Suggestion for New Shuttle Name

WLS-AM ^ | 02/03/03 | caller on WLS-AM

[aruanan]

A caller to the Don Wade and Roma show suggested:

1. that spending for NASA be increased,
2. that a replacement shuttle be built, and
3. that it's name be Courageous.

He asked Don and Roma if they could help get the ball rolling. I thought that if any place could get it rolling, it would be FreeRepublic.

[OldBlondBabe]

"More than 100 documented NASA technologies from the Space Shuttle are now incorporated into the tools you use, the foods you eat, and the biotechnology and medicines used to improve your health."

My husband and I have discussed this many times over the years. Anyone have a link to a list of the benefits we've gained as a result of the space program?

[spectre]

Phoenix is my first choice.

Pegasus, my second.

sw

[johnandrhonda]

"Things we now take for granted, like the common home smoke detector and cordless tools have grown out of technology derived from the space program."
Would you or NASA have us believe that we wouldn't have cordless tools or smoke detectors if it weren't for the space program? Give me a break.

[Psycho_Bunny]

3. that it's name be Courageous.

Not that I'm superstitious but, I don't think I'd be putting another "C"-word on the nose of a new shuttle.

[Redleg Duke]

"I remember wondering why a car was called an "Edsel"."

It was named after one of the Ford Grandsons, but a simpering rump-swab named Robert S. McNamara, before took a "higher calling" to totally screw up the Pentagon!

[Redleg Duke]

Sorry..."by a simpering rump-swab named Robert S. McNamara
..."

[Redleg Duke]

We can name it after either of the Clintons...as long as its purpose is to haul garbage!

[Redcloak]

The other names suggested here are good, but I still like Enterprise.

[Willie Green]

Why not try something innovative?

Just like we do with sports stadia, sell the naming rights to the highest bidder.
It'll help defray the construction and operating costs.

[abner]

Patriot

[Goodman26]

"Things we now take for granted, like the common home smoke detector and cordless tools have grown out of technology derived from the space program. More recent technological developments include a miniature implantable heart assist device based on space shuttle fuel pumps and protective clothing that can be used for a variety of applications based on spacesuit technology. The list actually goes on and on..."

Most (maybe all) of these advances resulted not from what we've learned in space, but from what we learned while pursuing space.

I think the Space Shuttle program was a compromise between those of us who want to really go for it and explore space and those who don't want to spend as much or distract us from the many earthly problems they see (but want to keep jobs in Florida and Texas. So, we have had to force ourselves to get excited about the shuttle and the kids' experiments (one key experiment on Columbia was looking at how fast ants tunnel in sand when in space) it is carrying out. I think NASA realized the public might start to question some of these things so they started to go celebrity and multi-cultural: "Teachers in Space"; John Glen (whow!look how old he is!); and an Israeli!!!

Hopefully, we'll rethink the whole Shuttle fixation, and start pressing the envelope again: the moon should belong to the USA (we got there first) and we should start having people live there, and build a giant telescope, and possibly assemble a spacecraft for more distant manned travel.

[Newbomb Turk]

Freedom 7

[Steve0113]

You mean the teflon that was in invented in 1938?

That's the one.

My bad -- I thought it came from the space program.

[NonZeroSum]

My bad -- I thought it came from the space program.

That's the problem. The spin-off spinners have been giving NASA credit for a lot of things that it had little to do with for years, which hurts the credibility of such claims. Spinoff is a lousy argument for doing a space program. It has to be justified on its own merits.

[Preech1]

ROFL! Oddly enough I thought the same thing...I guess paranoid minds think alike...

[Centurion2000]

Build the next generation of shuttles .... name the first 3 Patriot, Freedom, Independance.

[Dr._Joseph_Warren]

Please note: The following is totally satire.

Naming a new shuttle could also help pay for one.

Why not take a page from how stadiums are named and allow corporations place their name on the shuttle.

I can just hear Dan Rather now: 'We have lift-off of the space shuttle MicroSoft.'

[aruanan]

Independance.

Independence?

[ET(end tyranny)]

From pacemakers to braces, the medical benefits of space exploration

From Medical Correspondent Dan Rutz
November 2, 1998

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.

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

NASA's chief historian, Roger Launius, said great ideas from America's greatest adventure are a bonus. "The spinoffs are essentially serendipity," he said. "The primary mission of the agency is to fly in space."

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.

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

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.

"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."

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.

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

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.

"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," he said.

NASA Spinoff

Space Shuttle Benefits

APOLLO'S CONTRIBUTIONS TO AMERICA

NASA Technology Transfer Program. At Home with NASA

NASA Spinoffs Bringing Space down to Earth

[NonZeroSum]

This in no way responds to my point. In fact, it reinforces it. My point was not that there is no spinoff, but that it is oversold, and a lousy justification for space expenditures.