Oh, crackers. I’m sorry about the misquote. That last quote is, of course, from Hyperelastic
I think if you study these, you’ll actually find a lot of government support getting them started.
For example, railroads: developed from horse-drawn railcars in english coal mines. And the coal was a critical supply item for the English Navy. And there was a lot of government involvement in obtaining the land routes needed for railways. Here in midwest America, most of the railroads were extended across the Great Plains because of government grants of land adjoining whatever tracks they laid.
And airplanes: weren’t many of the Wright Brothers first sales of planes to the military forces of various countries? Plus nearly all the large airports I know of are built and operated by government bodies. Plus the whole Air Traffic Control system, airport security, etc.
By that standard, almost everything is ‘government created’, because the government has tremendous influence.
Doesn’t change the fact that the vast majority of appliances, technologies, medicines, and devices that make your life better all came from private industry.
No, I don’t think so. Governments were involved as customers, or in other ways sometimes. But to say that any involvement is the same as the sort of involvement Hyperelastic was refering to is disengenuous. To be clear, I think we are talking about the long term research and development phase of any particular “monumental achievements”.
Quite so. But before that it was used in many english homes to keep warm. It was only used by the navy after the invention of steam engines. Another of the privately developed technologies.
Quite so. This is what killed the railroads, ultimately, in this country. The absurd restrictions laid down by governments for “railroad companies” to get land grants led many to build railroads ( or in some cases simply grade the land in preperation for a road) take the land, exploit or sell it off, and then never build, or at least never run the railroad. The railroads which succeeded were largely those that were not built with government grants IMHO. However, again, we are talking about the initial research and development which lead to the technology.
Quite so again. But as before, the initial development was done privately in order to sell the technology. No grants were given to the Wrights.
Governments were cetainly involved in getting many industries started. Without relatively free markets, for instance, none of these technological inovations would have been possible. But to say that government had the same relationship with railroads as it did with the internet is to miss the point.
On review, Sam Stone said the same thing more succinctly.
The case of airplanes is an exception that proves the rule. The Wrights were undoubtedly great engineers, and did invent the basic concepts on their own with little government involvement. But what they produced was what we would call nowadays a “technology demonstrator” - it was a far cry from an airplane that could do something useful like drop bombs or transport the mail. The U.S. Army Signal Corps picked up the ball early with a $25,000 contract in 1908 for the Wrights to turn their prototype into a militarily useful airplane. Many years and millions of government dollars later, the airplane began to have an impact on everyday life.
And it’s not true that the government played no role in early aeronautical research. The Army had used observation balloons during the Civil War, and had sponsored decades of research by Samuel Pierpont Langley. Had Langley succeeded, the government would have been recognized as instrumental in early aeronautics. But all the government eggs went into the wrong basket. There were many reasons, well known to all, to favor Langley over the Wrights, which is what the government did. This kind of error happens in private industry frequently as well. As soon as it became clear that the Wrights were the leaders, the Army stepped in with a fat development contract.
No, it is an example of the rule which disproves your contention. Yes, government involvement in areonautical research included government funding. There were even government funding in many other forms of research. If we are going to give credit to the government for developing airplanes (as opposed to creating them), then we have to revisit your list of govenrment sponsered research and note that the vast majority of those items did not make an impact on daily life until private industry developed them.
But the bottom line is that private industries do it better. In virtually all cases. A detailed discussion on this is probably outside of the scope of this thread. I merely wanted to respond to your query about the presence of private research providing the world with miracles. The point being that bringing up a few cases of government successes does not mean that government research is the way to go in the future.
What is being argued by many uninformed observers of the goings-on at NASA, and what I believe you also are arguing by your statement that private industries do it better “in virtually all cases”, is that government involvement in technology development can only mess things up. To counter this, I only need one example of an important technology that benefited from significant government involvement, and I gave several.
The way people talk about privatizing space exploration, you would think that NASA is building this stuff in government-owned factories. The reality is that 85-90% of NASA’s budget is already passed to private industry in the form of contracts. It seems some people will not be satisfied until NASA abandons its oversight responsibility and simply starts writing checks to Boeing, LockMart et al with “Spend it however you want” on the memo line.
