of fibers and resins designed to provide great strength yet remain very light weight, have been synonymous with all aerospace applications from airplanes to NASA spacecraft and have advanced into lightweight, strong materials for helmets, tennis rackets and other sporting goods. NASA spawned further development of memory metals, metals that remember their former shape when bent, in its early space station studies and advanced forms of the materials are now used in common flexible metal eyeglass frames. Other glasses benefit from scratch-resistant coatings originally developed as a protective coating for delicate spacecraft parts. In footwear, a shock-absorbing spacer&Oacute; technique originally developed for the boots of moonwalking astronauts has given birth to an entire new family of shock-absorbing tennis shoes and other athletic shoes.

Electronics
The smoke detectors now required by law to be placed in all homes and universally credited with saving countless lives are an end result of a technology originally developed for NASA's early 1970s Skylab spacecraft. Quartz timing crystals which have led to the current status quo in wristwatches and small clocks were first developed for NASA as a highly accurate, lightweight and durable timing device for the lunar-bound Apollo spacecraft. On the moon, astronauts used specially developed portable, battery-powered electric tools to drill into the surface and take samples of the crust, tools that were the direct predecessor of today's cordless screwdrivers, drills and other rechargeable power tools. Common bar codes now used for pricing in supermarkets are an advancement of technology originally developed for uses within NASA, such as maintaining a highly accurate inventory of millions of spacecraft parts.


CURRENT TECHNOLOGIES
Bioreactor
A cell culture device developed as part of space medicine research at JSC may allow scientists to better test new treatments for cancer and viruses without risking harm to patients. The rotating wall bioreactor, a cell culture device that was developed as part of space medicine research at JSC, mimics the effect weightlessness may have on cell cultures by incorporating a rotating cylinder to hold the culture. With its rotation, pressure points on the growing cells are relieved and the device can grow three-dimensional, highly accurate tissues, unlike previous culture growths which grew in two dimensions. Already being commercialized by a small company in Houston, the device has been used to grow more than 35 cell types and no cell type yet tested has not grown well in the system. The bioreactor may add a valuable new tool to the arsenal of medical research.

Zeolite Soil
The study of how to grow plants in the most inhospitable location yet visited by humans the moon led to the development of a synthetic soil by JSC researchers that holds promise as a revolutionary fertilizer and soil on Earth. The zeolite soil mix takes advantage of the natural properties of a common mineral called zeolite in storing and time-releasing nutrients. A JSC-developed additive is mixed with the specially prepared zeolite to create a soil that in laboratory testing has produced conditions almost comparable to the fertility provided by hydroponics, a well-known technology that uses water to provide plants with a precise nutrient mixture. However, unlike hydroponics, the zeolite soil does not require massive pumps and pipes. The zeolite mixture already is being commercialized by two U.S. companies and may provide a valuable new fertilizer that, due to its time-release properties, avoids runoff pollution, a common symptom of current agricultural fertilizers, as well as providing high fertility.

Implantable Heart Pump
NASA's expertise in tiny yet highly reliable pumps may provide an alternative to the large, external heart pumps used by patients awaiting a heart transplant. JSC has combined forces with the Baylor College of Medicine and famed heart surgeon Dr. Michael Debakey to make use of the center's expertise in developing the Ventricular Assist Device. The new generation of heart pump already is undergoing implant tests in animals and, if they continue to go well, a first human implant may come soon. The pump would allow critical heart patients a much more convenient alternative to the heart pumps currently in use.

[MFFL]

Here's some Social Benefits

The Social Benefits of Space Exploration
by Tom Harris

Why do we dream about traveling in space and exploring alien worlds? Is the human expansion into the cosmos important to our future, or is it simply a technological extravagance of the developed world?

Space advocates usually answer these questions by citing the well-known, short-term benefits of the program, such things as technological spin-offs, job and wealth creation and scientific discoveries.

However, astronauts like Julie Payette do not risk their lives to contribute to the GNP or create jobs in the aerospace sector. We, and our explorer proxies, are driven by factors best understood by social scientists.

