# What REALLY did the space race provide for humanity?
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-really-did-the-space-race-provide-for-humanity/763821
**Category:** Factual Questions
**Created:** [August 24, 2016, 3:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-really-did-the-space-race-provide-for-humanity/763821 "2016-08-24T15:36:43Z")
**Posts on this page:** 20
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@CC](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CC)
#### Post date: [August 24, 2016, 3:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-really-did-the-space-race-provide-for-humanity/763821/1 "2016-08-24T15:36:43Z")
(Maybe this is better placed in GD, but there may be justification for it here, too.) On page 480 of the May 30, 1963 New Scientist, ([New Scientist - Google Books](https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=zF5CgNF-quUC&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false)), David Fishlock argues that not much of value will come from the expenditures of the space race and that the money would be better spent on general applied research into the improvement of life on Earth. He may have a point, in that life changed as a result of the space race, but were there any MAJOR inventions or discoveries that could rival (his list from the previous 30 years): fission, antibiotics, television, radar, the jet engine, the transistor?
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### Author:  [@Duckster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Duckster)
#### Post date: [August 24, 2016, 3:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-really-did-the-space-race-provide-for-humanity/763821/2 "2016-08-24T15:45:17Z")
Fifty-three years after the article came out:
[ul]
[li][http://www.universetoday.com/37079/benefits-of-space-exploration/[/li][li]https://www.quora.com/What-are-the-benefits-of-space-exploration[/li][li]http://www.ethicalatheist.com/docs/benefits\_of\_space\_program.html[/li][li]https://spinoff.nasa.gov/Spinoff2008/tech\_benefits.html[/li][/ul]](http://www.universetoday.com/37079/benefits-of-space-exploration/%5B/li%5D%5Bli%5Dhttps://www.quora.com/What-are-the-benefits-of-space-exploration%5B/li%5D%5Bli%5Dhttp://www.ethicalatheist.com/docs/benefits_of_space_program.html%5B/li%5D%5Bli%5Dhttps://spinoff.nasa.gov/Spinoff2008/tech_benefits.html%5B/li%5D%5B/ul%5D)
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### Author:  [@watchwolf49](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/watchwolf49)
#### Post date: [August 24, 2016, 3:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-really-did-the-space-race-provide-for-humanity/763821/3 "2016-08-24T15:48:10Z")
ICBMs
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### Author:  [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)
#### Post date: [August 24, 2016, 4:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-really-did-the-space-race-provide-for-humanity/763821/4 "2016-08-24T16:09:38Z")
The single most important thing to come out of the space race was a non-destructive set of goals for the US and USSR to compete on. I’d much rather compete over who can get people into space first, or onto the Moon, or who can keep the most people in space for the longest, than sink yet more resources into the competition over who can inflict the most megadeaths. Who knows? In the alternate timeline without the space race, the Northern Hemisphere might not even be habitable right now.
The second biggest thing we got from the space race was the spin-offs. Just the medical spin-offs alone from the Apollo project were well worth the amount spent on the entire program.
And finally, of course, we got to study a lot of things, like the geology of the Moon and the activity of the Sun and its interactions with the Earth. Those have value, too, both practical and idealistic.
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### Author:  [@Kent\_Clark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kent_Clark)
#### Post date: [August 24, 2016, 4:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-really-did-the-space-race-provide-for-humanity/763821/5 "2016-08-24T16:44:41Z")
Want one simple, concise answer? Satellite technology.
I’m talking everything from GPS to the Hubble Telescope to cable TV networks, In fact, [Project Echo](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Echo), the first successful attempt to transmit a signal via satellite, took place almost a year before the first manned spaceflight, and it’s been paying off its investment ever since.
Satellite technology gives us better tracking and analysis of weather patterns, precise mapping, location tracking, precision agricultural technology, and Pokemon Go, just to name a few things.