But so what? I can’t imagine why “not learning about ourselves” is considered a great loss. We stopped sending people to explore the Mariana Trench in favor of unmanned submarines, and you don’t hear anyone moaning about how even though we’ve learned more about it, we’re not sending people down there to possibly die, so it’s a big missed opportunity to learn more about the human condition. :dubious: Why is it better that we learn about ourselves through dangerous space missions than right here on solid ground?
Pretty much. Eliminate the parts of the space program that involve sending manned crafts, and get the displaced engineers into the private sector, so we’re not supporting the waste of money through taxes. Maybe Bill Gates can hire them for his own private space program. If the engineers end up being snagged by another country, so be it. It’s not like outsourcing is a rare thing these days anyway.
No, no – that’s the Defense Department you’re thinking of there!
That’s a useless distinction. When people talk about “government programs,” they man government-funded programs. The way the government stimulates technological development - either as a primary goal or as a spinoff - is by being a paying customer. Satellites and rockets are not developed by NASA, but by contractors who get paid by NASA to develop it. If NASA weren’t there as a customer, it wouldn’t have been developed.
Yes, the private industry is definitely best at providing a solution for the lowest possible cost. But the private industry is not going to pay for long-term, basic scientific research because the payoff will be indirect and decatdes away; that’s why you need the government as a paying customer and pay for scientific data.
Another thing the private industry is bad at is investing in long-term high-risk technology development programs. The Boeing 747 is often cited as an example of a company betting its own future on a new long-term project, but that was an extention of the tried and true technology. Who would have risked investing in a launcher development project in the 1950s? But the government can afford to pay for this development effort. The contractor retains the technology which can then be used on commercial products.
Like, now? This will kill the ISS. Where does this leave Russia, Europe and Japan who have spent a total of $8 billion on the project already? The Japanese and European lab modules haven’t even been launched yet. It’s potentially as damaging to the US’s reputation as Iraq. Is the money saved worth the political cost?
What about the domestic opinions? Like it or not, a manned space program has a symbolic value. After the US pulls out, Russia and China will be the only ones flying. I doubt the majority of Americans would see that as an acceptable situation.
What would Bill Gates do with a space program?
Would you be happy to see a big portion of aerospace engineers were hired away by Europe and Russia? It would represent the loss of a substantial amount of investment.
yeah, but millions of people each year SCUBA dive, and the oceans themselves are finite, whereas space is infinite. In time, every part of the ocean will know a human presence, because it is in our nature to put ourselves, and not merely our tools, into places. Ballard originally went down to the Titanic with robotic probes, today tourists are mucking about the site so much in submersables that they’re doing considerable damage to the place. Obviously, robots are not enough for them.
No, not really. I am not suggesting that governments play no role whatsoever. In fact, I don’t think I said that governments can “only mess things up”. I simply said that private interests can and do do it better.
Quite so. this is one reason why I did not make the claim you think I did.
No, that would actually not help matters at all. The problem is that NASA sets priorities and goals not based on science or even profitability. They set goals based on politics. Specifically, the politics which allow NASA to grow. I’m not trying to assign nefarious motives to anyone at NASA. I love NASA. I enjoy most of the things they do. I defended the manned missions to Mars initiative around here, for gosh sakes.
But the hard truth is that when you are spending your own money, you are much more likely to look long and hard at proposals and only choose those which you trust to have a good possibility of positive outcomes.
Also, if you are wrong, who cares! It was your money anyway!
The problem with NASA and governmental science in general is that it is not only less efficient than private concerns, it takes money away from those concerns which are successful in order to be less efficient.
No, it is not. I think you make the same one here:
Specifically, you are talking about the difference between the inventor of a technology and the developer or mass marketer of that technology.
The problem is that the idea that governments are necessary for scientific development is not true. Nor is the idea that private companies do not invest in long term research projects. Many have and still do. Untill recently (around 50 years or so) all technological developments were funded almost entirely by private interests. None of the miracles I mentioned were funded in the nacent technological / basic research stage by any government programs.
Weren’t private interests investing and researching rocketry long before then? How much money did the US government spend on that? How much did the German government spend on rockets before they nationalized the various private rocket clubs?