Human beings act out processes long before they understand them&quot;, says Carleton University anthropologist, Charles Laughlin. &quot;Even when they presume to understand them, very often that understanding is simply a rationalization.&quot;

Laughlin explains that the standard justifications for space flight are an example of such rationalizing. He believes that we would be expanding off-world even if these benefits did not exist. The real reasons for space flight, he says, have more to do with human nature and the way in which humanity will continue to change as we move into this new frontier.

At first glance, social science might not seem to have much relevance to a highly technical and futuristic enterprise like space flight. Indeed, the space community has always been
reluctant to associate with those in the &quot;soft&quot; sciences.

However, things are changing. Led by the innovative thinking of several forward-looking social scientists and a minority of space professionals, a healing between these fields is occurring which has the potential to radically alter our view of the program.

Anthropologists are leading the way. They explain how their discipline, embracing both the biological and cultural evolution of humankind, provides an important perspective, helping us understand the human implications of leaving our home planet. Ben Finney, a University of Hawaii anthropologist, maintains that &quot;the space revolution is leading humanity into an entirely new and uncharted social realm.&quot; He says that the act of settling space &quot;will change humankind utterly and irreversibly.&quot;

These changes will eventually become so pronounced that Cabrillo College anthropologist James Funaro says, &quot;the first aliens we encounter in space will be ourselves.&quot;

Laughlin and space psychologist Philip Harris explain that space travel has already changed the way we view humanity and our world. It is no coincidence that, within two years of our first views of Earthrise over the Moon, we saw the formation of Environment Canada, the US Environmental Protection Agency, Greenpeace and the world's first Earth Day.

Finney shows how this sort of transformation is analogous to that experienced by successive generations of Polynesians as a result of exploring and settling islands across the Pacific Ocean. He labels humans &quot;the exploring animal&quot; and concludes that a withdrawal from the exploration and development of space would put the brakes on our civilization's cultural and intellectual advancement.

Space-generated changes to humanity were predicted at the dawn of the space age when philosopher Hannah Arendt warned in her 1958 book, The Human Condition, &quot;The most radical change in the human condition we can imagine would be the emigration of men from Earth to some other planet.&quot;

Arendt feared this expansion. Today's anthropologists welcome it as a necessary catalyst, accelerating the modifications to our society and our consciousness we need to survive.

Historian Stephen Pyne of Arizona State University West shows how the history of western civilization since the Renaissance demonstrates a strong correlation between geographic exploration and general cultural vitality. He sees important similarities between what space exploration offers our civilization and what the exploration of the world contributed to Europe after the Middle Ages.

&quot;It has a cultural context&quot;, says Pyne. &quot;Exploration is not simply driven by technology.&quot;

Pyne asserts, &quot;Choosing to explore the solar system will not, by itself, assure us continued status as a world civilization. But choosing not to explore will ensure that we will not retain that stature.&quot;

Political science professor Michael Fulda of the Virginia-based Institute for the Social Science Study of Space summarizes the space/social science connection well when he says simply, &quot;Space exploration is a social activity&quot;.

Ultimately, we may find that forces above culture or biology are driving us into space. Laughlin says that relations were established in the Big Bang that made the evolution of intelligent life inevitable. From this point of view we may simply be the universe's way of coming to know itself -- cosmic exploration may be humankind's central purpose.

Science fiction writer, Ray Bradbury, gives us a glimpse of the direction in which Ms. Payette and her fellow space travelers may be leading us when he writes:

What I to apeman
And what then he to me?
I, an apeman, one day will seem to be
To those who, after us, look back from Mars
And they, in turn, mere beasts will seem
To those who reach the stars.

[Dooby]

One more:


delicious Tang.

Where would we be without powdered orange drink?

[MFFL]

Tang - I haven't had that since &gt;I&lt; was a kid. Do they still make it?

[Murphy3]

homer simpson in space...enough said

[Dooby]

Thank you, Murph. You knew exactly where I was coming from.

[veruca salt]

What did you do?
Type &quot;Benifits Of Space Exploration&quot; in Google??
Don't you have a comic store to run?
It appears that you read way too much into a one liner I had already forgotten about.

[MFFL]

Yes

No - I'm taking the day off

No - I'm a big space nut and I felt like spending a couple of minutes on it.

[scooterj5]

Have you got the total cost for all this?

[Drbio]

3 packs of Tang.