Space, the Final ... Killer App

Perennially, but particularly during this worst of downturns, the semiconductor industry still quests after the chimerical killer app — that one product that will render it bulletproof to cycles and consumer whims, piling profits on ever-upward order-of-magnitude scales.

Since Mephistopheles seemingly has left the wish-granting business, would you settle instead for a moderate investment that will pay back in a plethora of varied markets full of killer apps, and hundreds of millions of consumers anxious for the privilege of stuffing money into your pockets?

Let me put it another way. If in 1960 a time traveler from the future had approached your father and told him that, for a mere $25.4B, he could get at least a thousand-fold return in technological advancements and products that people find they cannot live without, he might have asked, "Such as?" And the traveler might have replied, "Oh, things like ICs, fuel cells, cordless appliances, cell phones, worldwide TV coverage, smoke detectors, GPS, laser surgery, LEDs, MRIs and CAT scans, PDAs, ecological husbandry, telepresence, and many others, which even if I could explain them to you, you wouldn't believe me anyway." What would he have done?

The 1961-1972 Apollo program cost $25.4B (~$112.5B in 2003 dollars). The origin of those products — and thousands more — is directly traceable to that now-legendary American effort to reach the moon. The inertia of that technological thrust still dimly echoes all around us, yet NASA's annual budget, $15.5B, is less than 1% of the federal budget. This generation-long shoestring budget has mutated a can-do organization into a group of shy, hesitant techno-bureaucrats concerned about justifying their existence, ready to court disaster in their search of corners to cut, and unwilling to plan beyond the next shuttle launch. They tremble under the shadow of a budgetary sword of Damocles, while every shortsighted politico seeking to increase his constituency's entitlements menacingly wields a pair of scissors over his head, righteously crying, "Why waste money in space when we have Great Problems to solve right here on Earth?"

Had we continued wasting money in space at the rate of the Apollo program, not only would we have a permanent presence on the moon carrying out R&D into new materials and drugs, with limited manufacturing already taking place, but space travel itself would probably be at the equivalent level that aviation enjoyed during the late 1940s. Possibly, we might have already visited Mars. By pursuing this, no child would have starved, no senior would have died for want of medication, and no single mother would have been robbed of daycare. It could all have been had for considerably less than Social Security or Medicare cost with far greater benefits for all humanity, something that neither of those long-mismanaged programs provides.

The fallout in know-how and progress that this technology (aborted for societal causes) might have provided the world staggers the mind. Conceivably, cancer, Alzheimer's and heart disease might have already been conquered by a mature nanotechnology well beyond our current uncertain attempts. Certainly, semiconductor technology would be unrecognizable to any of us today. The profusion of products requiring our industry's devices would be inexhaustible, and the hunger for semiconductor content insatiable.

The Cold War that sustained our resolve to boldly go where no man has gone before is a historical footnote. We no longer have a race to win. We must return to space because we should be sufficiently greedy to covet wealth and an ever-better standard of living, and selfish enough to want to enjoy it far beyond the Biblical threescore-and-ten, and to live those years in good health and with a functioning mind.

Think of it. All this is within reach for just the cost of a small war. Why not assume the risk of creating the kind of future in which we all want to live? Why not rebuild NASA back to the splendid fountainhead of technology it once was?