My point is that governments have the capacity to aquire very large amounts of capital. If spent wisely, they can do wonderous things. Unfortunately, governments also have a warped feedback mechanism on their spending. This does not preclude them spending wisely, but it does make if much more difficult. Certainly there is an argument to be made that certain large capitalization projects need governments to succeed. But I would argue that because there is insufficient capital available for them, they may not be wise ion the first place. Remember that one reason no one was investing in launch vehicles in the 1950s outside of government, was that there was no use for them outside government. The ideas about how such things could be used comercially were in their infancy.
Look. I am really not arguing for the gutting of NASA. I am arguing a philosophical point. Perhaps it is a hijack. I have done that sort of thing in the past.
NASA doesn’t set its own budget, Congress does. And NASA has to produce results to take back to Congress. Do you have any idea how difficult it is to get a NASA project approved? The problem is the opposite of what you seem to be suggesting - NASA is so concerned with producing results and afraid of failure that they aren’t approving enough high-risk projects. And once a project gets approved, its members are under trememdous responsibility to produce results. The results may be measured in papers rather than dollars, but there is as much pressure to succeed as any private enterprise.
No, I was talking about the difference between the inventor/developer of a technology and the source of funding for continuing development. If a US company has a revolutionary technology but insufficient funds to develop it into a profitable product, don’t you think a loan from the US government would be an overall gain for the US? Otherwise it may not be developed at all, or developed by a foreign country. A NASA contract is one way to give funding to that startup industry.
I didn’t say research. I said development program. There may have been some basic research, but it took a government-funded program to make space launch into a business. (Which it is now.)
So what is your point? The discussion seems to have shifted from manned spaceflight to everything NASA does. I really don’t see how private parties can be talked into funding, say, the SSC or a next-generation space telescope or a Mars sample return mission. And even if we could, those investors would demand the data be propriatory, as the biochem research firms are doing now. This trend would be very damaging to fields such as physics and astronomy.
Cite?
Fair enough. But the original question discussed by myself and Hyperelastic were about the inventor/developer (considering him and his funding to be inseperable) at the invention stage of the technology.
Please don’t confuse me for some NASA basher who hates NASA or thinks it was a waste of money. My objections to government spending are more subtle than that. I enjoyed many of the things NASA did. I am simply objecting to the notion that technologies cannot be created without government funding. Which, was Hyperelastic’s point initially.
I think we measure pressure in different ways. I’m certain that results are measured differently. What happened to the scientists, engineers, and managers who were responsible for the 2 Mars probes which did not reach Mars? How many of them had to look for new jobs? Can you imagine the same sorts of statistics if those probes had been contracted for by private industry?
I guess my point was that “invention stage” isn’t as long and expensive as you seem to imply. It doesn’t take much to come up with an idea; the expensive and laborious part is turning that idea into a useful, marketable product.
I agree with that, but I also think many industries benefited from government funding, and as a result the technology reached us regular consumers much faster than it would have without that government funding.
The engineers and managers are in trouble, because the group who built that probe will have a hard time getting contracts in the future. I can’t remember who built it, but even if it was a group at a NASA center, they have to compete with other groups for funding or contract. If your group doesn’t have funding, your job really is on the line.
The impact on the scientists are probably greater. They spent years on the project, and the payback was supposed to be papers they would write. Without those papers on their resume their career options will be much more limited. For postdoc-level scientists it may make the difference between getting a full-time research job and giving up academia. For the grad students who worked on the project and were counting on it for a Ph.D thesis, it may mean two more years of work to do a thesis on another topic.
I can agree with this. If I am not mistaken the list proposed by Hyperelastic was invented by the government, but developed by provate industry. The Ariplane (from my list) was invented privately but its development was funded by militaries.
Clearly. As I said, governments have the capacity (by virtue that they can amass large amounts of capital) to do tremendous research and development.
Thanks for the info. I had not seen any of this in the news.
I’d point out, that the results would be a bit more severe in the private sector. Although, I’ll admit they would not be drastically more severe. If the project had been a private or even comercial one, it might have lead to the loss of the investment.
I really don’t think we are talking about the difference between communism and capitalism here. We are merely disagreeing on an abstract principle which may not directly translate into empiracally measurable differences.