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Feb
04

NASA Finally Learns To Think Like The Soviets

By WordsmithBob

NASA versus the SovietsWhen I mentioned to my wife that NASA fired a missle into the moon, she rolled her eyes and muttered, “Boys and their toys.” I then explained to her that the idea was to blast a large cloud of soil into space where they could analyze it from Earth with a telescope and other visual tools looking for water (and probably minerals that could be used to create fuel and oxygen.)

This was actually a case of NASA thinking like entrepreneurs rather than “a kid in a candy store.” Rather than coming up with a slick and expensive robot to send up, dig samples, analyze them, and tight beam the data back to earth (which is how they used to do things), they looked for the cheapest and easiest solution.

It reminds me of the story of my favorite pen. The UniBall PowerTank. It uses a pressurized tank for the ink so it writes in any position; even upside down. I won’t use anything else.

It was developed by NASA back in the 60’s. They realized that a regular pen wouldn’t write in a zero gravity environment. So they spent a million dollars on a research project to develop a pen that could write in zero gravity. Brilliant engineering solution. The Soviets gave their astronauts pencils…

Originally posted 2009-10-09 10:09:47. Republished by Blog Post Promoter

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