Absolutely right. Newt’s speech yesterday(?) on space exploration and DEVELOPMENT detailed past vision recalled (Lincoln pushing railroads at a time when many thought the idea “crazy”) and effective ways to get this job done at greatly reduced cost.
Excuse the length of my post but in reality it is a drop in the bucket as to the accomplishments of NASA. It is on their site. Amazing! brilliant feats thanks to exploration. Here is just one..At the Hospital With NASA07.29.04”Cool” Laser Heart Surgery
Nobody thinks it’s “cool” to have a heart operation, but thanks to NASA technology a “cool” laser is providing thousands of patients with an alternative to heart bypass surgery.
Image to right: Doctors can now use the “cool” laser instead of performing regular bypass surgery. Credit: NASA
It is estimated that some five million Americans suffer from “hardening of the arteries” (atherosclerosis), the single biggest cause of heart disease and related ailments. Until recently, heart bypass surgery, which replaces clogged blood vessels, was the main treatment for serious cases.
A non-surgical alternative to some patients is balloon angioplasty. Through this procedure, a flexible catheter with a tiny balloon at its tip is threaded into the blocked artery and inflated to widen the path for blood flow.
In January, 1992, the Food and Drug Administration approved a new surgery method derived from laser technology pioneered by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory for remote sensing of earth’s ozone layer. This laser surgery can help a broader range of patients than balloon angioplasty.
Image to left: Doctors use the “cool” laser to vaporize blockage inside arteries. Credit: NASA
The procedure involves threading a small catheter through coronary arteries. The laser light is carried through fiber optic bundles within the catheter. Another group of fibers shines a light at the tip to provide video pictures of the inside of the artery. Watching the video pictures, the doctor can spot areas of blockage and fire short bursts of laser beams to vaporize them. While other types of lasers are too hot for delicate heart surgery, the excimer laser operates at a “cool” 65° C, a temperature that human tissue can tolerate.
“Absolutely right. Newt’s speech yesterday(?) on space exploration and DEVELOPMENT detailed past vision recalled (Lincoln pushing railroads at a time when many thought the idea “crazy”) and effective ways to get this job done at greatly reduced cost.”
I agree that we need to set higher goals but I think Newt’s over-reaching with a lunar base. People are so focused on our current economic situation that they won’t even want to think about something that big.
We went to the moon already. I’m not sure it’s really the job of government to make moon colonies.
But you know, if you are going to suddenly decide that we should spend money we borrow from China on a space program, the best place to say that politically is in Florida, right before the Florida primary.