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.
>> “ but thanks to NASA technology a “cool” laser is providing thousands of patients with an alternative to heart bypass surgery.” <<
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That one loses!
There is a far better, safer, more effective alternative:
Nutrition, and rejection of drugs and surgery, and their horrendous dangers.
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Heh - I am an engineer: You and I could fill these pages until our fingers drop off with all the positives that came from NASA and those who worked with them. And still there would be much more.
However, Newt is right. As is true of so many areas, the Establishment (in this case the NASA Establishment) needs serious pruning and reshaping followed by redirection. The goal is not to save money in a zero-sum-game while everyone remaining sits around in committees and does studies to try to justify their jobs. The goal is to create whole new areas of economic growth, opportunity, and benefit to humankind, the USA in particular. Along the way, we learn more about our Universe (close and far), and encourage a whole new generation of scientists, engineers, and technicians, to create far more than thinner laptops and computer games.