Re: NASA and Charu's exaggeration....

[Charu datt <charuX@lucent.com>]

At 12:11 AM 12/2/98 -0800, Vamsi wrote:
>    Boy are we in for a big one!!  The Space race began as a show of
>Military power in the 1960's between the US and USSR.  In fact, USSR
has
>put Sputnik (the first Satellite) on a Rocket that was originally
>designed to deliver Nukes!!  Yes, there are lots of Civilian uses for
>NASA but let us not forget that the impetus was provided by the
Military
>initially and that is what I have said in my previous message.
>
Not quite. The so called space race was part of an ideological war: the
evil godless communists were supposed to be so inferior that they
couldn't
possibly do better, technologically or otherwise, than the "free world".

Sputnik was a contradiction of this state propaganda. I don't dispute
that
NASA's programs are boondoggles of the same magnitude as many military
boondoggles [such as F22], and in fact constitutes corporate welfare for

many of the same contractors who supply the military. The effect is the
same as direct military spending- huge public spending pumping up the
economy but with the control firmly in the hands of central planners
thereby reducing the threat of increased local autonomy.

>
>    As for the Diode/Transistor, it was funded by the Military because
>there was a need for a highly responsive "switch" for Fuzing mechanisms

>in Bombs.

Wrong again. the transistor was invented at AT&T Bell labs. Bardeen,
Shockley, and one other researcher, whose name escapes me, received the
Nobel prize in physics for the invention.

The fast switches you refer to were not solid state devices. They were
"tubes".

-Charu


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