http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R99hAG0tgkg

Wash that down with some Tang! Start your day the astronaut way!

Remember JPL? The Jet Propulsion Laboratory was really engaged in managing unmanned space missions. But when it was founded, space rocketry was considered “that Buck Rogers stuff,” hardly the sort of thing the Federal government should be funding. That’s why JPL got such an innocuous, even misleading name.

Until Sputnik, most American leaders, including Eisenhower, considered spaceflight to be much too far in the future for the government to be concerned about. They underestimated the popular response to the Soviet achievement AND the effects of accelerating technology.

Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo were proofs positive that the development of advanced technologies does indeed accelerate.

We only have to think of the computers that ran those 60s spacecraft. The cheapest computer in your house now is far more powerful than the one that ran the Apollo 11 LEM. Armstrong had to take manual command to fly it to the Moon’s surface, because the computer’ skimpy memory and processors were overwhelmed by the task and were shutting down.

The Space Shuttle’s computers are far more powerful, but still not cutting edge because they have to be proven spaceworthy. That takes time. Meanwhile, another computer revolution takes place…

So, our space program not only catalyzed accelerating technology, it benefited from it. And so it does so today.