Skipped ahead to just listen to this and it is exactly what I was expecting. Nice opener.
I felt you were a little too diplomatic with the privatisation issue in respect that the answer at this time is simply no. I would seriously doubt we would have anything in space had government not taken up the mantle and as you said, worked to a motive that wasn't directly tied to a ROI number that can be calculated on a spread sheet before hand. Depending on your source, the Apollo Program had a Return on Investment for the country as a
whole over 20 years to be 14:1, meaning for each dollar spent on the Apollo program, the country as a whole benefited by 14 dollars and the on flow from that no doubt continue well into the future, and that is a
low ball number. A brief look into the economics of NASA can be found
here with differing methods and assumptions drawing differing conclusions.
The benefit not only came from the NASA employees spending their wages in the local economy, but from the technology they developed and because of how NASA was setup, there was an intentional out flow of that technology that was allowed to be commercialised at a heavily discounted R&D cost through the contractors since NASA did the heavy lifting. This had a massive multiplier effect. Like the bullet hell shooters, getting a high score isn't about how many kills you get, but how high you get the multiplier.
Part of the contracting system is there to no doubt put to rest the unfounded fear that government would overrun R&D and technology would be lost if left in a lab. However there is the counter point that NASA might have taken contracting too far and has lost it's edge. With a quick look at the DOD, you can see clearly the pitfalls of taking contracting too far.
Neil Armstrong is one of a rare breed of Hero that represented the best that humanity could offer and he did it with the grace, honor, integrity that is super human. A Universal Hero.
Topic: Space Questions for Jonny? (Read 28780 times)
