Subject:
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Re: And now for something completely different...
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.off-topic.debate
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Date:
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Wed, 12 Mar 2003 17:27:12 GMT
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Viewed:
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689 times
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In lugnet.off-topic.debate, Christopher L. Weeks writes:
> > http://www.ccssc.org/exhibit.htm
> > "The Coca-Cola drink dispenser is a replica of the first such beverage
> > machine taken into space. The dispenser was used during recent shuttle
> > missions to test the feasibility of creating and drinking carbonated
> > beverages in space."
>
> The deal with research is that you never know what ancillary technologies will
> crop up from it. You can smirk at Coke in space all you want, but the "test
> the feasibility of creating...carbonated beverages in space" part sounds like
> potentially very usefull technology. What if in order to do so they have to
> invent a new distillation technology that allows poor countries to cheaply
> extract potable water from poluted or saline sources? I'm obviously just
> pulling that out of my donkey, but stuff like that has happened a thousand
> times with the space program.
Though I've said before that I support space exploration in its own right
(without needing a penny-for-penny justification), I'm not sure about the
1000 fecund technologies bred by the space program. Am I just being dense?
I mean, are these technologies that could not have been developed just as
well through equally well-funded terrestrial research? To put it another
way, was the development of these technologies dependent upon the space
program or was it a matter of "we have a space program, and by the way,
here's a non-stick frying pan"?
And, anyway, even if not a dime's worth of spilloff technology has come
out of the space program, NASA's budget really isn't the bank-breaker that
some critics seem to think it is. The as-yet-science-fiction missile
defense system (and the research thereof) is a much more wasteful use of
money, for example.
So why not let NASA have its zero-g Coke machines? The Fed has the money
to throw around elsewhere, so let's use that, instead.
Dave!
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