A short comment about the 60 -70s "Space Program" and "Race to the Moon"

[Stuart G]

...Was it worth it all? What did we get out of that endeavor? What was the point in spending hundreds of millions on that? Can there be one positive result from that? YES, YES, and YES.

This opinion has been verified by many. The so called "Space Program" and "Landing on the Moon" encouraged and gave lots of money to an industry that was in its infancy at the time. An industry that has changed all of our lives. (Hang on one more sentence) Picture if you can a 60s and 70s room of...(are you ready?) computers. Large heavy things with all kinds of huge...huge insides etc.

..The space program forced the computer industry to miniaturize the instruments and computers so the things would fit into the space capsules. That miniaturization continues today. I recall a class I took in the late 70s or early 80s where the professor said that one day computers would be so cheap and so small that people would walk around with them. That is what he said. And at the time, I thought he was totally nuts. (that was even though I was and am and was a science fiction fan of "Star Trek" and "Star Wars"

..Recently, in the last few weeks, I was a restaurant, and what appeared to be a family of 4 people, (two adults and 2 teenagers) sitting, waiting for the food to come, not talking to each other, but all four holding up their computers in their hands and looking at them. They must have been texting or looking at something very important. Hell, I don't know. But all four had computers in their hands and were using them.

Well, I was wrong again.

[BigmanPigman]

1. I remember being told in 1984

that soon everyone would buy everything via computers. I said BS! How and why would people buy clothes and shoes without being able to try them on? Currently, I still do not carry a cell phone/device with me.

[world wide wally]

2. You forgot to mention Tang instant drinks

Before that,mall we had was Kool-aid

[customerserviceguy]

3. While it can be argued

that there was little or no benefit from the manned space program (besides winning a proxy war with the USSR) such is not the case for unmanned satellites. Weather satellites have saved lives, communication satellites have brought people closer together, even the navigation satellites that inform our GPS devices have saved countless hours of aimless driving and the fuel associated with it.

[hunter]

4. It surely kept my grandfather out of trouble.

He was one of the engineers who made it happen.

My grandfather was nothing but trouble his entire life, and an Army Air officer in World War II. The Army very wisely kept him on the ground running various aspects of the war machine. The furthest the war took him, so far as we know, is Alaska, but there are hints of Europe.

I saw my grandfather ride a bicycle once and it was among the most terrifying things I've ever witnessed, he was 100% klutz, a danger to himself and others, with a great big grin on his face. I can't imagine him flying an airplane, although he claimed to know how. Riding in a car with him driving was scary enough. In the Army he had a driver. As a civilian aerospace engineer he had my grandma.

In the course of his military service he acquired a knack for exotic metals in somewhat mysterious circumstances. He was taciturn about the war. The war was a dirty job that had to be done. But he'd always talk about his work for the Apollo project with great pride. Bits of metal he made took men to the moon and back. Some of these bits of metal are in the Smithsonian.

[marked50]

5. Got an interesting story on this techo evolution

I worked at Intel starting in 1984. At the time the IBM PC with Intel microprocessor was just starting to take off. Sounds pretty cool and something you would just accept. The weird thing here was that after much pleading from Intel people, esp engineers, to Andy Grove (Intel CEO-and future Person of the Year on Time magazine) to have these for our use he said no, there would never be PC's in every engineers cubicles. Our course this is what I was told, having never asked Andy for his version.

Things did change and we did end up with computers in our cubicles.