NASA Wins Nanotechnology Award 36
Roland Piquepaille writes "NASA is rarely associated with nanotechnologies. But one of its researchers working at the NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center just received a Nanotech Briefs Nano 50 award for a manufacturing process for high-quality carbon nanotubes (CNTs). Because of its ability to produce bundles of CNTs without using a metal catalyst, this method is simpler, safer, and cheaper than current ones. The CNTs produced by this process are also purer and well suited for medical applications."
Re:How long until someone whines.... (Score:5, Interesting)
This reminds me of IBM, which in the 80's was a huge, bloated, money wasting pig. Despite this, they generated more patents and innovations than any other company on earth (ex: they invented the relational database, but Ellison made a fortune on it). Like Xerox, they rarely turned their innovations into valuable products.
I think that a hugely well funded organization with no purpose (Parc, Watson Labs, NASA) provides niches for innovators to spread their wings. That is, until marketing gets involved.
Re:How long until someone whines.... (Score:3, Interesting)
now this wouldn't be a problem if politicians were well educated or atleast made an effort to learn about a program before saying "let's take in a new direction," but they're not, they're dumb as hell and love to change things at the first sign of trouble.
of course this might just go straight back to john q. taxpayer, who isn't very smart either and doesn't understand what CNTs are and doesn't see NASA being worth the "DoD sized" budget that they think NASA has http://www.thespacereview.com/article/1000/1 [thespacereview.com], but john q. taxpayer understands "nasa goes to moon again" as something tangible and worth while. while i won't argue against it being tangible or worth while, it definitely isn't the best way to spend the limited amount of time/money that nasa is given