Thanks to satellites we were able to see [Tropical Storm Gaston](http://www.nj.com/weather/index.ssf/2016/08/tropical_activity_spikes_in_atlantic_with_3_storms.html) start out as a minor storm in the middle of nowhere, rather than waiting for a freighter to bump into it.
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### Author:  [@carnivorousplant](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/carnivorousplant)
#### Post date: [August 24, 2016, 5:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-really-did-the-space-race-provide-for-humanity/763821/6 "2016-08-24T17:32:58Z")
> [@kunilou](#):
>
> Want one simple, concise answer? Satellite technology.
An excellent answer, Sir.
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### Author:  [@billfish678](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/billfish678)
#### Post date: [August 24, 2016, 5:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-really-did-the-space-race-provide-for-humanity/763821/7 "2016-08-24T17:39:51Z")
I think that sooner or later most of the technology/spinoffs from the space race would have still happened.
But even if that is true, I have little doubt they came about significantly sooner as a result. Probably a generation or more sooner IMO.
That alone is worth something.
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### Author:  [@Si\_Amigo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Si_Amigo)
#### Post date: [August 24, 2016, 5:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-really-did-the-space-race-provide-for-humanity/763821/8 "2016-08-24T17:43:52Z")
> [@CC](#):
>
> (Maybe this is better placed in GD, but there may be justification for it here, too.) On page 480 of the May 30, 1963 New Scientist, ([https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=zF5CgNF-quUC&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs\_ge\_summary\_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false](https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=zF5CgNF-quUC&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false)), David Fishlock argues that not much of value will come from the expenditures of the space race and that the money would be better spent on general applied research into the improvement of life on Earth. He may have a point, in that life changed as a result of the space race, but were there any MAJOR inventions or discoveries that could rival (his list from the previous 30 years): fission, antibiotics, television, radar, the jet engine, the **transistor**?
Or the [integrated circuit](http://www.computerhistory.org/siliconengine/aerospace-systems-are-first-the-applications-for-ics-in-computers/). It saw in the Apollo mission it’s most significant application.
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### Author:  [@Common\_Tater](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Common_Tater)
#### Post date: [August 24, 2016, 6:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-really-did-the-space-race-provide-for-humanity/763821/9 "2016-08-24T18:11:20Z")
For one obvious thing we wouldn’t be posting questions like this on the internet for people around the world to answer.
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### Author:  [@watchwolf49](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/watchwolf49)
#### Post date: [August 24, 2016, 6:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-really-did-the-space-race-provide-for-humanity/763821/10 "2016-08-24T18:17:06Z")
Certainly space exploration has _significantly_ advanced our abilities to explore space.
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### Author:  [@fiddlesticks](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/fiddlesticks)
#### Post date: [August 24, 2016, 6:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-really-did-the-space-race-provide-for-humanity/763821/11 "2016-08-24T18:19:12Z")
Much of the early “Silicon Valley” work/funding fed the rocket business. Which was primarily about lobbing nuclear warheads towards the USSR, with satellites being a bonus.
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### Author:  [@Ranchoth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ranchoth)
#### Post date: [August 24, 2016, 6:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-really-did-the-space-race-provide-for-humanity/763821/12 "2016-08-24T18:22:22Z")
There’s a quote from Lyndon Johnson I’ve seen, and has some citations to back it up, that comes to mind immediately:
> [@](#):
>
> “I wouldn’t want to be quoted on this,” President Johnson told a gathering in 1967. “We’ve spent $35 or $40 billion on the space program. And if nothing else had come out of it except the knowledge that we gained from space photography, it would be worth ten times what the whole program has cost. Because tonight we know how many missiles the enemy has and, it turned out, our guesses were way off. We were doing things we didn’t need to do. We were building things we didn’t need to build. We were harboring fears we didn’t need to harbor.”
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### Author:  [@Siam\_Sam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Siam_Sam)
#### Post date: [August 24, 2016, 6:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-really-did-the-space-race-provide-for-humanity/763821/13 "2016-08-24T18:22:43Z")
nm. Example already given above.
