Don't worry, I'm not about to propose that we should all invest in personal space travel, although some of our colleagues apparently have.  No, what this is about are the unintended consequences of pushing the boundaries of science.  Space as the final frontier may be one of the most sexy of these, but this article could easily be written about most any area of technological advancement.

Every time someone talks about the next great challenge in space, the nattering nabobs of negativism talk about how much it costs, and couldn't those dollars be better spent on the problems right here on earth?

We stand today just passing the 40th anniversary of the first man walking on the moon.  For those of us of a certain age, we can remember EXACTLY where we were that night on July 20, 1969, watching a fuzzy black & white image on the small TV screen.  The wonder we all felt then has not really diminished with the passage of decades.

But if we had our venture capital hats on then, we would have been looking at an entirely different picture - still fuzzy, but equally exciting.  We would have foreseen the coming telecommunications revolution as well as the medical imaging industry, all spawned by the space program.  DSP (digital signal processing technology) was stretched by NASA to new heights - and that made those new industries possible.  Products as simple as the ear thermometer and the home smoke detector are taken for granted today, saving lives every day.  The first smoke detector was in Skylab in 1973, and the ear thermometer came from trying to measure the birth of stars. The CAD (computer-aided design) industry developed in the 1970's, driven by NASA's need to build things and submit them to stresses never before considered.  There are some older VC's whose vacation homes were paid for by those early CAD companies.

For a more complete list of space-driven inventions, check out the following NASA link.  Maybe it's telling that NASA keeps this list on its kids page.  Maybe we adults lose that wonder of discovery all too soon. 

If you are an entrepreneur or a VC, the space program, as it was and as it can be, holds the promise of technology and products that make us all money, and make the world (yes, right here on earth) a better place. Let's make sure our government leaders hear that message.

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