For NASA’s worth, start with medical technology

By Tom Walsh

----

The 30-year space shuttle era is over. James Van Allen, if he were still alive, would be delighted. He was a lifelong, vocal opponent to manned space flight.

Van Allen designed and built the first satellite that the United States put into orbit as a quick response to sputnik.

Countless other robotic measuring devices of Van Allen's design remain in space. His Voyager 1 instruments are on their way to another galaxy. Since 1977, for 34 years, this unmanned probe has been transmitting data and images.

Van Allen believed strongly in space exploration and that involving humans, compared with using robots, was an amazingly expensive and wasteful public relations stunt. Yet Van Allen would not begrudge the technological and scientific spillovers the manned space program has produced.

It cost at least $500 million every time the shuttle took to space. By the time the shuttle fleet was retired, the program cost an estimated $174 billion, most of it provided by American taxpayers.

Was it worth it?

“Asking if space exploration - with humans, robots or both - is worth the effort is like questioning the value of Columbus' voyages to the New World in the late 1490s,” says Keith Cowing, a former NASA space biologist. “The promise at the time was obvious to some, but not to others.”

By some estimates, the U.S. economy receives $8 in economic benefit for every $1 spent on the space program. Beyond this return on investment, some 1,400 NASA-documented inventions have benefitted U.S. industry and the quality of life worldwide since 1976, especially in the realm of medical care. Digital signaling processing systems developed for spaceflight are the core technology for CT scanners and MRI systems now crucial to disease diagnoses. NASA technology is behind kidney dialysis and breast cancer detection involving mammograms.

“Whenever we look at government spending - or any spending for that matter - it is important that we understand what is being purchased and whether there is a value for that investment,” says David Livingston, an economist who teaches at the University of North Dakota. “We should also ask if the value benefits a narrow group of people or a special interest, or does it have the potential to benefit large groups, even humanity.”

The list of publicly subsidized undertakings that have benefitted many is a lengthy one.

The Jackson Laboratory, where I work as a science writer, is a non-profit human genetics research facility that has been working since 1929 to better understand the biomolecular complexities of the genetic basis of cancer and other complex human diseases.

What's the return on investment in terms of job creation and economic impact, both long- and short-term, on the basic research required to understand the biomedical complexities that underlie genetic medicine? That question, on its face, loses sight of the potential impact such basic biomedical research has on the global emergence of a new and more effective, efficient and affordable paradigm for disease prevention, diagnoses and treatment.

As a non-profit, the work of the Jackson Laboratory benefits the greater good, rather than generate revenues for allocation to shareholders.

As economist David Livingston put it: “Clearly, several types of public expenditures can be considered investments, (as) they can benefit large groups of people and humanity.”

I couldn't agree more. But I also must ponder what insights Van Allen could have processed and shared given the $174 billion spent on the shuttle program.

Tom Walsh of Gouldsboro, Maine, covered the University of Iowa's involvement in the U.S. space program as a Gazette reporter in Iowa City. He is now a science writer for Jackson Laboratory. Comments: tom.walsh@jax.org