Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!sun-barr!decwrl!shelby!brooks@sierra.Stanford.EDU
From: brooks@sierra.Stanford.EDU (Michael B. Brooks)
Newsgroups: sci.space
Subject: Re: Techno-welfare
Summary: IC industry benefited from NASA
Keywords: Apollo, ICs, IR&D
Message-ID: <431@sierra.stanford.edu>
Date: 21 Dec 89 04:34:43 GMT
References: <8912181657.AA01075@aldrin.cray.com> <1989Dec20.150503.27019@cs.rochester.edu>
Sender: brooks@sierra.STANFORD.EDU (Michael B. Brooks)
Reply-To: brooks@sierra.UUCP (Michael B. Brooks)
Organization: Stanford University
Lines: 43

>From: dietz@cs.rochester.edu (Paul Dietz)
>Subject: Re: Techno-welfare
>Message-ID: <1989Dec20.150503.27019@cs.rochester.edu>

>Industry has a strong incentive to do R&D in areas that will lead to
>valuable products and services that can be sold for a profit.  NASA
>does not.

Agreed Paul, and therein lies the heart of the problem. Most Industrial
R&D is for short term needs and short term profits (especially 
these days, in this country).  In the bygone days of Apollo, relatively
longterm investments were made without overriding attention to
"business necessities".

>Transistors were invented in 1948.  ICs were invented in the late
>1950's.  Early IC development was nurtured by military and NASA
>spending, but it isn't clear to me that without NASA ICs wouldn't have
>come along anyway at about the same rate -- especially if the
>engineering talent that went into NASA had gone into other fields.

The collection of many engineers, in many companies, working on micro-
minaturization of ICs for space applications, funded by NASA for Apollo,
freed this pool of talent from the constraints of "business necessities".
My suspicion is that the pace of the IC industry growth benefited 
enormously from this  freedom, and that if IR&D had to fund the 4Mb DRAM
antecedents and associated technology (rather than NASA & USGov.), we
would not see these at this time.  Apollo created a large body of 
of engineers, (and the public), aware of what microminiturized technology
could do. "It put a man on the Moon" etc. The technical success of Apollo
and micro-tech was demonstrated for all of the Corporate Boards of 
the world, and many of these decided to give more money to their IR&D
people.  After all, you might be able to make some interesting products
from these smaller ICs, especially since NASA paid many basic research
costs.

In effect, Semitech, Semiconductor Research Corporation (SRC),
MITI, and DARPAs continued semiconductor research support, all mimic what
NASA did at this time.  It`s unlikely that IR&D would have carried us
to this point, this fast, by itself if not for the politics of the space
program, and its high visibility. Put another way, ICs were proved
and sold by Apollo, in the biggest way possible.  Great advertising!

Mike Brooks/Stanford Electronics Labs (solid state)/SU