America's Space Program

Paper Summary:

This paper discusses why the American space program was worth the cost. It presents a retrospective history of the program with regards to its impact on the U.S. economy and way of life. It shows how the 1969 trip to the moon allowed many new technologies, which would normally take decades of development to be refined in the private sector, to crystallize in mere years. Technologies like cell phones, TV, the Internet, and many others got their start during the American 'space race'.

From the Paper:

"Besides its obvious benefits to the technology sector, when a project of the space program's magnitude is attempted, there are inherent benefits to the entire economy. The Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo programs cost the government approximately 25 billions dollars in 1960's money. It terms of the 60's GDP, or Gross Domestic Product, the space program gave the US economy an additional yearly growth rate of 2.6%, from 1959-1970. In a good year of growth, the US economy will grow from 3 to 5%. That means that because of the Apollo program alone, the GDP growth rate was nearly twice what it would have been without the governments influx of cash. Aside from the money that was pumped into the economy, thousand of jobs were created to build all of the millions of parts that were used during the decade of the space program."

More papers on America's Space Program:

• Persuasive Essay # 117798 : "The American Space Program"
• Term Paper # 150050 : "The NASA Space Program"
• Essay # 63036 : "The Space Race"

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