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This week, NASA unveiled a new website that touts spin-offs from its technology that have found uses in the bathroom, kitchen, grocery store, and other places. You can find the website by following this link and clicking on “NASA Home and City” in the menu.

Some previous bragging about NASA spin-offs has raised eyebrows, even within the agency itself. Agency staffers questioned earlier boasts about a variety of smoke detector technology that NASA was said to have had a hand in developing.

I had a look at the spin-off website, and although some of the claims are surprising, each is accompanied by a link to further information to back it up.

It’s a snazzy website, and I can understand the motivation for it. NASA figures if it makes itself sound useful to people’s everyday lives, they’ll be more willing to give the agency their tax dollars. But I hope NASA doesn’t get too obsessed about this sort of thing, because I don’t think taxpayers give NASA its $17 billion or so each year because they’re hoping it will lead to scratch-resistant faucets and cordless vacuum cleaners.

The support for funding NASA science and space exploration that exists surely has much more to do with people’s innate curiosity and the human urge to explore, rather than with any expectation of practical benefits.

I think NASA would do better to focus on reminding people how exciting science and exploration can be in their own right, rather than telling us they invented edible toothpaste and insulating paint.

What do you think? How should NASA or other science- or exploration-related agencies try to increase public support for what they do?

Source: Newscientist

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 4th, 2008 at 2:38 pm and is filed under News, www. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.