STENNIS TEST STAND TO SEND ASTRONAUTS BACK TO THE MOON

SUN HERALD ^ | May 29, 2009 | J.R. WELSH

[Pistolshot]

Those were developed OUT of the race to the moon, any guess what technologies will be developed out of this one?

[Alberta's Child]

Understood. But wouldn't it have been far more cost-effective to just do it all as a research program and not spend all the time, money and effort to send the spacecraft to the moon?

I mean . . . nothing you mentioned there actually required anyone to fly to the moon.

[Pistolshot]

So, I guess you believe that the technological advances would have just happened by themselves?

Computers went from room sized to desktop because the Apollo program needed the computation capability. Advances in medicine, chemistry, mathematics, all advanced because of the space program. And no one, I mean NO ONE has the money to invest in R&D like the government.

So many private industries spun off the space program it's unbelievable you have no concept of what that brought to all of us.

Getting to the moon showed a capability, one we used a number of times. It is man's need to explore that takes us into space, and we are just at the begining of that. What new technologies will come out of that, that you take for granted?