stories      playing with other people's toys      WHAT WE GET FROM SPACE      other editorials What We Get From the Space Program by Steve Anderson Writer.SGAcreative.com Published as a letter to the editor in the Harrisburg Patriot-News, June 22, 2002. Unimpressed by mere scientific exploration, critics often scoff at the "impracticality" of the space program.  "Thirty years in," they say, "and what has NASA discovered that will ever lead to real benefits here on Earth?"  So far, they'd have you believe, the only tangible payoff is in Space Center tourism. On the contrary, the benefits of the space program are quite real, and there's nothing "eventual" about them. Every live news report from Afghanistan, every aerial photograph of Iraq taken without endangering a spy-plane pilot, every bomb dropped with GPS precision, every vehicle with anti-theft tracking, every clear international phone call, and every national weather map or long-range forecast depends on a satellite built, designed, launched, or at least inspired by NASA. The space program also pays off in "spinoffs," technologies that would not exist without NASA.  Survival blankets and water heaters use aluminum insulation designed for satellites.  Firefighters wear fireproof materials developed for space capsules.  Eyeglasses use flexible space-station metals and lens coatings that originally protected fragile parts during blastoff.  The composite materials in bicycle helmets and tennis racquets evolved in aerospace fuselages.  Neil Armstrong's boots inspired today's shock-absorbent sneakers, and the precise, resilient quartz crystal developed for his capsule's clock is found in millions of wrist-watches today. And finally, the impractical, pie-in-the-sky space program has also saved countless lives, because like so much of the technology we take for granted, the smoke detectors in all our homes started in space--30 years ago, on Skylab. Check out more of my editorial writing on the professional writing section of this site.