[narby]

The biggest "space spinoff" is never mentioned. It's the training and experience gained by hundreds of thousands of technical workers during the decade from Sputnik till Apollo. Those thousands of people then went on to radically increase the wealth of this country.

I work in the GPS industry, another huge industry that wouldn't be here at all without the space program.

[John H K]

I work in the GPS industry, another huge industry that wouldn't be here at all without the space program.

Depends on what one calls "the space program." The Apollo and Space Shuttle programs had jack squat to do with GPS.

Now, of course, GPS is a "space program" since it requires satellites, but the whole program was part of the military unmanned program. And the launchers for all the satellites are ancient early 60s technology, basically.