The space program has lots of detractors (and, to be fair, lots of starry-eyed, er, boosters), but here are some spinoffs from the space program that may not be obvious:
Or: more accurately, in strictly economic terms — what has the space program done for us?
Well, for starters: without the space program we’d probably be dead. Spy satellites are the very keystone of arms verification; without spysats the cold war would quite possibly have turned hot by the early 1960s, due to misinformation and fear permeating the chain of command on either side. Subsequently, gamma-ray detector satellites such as the American Vela constellation and its Soviet equivalents gave some reassurance to the superpowers by giving them the ability to know with a degree of confidence in whether or not nuclear explosions were taking place anywhere on the planet — a prerequisite for nuclear deterrence without a launch-on-warning policy.
But the cold war’s over. So what else?
* Weather satellites. We tend to forget how primitive weather forecasting was before we could look down on developing weather systems from above; the evidence is on your TV set every day.
* Communications. The first live trans-Atlantic TV transmission took place as recently as July 23rd, 1963; go back even a few years before that, and intercontinental TV was an element of science fiction. Today, you can buy a premium-priced mobile phone that gives you coverage from the middle of the ocean, by way of satellite services such as Inmarsat and Iridium, and see news from the far side of the world in real time. It has quite literally shrunk the world.
