Almost anyone would be impressed by the technological achievement it took to hurl an SUV-sized projectile 352 million miles through space, on a flight lasting 36 weeks, and have it land safely and at the correct time and place on Mars.
But they might not see the local applications of NASA’s space exploration. Monday’s landing reminds us that what happens on Mars has implications everywhere, including in Maine’s businesses and classrooms.
Ultimately, NASA’s work connects to Maine’s expansion of its nascent composites industry. In May, the Maine Composites Alliance set up shop at Brunswick Landing, the former Navy base, to link Maine manufacturers with NASA and affiliated businesses. The goal is to build contacts that will create new jobs.
Providing materials for work at the space program and associated projects is just one way that advances in composites technology, resulting from NASA research and methodology, spin off into Maine jobs.
Dr. Habib Dagher, founding director of the Advanced Structures and Composites Center at the University of Maine, said NASA provides a model for the center’s approach to research and development. Teams that include engineers, physicists, biologists, mathematicians and industry partners collaborate on projects that support economic growth.
Advanced Infrastructure Technologies and its “ bridge in a backpack” product is an example of a Maine business with roots that trace to NASA. NASA provides not only technology but a multidisciplinary research framework that businesses like Advanced Infrastructure Technologies can adapt for their purposes.
Dagher also pointed to parallels between the space program and work the composites center is doing to place floating wind turbines off the coast of Maine. Both use computer modeling and sophisticated tracking systems to ensure that projects “beyond the horizon” can stand up to extreme climatic conditions.
A computer systems monitoring product developed and refined by iSagacity in Portland represents another example of a NASA spinoff that benefits the Maine economy. Building on technology licensed by NASA, iSagacity’s Process Data Miner helps predict equipment problems in power plants.
“By having NASA pioneering the next step of the scientific ladder (and then the next step) we move forward, always with new technologies, which 30 years later seem as simple as a microwave oven or better engine compartment insulation in automobiles,” said Tom Bickford, executive director of Maine Robotics.
People can argue whether these advances would have emerged from the private sector without NASA as a catalyst, but there’s little argument against the space program’s lasting positive impact in Maine’s classrooms.
At a time when educators in Maine and across the country struggle to prevent students from lagging further behind other nations in math and science, accomplishments like the Curiosity landing provide tangible motivation.
NASA’s “biggest impact in Maine is in keeping our kids interested in the sciences,” according to Bickford, who said his organization’s summer camp programs this year drew 407 students between 9 and 14 years old.
Whether it’s capturing the imaginations of young Mainers or providing a framework for future business endeavors, the local impacts of NASA’s space exploration should not be underestimated.
I read somewhere that sending a rover to Mars was the equivelant to shooting a basketball from Los Angelas to New York and sinking a basket without hitting the rim!
I’m not impressed. We put two Viking vehicles with cameras on Mars in 1976 .. 35 years ago. The Pathfinder Sojourner vehicle in 1997, and the Phoenix vehicle in 2008 .. and several more as well. I can’t fathom what all this hoopula is about.. except we’re so starving for bragging rights that any little inconsequential event can be hyped to the max to make the populace think that NASA is still a viable functional organization. In truth, NASA is disfunctional and lost it’s vision decades ago. One has to ask: Why is NASA, whose charter is aeronautics and space (beyond the atmosphere) involved in climate studies (read Global Warming) that is the responsibility of, the National Oceanic and Atmosphere Administration, – NOAA? The answer: Fast money for the corrupt and connected.
Check out the significant innovations needed for this mission to be successful. Granted, NASA is now controversial, but this mission can’t be regarded as “inconsequential”.
Why is Timer Warner Cable involved in WIRELESS internet and not only cabled internet? They are Time Warner CABLE!
There was a lot of novel technology in this mission. This is the largest rover yet which brought a whole slew of new challenges. How could anybody not be impressed by those supersonic parachutes and the sky crane. Besides, unlike rovers before it, this one truly is a mobile laboratory. The types of tech they were able to get onboard can have many terrestrial applications from deep sea rovers, to unmanned bomb or chemical sniffing drones to things neither you nor I can dream of.
Oh for heavens sake, get real. Nearly 1/2 a century ago, we planned, designed, built, and executed numerous MANNED missions to the lunar surface. Today, NASA can’t even keep a shuttle in the air and we’re launching US space missions with Russian rockets. This current exercise, after two previous failures, was tiddy-winks stuff with an overreaching Marketing and Public Relations staff. You Sir, are easily bamboozled and need a reality check. NASA needs a good overhauling and cleaning out of the existing managment rot and again do real advanced science instead of repeating easy to do sequels with the high cost and low benefits ratio.
This is not real science? Did someone miss out on a NASA grant some time?
No, NASA turned into grant science .. international space station, where we were promised nano-manufactoring, and zero gravity metallurgy.. what we got is a bunch of euro-trash spinning static bicycles and jumping rope in televised look-at-me fashion. Obama directed NASA to reach out to the islamic states for inclusion in grants. Most of NASA resources are directed now to global warming, ice studies, and climate change. Sad but true.
Aeronautics referes to within the atmosphere. So……what’s your point again?
Half the world was starving when America let her fly
with billions in cost overruns, and no one bats an eye.
My uncle who worked in Southern Florida wrote the above when the Shuttle first flew over 40 yeras ago. NOTHING positive will outweigh the cost to our enviornment, and the cost to taxpayers who are struggling to pay mortgages medical bills, and for the soring price of gas.
Thanks government you really have a feel for “We the People.”
The satellites that the shuttle put up and allowed us to repair have helped us in everything from weather tracking, GPS, to communications. These tools are absolutely used in job creating and solving world crises including but not limited to starvation in developing countries.
yeah since 1958 (when the space program began) starvation has diminished, everyone has a job, and the poor have gotten rich.
Tell me again where this happened?