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### Author:  [@Philster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Philster)
#### Post date: [August 24, 2016, 6:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-really-did-the-space-race-provide-for-humanity/763821/14 "2016-08-24T18:27:09Z")
Funny, but I love when people who owe their very existence to the willingness and inherent nature of mankind to explore and push the envelope of exploration to question whether this very fundamental human trait – a key component of the human condition – is better off squelched.
No one needs to cite a damn thing.
Humans push forward and explore, and it is utterly ludicrous to suggest we stop being human and ignore this very trait that has advanced the world.
\*“We’re be better off staying here and investing here and making THIS cave the best cave ever… MY ASS” \* – Og, Circa 300,000 B.C.
.
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### Author:  [@filmore](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/filmore)
#### Post date: [August 24, 2016, 6:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-really-did-the-space-race-provide-for-humanity/763821/15 "2016-08-24T18:30:13Z")
I don’t think you can count just the inventions which came directly from the space program. The space race created a lot of excitement and interest in the science, engineering, and technical fields. I’m sure that led to a lot of schools expanding their programs and a lot more students going into those fields, which led to inventions and advancements in many fields unrelated to the space program. The space race jumped us ahead by decades in technical development. Probably a lot of the same technology would have eventually been invented anyway, but how much longer would it have taken?
The Greeks were playing around with steam engines, but just as toys. They never realized the full capabilities. Think about where we would be if the Greeks kept investing in steam technology. If they developed steam locomotion 2000 years ago, where would be now? Steam technology eventually became full scale, but it took 2000 more years and led to many more advances unrelated to steam engines. I think the space race is similar in that way. It’s a huge technological advance which creates many other technologies in the near term.
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### Author:  [@Duke\_of\_Rat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Duke_of_Rat)
#### Post date: [August 24, 2016, 6:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-really-did-the-space-race-provide-for-humanity/763821/16 "2016-08-24T18:33:48Z")
Tang!
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### Author:  [@watchwolf49](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/watchwolf49)
#### Post date: [August 24, 2016, 6:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-really-did-the-space-race-provide-for-humanity/763821/17 "2016-08-24T18:36:03Z")
> [@Philster](#):
>
> [snip]… \*“We’re be better off staying here and investing here and making THIS cave the best cave ever… MY ASS” \* – Og, Circa 300,000 B.C.
>
> .
\< nitpick \> The date on that quote is typically cited as August 27th, 29615 BC (Julian) … about 500 feet downhill from the current location of Gibraltar Airport. \< /nitpick \>
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### Author:  [@silenus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/silenus)
#### Post date: [August 24, 2016, 7:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-really-did-the-space-race-provide-for-humanity/763821/18 "2016-08-24T19:21:29Z")
So basically Fishlock was full of it.
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### Author:  [@md2000](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/md2000)
#### Post date: [August 24, 2016, 8:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-really-did-the-space-race-provide-for-humanity/763821/19 "2016-08-24T20:47:11Z")
_“What have the Romans ever done for us…?”_
Yes, those billions spent on the space race were not piles of cash lofted into the sky. It was given to a myriad of universities, research labs, and local tech companies to hire scientists and engineers, do research, develop materials and products, etc. Someone had to develop the $2,000 toilet seat.
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### Author:  [@rbroome](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/rbroome)
#### Post date: [August 24, 2016, 8:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-really-did-the-space-race-provide-for-humanity/763821/20 "2016-08-24T20:55:26Z")
hope for the future.
I have never understood the idea that if the Government just stopped spending $ on project X that would free up the money to spend on project Y. I have never actually heard of things working that way. The Government spends as much as it can on all the projects it wants. If it wants to fund project Y at some level it will. If project X goes away, the money isn’t spent on some other predefined project. “Cancel his project and fund mine!” has never been a winning strategy in my experience. 🙂
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