From: robert casey on Jul 24, 5:26 pm


NASA has a rather large PR department, adjacent to a large
"technology licensing" department, all of which is intended
to help support NASA operations' budgets. Their PR is on a
higher level than the ARRL's PR, but both tend to generate
a considerable number of MYTHS in their respective areas.

NASA pays people to write "MYTHS"...???

He probably was talking about the supposed "spin-offs"
from the space program to regular consumer products.

Not "probably," DEFINITELY. :-)

Many such were actually spin doctoring. But the space
program was/is still worth doing, and some products were
developed quicker because of it. ICs and such.

I think the whole of the space program is DEFINITELY
worth doing. Thought so before I was a part of it
and still think so.

But, another of those "spins" is that "ICs got developed
through NASA help." Yes, NASA did - eventually - use ICs
but most designs of the Mercury-Gemini-Apollo program
era were discretes, diodes and transistors that were
screened, life-tested, lot-tested, measured three ways
from Sunday, and recorded in many pages of logs along
the "TX" (Tested eXtra) route to being man-rated.

Those of us who had been in clean rooms and had to attend
"MRBs" (Material Review Board) of minimum three persons
to change a single part were well aware of all those
things being discrete solid-state devices. Instrumentation
electronics had unmerciful QC procedures...man-rated was
another plateau above that.

I got to hold in my hand a TI flat-pack (old style) in
1958. A J-K flip-flop. Marveled at how small, tiny,
etc., it was. [I'd just built a "fast" (1 MHz clock)
discrete flip-flop with much difficulty] NASA was
barely out of the Geophysical Year launch failures of 1956.

The IBM guidance computer for Apollo wasn't even designed
yet in '58 but it would eventually be made...using nearly
all discrete semis and core memory..."magnetic rope" (of
cores) for a "ROM." State of the art when design was
begun...not even comparable to what consumers got a decade
or two ago.

The COMMERCIAL-INDUSTRIAL part of electronics spurred on
the development of better, newer ICs. Government, primarily
military, was second, just not near as desirous of small
solid-state ICs as the commercial-industrial side of
electronics. Semiconductor makers enjoyed a boom on top
of boom in the commercial and industrial electronics
area. Even now, the "space rated" ICs are terribly few
in number. Check the NASA preferred parts listings
against the giant listings of any semi distributor. No
comparison.

NASA's big mainframe computers and fancy consoles at
MSFC and the Cape? All supplied by the commercial-
industrial makers as essentially stock parts.

...and that's the way it is...(borrowing from Walter C.)