News

NASA: SATOP provides valuable free assistance to researchers.

NASA’s behind-the-scenes technical wizardry in the movie Apollo 13 has surely inspired many with the thought, "If only they could apply that know-how to a closet freshener!"

By Erik Baard Wired News

Well, thanks to a recently expanded NASA initiative called the Space Alliance Technology Outreach, a group of space engineers are doing just that and more.

The program, in which NASA engineers contribute their expertise to the development of earthbound technology, has resulted in such recent innovations as air-filtering nasal implants, a mechanical fruit picker and the DampRid closet freshener.

But some wonder whether this gift horse might really be political pork.

NASA proponents have long touted technology spinoffs as an important rationale for funding the space program. CAT scans, advances in robotics, and the development of everyday items like cordless power tools and image stabilizing software for home video cameras have all sprung from NASA research and development.

In that light, SATOP http://www.spacetechsolutions.com/ can be seen as a way to deliver on that promise. Engineers contribute up to 40 hours of pro bono labor over 90 days to complete selected projects at small businesses.

One lucky recipient was the Myers Dance Studio in Schenectady, N.Y., where a Lockheed Martin robotics engineer from Houston volunteered to improve the studio’s acoustics with custom designed sound dampeners.

The studio is in a cavernous hall where music bounced off the concrete wall in ways that were "actually painful," said Alice Manzi, scenic designer for the Northeast Ballet Company, a group in residence. "Now we’ve been able to take the edge off," she said.

Florida’s Technological Research and Development Authority started SATOP in 1995. Since then, the program claims to have made or preserved more than 1,000 jobs in that state, and added $47 million in sales revenues and $23 million in capital investments there.

In 2002, SATOP was expanded to California, Texas, New Mexico and New York.

It’s the location of the new offices that raises questions about political machinations. Texas and California are indisputably space industry leaders, so sending engineers down the road to work on an extracurricular assignment might make some sense.

However, the New York base for SATOP is the Syracuse Chamber of Commerce — not exactly a hotbed of interplanetary exploration.

It is, nonetheless, home to congressman James T. Walsh (R-N.Y.), chair of a House Appropriations subcommittee that holds the keys to NASA’s annual budget.

In its fiscal year 2001 budget, Congress gave SATOP $6 million to last two years, but nearly $3 million in 2002 was budgeted for the expansion into new states. The current appropriations bill calls for another two-year program, this time for $7 million, of which $3 million would be spent outside of Florida.

Walsh also scored a new Regional Applications Center for New York with NASA at Cayuga Community College, near Syracuse.

"If somebody needs a partner in their business, it’s not up to NASA to use taxpayers to subsidize that," said Thomas A. Schatz, president of Citizens Against Government Waste, a nonprofit offshoot of the Reagan administration’s cost-cutting Grace Commission. "It seems like if businesses are going to benefit from technical assistance, there should be some payment."

Besides, he added, "You would hope they would be busy enough, or want to be busy enough, to focus on the work taxpayers are paying them to do — explore space."

On its website, the organization lists seven criteria for identifying government waste. At first blush, "virtually everything here qualifies," according to Schatz. "The fact that it is in Syracuse is one thing, and that New Mexico is involved points at Senator Domenici." Sen. Pete V. Domenici (R-N.M.) is a ranking member of the Senate Budget Committee and a member of the Senate Appropriations Committee.

But Myers Studio was helped by way of e-mail and telephone, often on weekends, from an engineer who’s an acoustics hobbyist in his spare time.

"He delayed the work when they had to launch the space shuttle," Manzi said.

A representative for Congressman Walsh bristled at the pork insinuations. "That’s pretty shortsighted," said Dan Gage. "In every sector of government there’s research to benefit the general public. Why shouldn’t other parts of the country benefit from the experience NASA has to offer?"

http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,1282,56505,00.html

Posted in:

Sorry, we couldn't find any posts. Please try a different search.

Leave a Comment

You must be logged in to post a comment.