This is for Nancy, because she asked.<\/p>\n
I, too, watched the space shuttle explosion in 1986, and the more recent Columbia disaster in 2003 (or was it 2002?) and I remember crying my heart out watching the coverage. But I still believe that the space program needs more, not less, funding.<\/p>\n
For a really great list of spin-off benefits from the US space program, visit The Space Place<\/a>:<\/p>\n One of the many spinoffs from the Hubble telescope is the use of its Charge Coupled Device (CCD) chips for digital imaging breast biopsies<\/a>. The resulting device images breast tissue more clearly and efficiently than other existing technologies. The CCD chips are so advanced that they can detect the minute differences between a malignant or benign tumor without the need for a surgical biopsy. This saves the patient weeks of recovery time and the cost for this procedure is hundreds of dollars vs. thousands for a surgical biopsy. With over 500,000 women needing biopsies a year the economic benefit, per year, is tremendous and it greatly reduces the pain, scarring, radiation exposure, time, and money associated with surgical biopsies.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n Other technological spin offs from the space program cover everything from golf ball aerodynamics to doppler radar (weather) imaging to improvements to school bus design and even better baby food.<\/p>\n Of course, this only covers some of the practical things we have learned in the pursuit of space. To me, it’s not even half of the best argument. For a more poetic description of why we should continue to explore space, please do take a moment to read the Bad Astronomer <\/a>on this subject. He’s a terrific writer! Make sure you read the comments, too. No really, go! It’s important.<\/p>\n And on a completely unrelated but perhaps not so unrelated after all topic, have you guys seen Google Earth<\/a> yet? So way wicked cool you have to see it to believe it! Google sightseeing <\/a>has now gone international as well.<\/p>\n So, now you know how I feel about it – what do you think? Is it worth it to explore space?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" This is for Nancy, because she asked. I, too, watched the space shuttle explosion in 1986, and the more recent Columbia disaster in 2003 (or was it 2002?) and I remember crying my heart out watching the coverage. But I still believe that the space program needs more, not less, funding. For a really great … Continue reading “Why we should explore space”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[68],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-152","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-my-inner-geek"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/152","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=152"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/152\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=152"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=152"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/danigirl.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=152"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n