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Originally Posted by El Blanco
Actually, when you look at most of the important advances in history (especially American history) scientific advances have been tied directly to military applications.
Space program: The German Vengance II rockets were the basis for shooting people into space.
Medicine: Gell pills were invented to get wounded soldiers to down their penicillin. The Civil War saw the greatest jumps in prosthetic technology until the use of robotics. The use of phosphorus and other incindiary chemicals during WWI led to the invention of skin grafts.
Internet: Product of DARPA, the R&D people for the Pentegon.
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I'm not a huge fan of this argument. You often hear it made for why we should keep putting more and more money into NASA.
Okay, so after how many billions of dollars, we get how much innovation? Could we have simply directed those billions into the actual desired product itself (i.e. medicine, internet, blah blah)? I know, I know,perhaps innovation comes about from experiment and random chance, but it seems like a really roundabout way to improve on things.