The ISS was a bad idea from the start. Even Carl Sagan spoke out against manned space flight because it sapped funding from real science missions. And yet they continue to push the idea. What can the weakest link (i.e. humans) add to our knowledge when our tools can do much better?

Who cares how long the spam can survive in space? It does not help us to glean much sought after knowledge about our celestial neighbours. And who in his right mind would want to suffer the consequences of interplanetary missions? Why risk life and limb when we could risk only hardware?

Have the robotic missions to Mars taught us nothing about the wisdom of sending our tools to do our discovering for us?

Can you imagine the advances if all of NASAs efforts were focused on advancing the state of intelligent robotics?

We humans are the best tool makers ever! This, and our brains, have brought us as far as we have come. We can now extend our reach to the entire solar system without having a real live arm attached to a person on the scene.

In short, it is time to grow up! Spam in the can is now a liability rather than an asset. Even the military is wise to this (note the predator and all the other pilot-less drones).

[Several examples snipped out for brevity]

In general I’d be tempted to assume that military is directly or indirectly implicated in most of the technological and scientific advances. After all, the first spear was propably as effective againts rival tribesmen as it was agains mammoths.

I disagree.

While there will frequently be military applications of new scientific developments, and while military funding will often bring about development of a technology from proof-of-principle to reliably-working device faster than can be achieved in the civilian sector alone, I still contend that military research makes at most a modest contribution to civilian innovations.

Nigel, I’d say that your criteria of what’s a product of military research is pretty narrow.

Perhaps you are right.

I was wondering if someone was going to point out the weaknesses of the arguments I was making.

However, if you consider GPS to be the only truly military achievement, you probably don’t know that internet started as a military ARPAnet project years ago.

Yes, the internet was entirely a military tool. However, not only was the world-wide web that operates on the internet entirely a civilian scientific tool (invented by scientists at CERN), it can equally be argued that the internet was not an invention, but merely the application of existing technology.

An earlier commenter claimed that military research has spun off innovations for use in day-to-day civilian life. While I acknowledge that many technologies have been rapidly developed by military spending, I still maintain that military research does very little in terms of spinning off innovations into civilian sectors.

Heck, even microwave ovens are by-product of radars developped by military in the WWII. Nuclear energy would be certainly delayed several decades hadn’t there be the Manhattan project.

Here you are absolutely right. These are the first two unambiguous examples of military research spinning off innovation into civilian life.

Phew! That took a while.

Okay, but there are several problems. I really disagree with your position, but I can somewhat see it. My biggest issue is that while I agree the ISS is not a pure science institution, it’s wrong to see it as not doing science. The engineering there is fantastic. The ISS was just overly sold as a science platform. I think now that you are going to have double the staff, there’s going to be a lot more results. Still, expect engineering, like the testing of the VASIMR engine and the deep space internet protocols that was reported a few days ago.

Also, his words on the blog, as I read them, were stating that we shouldn’t push towards Mars before the Moon. Why run before we walk? I don’t think it’s a general dismissal of the program (and I hope I’m not putting words into anyone’s mouth).

BTW, NASA doesn’t make the decisions on what it works on. NASA executes the agenda of the President and the Congress, as stated by the NASA Authorization Acts. As such, you aren’t going to see the manned programs go away any time soon. They provide way too many jobs all around the country to contractors and companies, the same one who build the satellites.

Still, I really want a manned person on Mars when we are ready. From personal experience, one field geologist will redefine what we know on the planet. For instance, today’s glacier finding, you could have someone very easily dig to find them and look at it directly.

Military research does have a huge impact on our daily lives. Without it, we would still be flying in propeller planes, e.g. We would have never even broken the sound barrier, even.

I don’t buy this.

When Frank Whittle invented the turbojet engine, he was in the RAF, but his superiors really didn’t want to know.

Jet engine technology, once it had been proven in principle in a civilian context, was then wholeheartedly embraced by the military. According to Wikipaedia, the first plane to fly entirely using turboject power was a Heinkel.

Most of the rocket technology that brings science equipment into space is derived from rockets originally developed for the military (heck, von Braun was working for the German military in WW2 building the V2).

Again, you are at best partly right. Solid-fuel rockets have been around for over 1000 years. Large, liquid-fuelled rockets were indeed a development for military purposes, the V1 and V2 being the obvious examples. So, the technology that permits us to loft large loads into orbit was developed for military purposes initially, but was not invented by any military research programme.

The first satellites were spy satellites.

Simply not true. Sputnik 1 ended up having nothing more on board than a radio transmitter because the first Soviet rockets could not loft anything heavier than this into orbit. The first US satellite carried a scientific instrument (an X-ray detector), which is how the Van Allen radiation belts were first detected.

Spy satellites, because they were large, came later.

Now we use the same tech for anything from comunications to earth monitoring and surveillance to google maps.

None of which was invented by any military research programme.

Computers… Most of the computer tech comes from code machines and code breaking technology. Later it was advanced for nuclear rocket guidance. Heck 486 CPUs were prohibited to be exported to the USSR until rather recently as they were considered important military tech. No kidding…

The USA’s export bans are not an indication of whether or not the technology was invented in a military research programme. I do not think that Intel has ever been a part of the military-industrial machine. However, this does not prevent the existence of military applications of computer technology.

While the first working prgrammable electronic computer was indeed built at Bletchley Park for military code-breaking purposes, the technology and mathematical logic upon which it was based was largely in existence already. The first programmable computer was Charles Babbage’s difference engine, a mechanical device that he never finished. There is a replica of part of it in the Science Museum in London. Ironically, it took computer-controlled milling machines to make the parts with sufficient precision to make it work smoothly and efficiently.

As for modern computers, they were only made possible by the invention of the transistor, which arguably was invented at Bell labs in the late ’40s – a decidedly civilian research environment.

So my question still stands. Apart from the possible exception of liquid-fuelled rockets (which is arguable, but I’ll allow it here), what military research has spun off innovations that benefit us in our civilian lives?