NASA...and World Poverty

NASA...AND WORLD POVERTYCan they work together?... By Rachel Urquhart

WORLD POVERTY! WHERE DO YOU THINK?

POOR PEOPLE AROUND THE WORLD!!! Poor people around the world who have few or no

materials for surviving Normally you would say that you could only find poor

people out on the streets but that’s NOT the only place where poor people make their ‘homes’ and live there lives! ( Find out more about this on the next slide)

India and Africa are some places where poor people live. They are very short on food and the nearest hospital is

miles away. They have to walk all that way with no shoes and maybe

carrying or holding on to children!!!

HOW POOR PEOPLE LIVE! Poor people also live in bad conditioned tents an

poor houses. These houses sometimes only have 1 room. The tents probably have no carpets. This must be very hard for families with children. Often they have no regular income or money

coming which is what is needed to help them buy food, clothes and shelter.

Developed countries, like America and Britain, spend government money to help people in poverty.

This can be Social Security payments within your own country or overseas aid to other countries.

NASA!!!! National Aeronautics and Space Administration NASA receive funding from the American

Government , public donations and fundraisers. They patent new inventions and reinvest the funds

received. In one year NASA received $17billion from the

government. Social Security payments to help those in poverty for the same year were $535Billion! Wow – now that’s a lot of money in America alone!

Large amount of funding is redistributed to manufacturers of components for space exploration – NASA only assemble the parts and pay the astronauts!

$2-3 billion a year is spent on a rocket/shuttle to space!

HOW NASA SHARE THEIR EXPERTISE... When the USA Today featured the ‘TOP 25

Scientific Breakthroughs’ on its 25th Anniversary, 9 of them came from space – 8 were directly from NASA

NASA is required by law ‘to provide the widest practicable and appropriate dissemination of information concerning its activities and results.’

We will now look at a few of these (taken from the internet)...

1978: Teflon-coated fiberglass developed in the 1970s as a new fabric for astronaut spacesuits has been used as a permanent roofing material for buildings and stadiums worldwide.

1986: A project directed at the Johnson Space Center resulted in a lightweight breathing system for firefighters. Now widely used in breathing apparatuses, the NASA technology is credited with significant reductions in inhalation injuries to the people who protect us.

1994: Relying on technologies created for servicing spacecraft, a Santa Barbara-based company developed a mechanical arm that allows surgeons to operate three instruments simultaneously, while performing laparoscopic surgery. In 2001, the first complete robotic surgical operation proved successful, when a team of doctors in New York removed the gallbladder of a woman in France using the Computer Motion equipment.

2005: Two NASA Kennedy Space Center scientists and three members from the University of Central Florida teamed up to develop NASA’s Government and Commercial Invention of the Year for 2005, the Emulsified Zero-Valent Iron (EZVI) Technology. Designed to address the need to clean up the ground of the historic Launch Complex 34 at KSC that was polluted with chlorinated solvents used to clean Apollo rocket parts, the EZVI technology provides a cost-effective and efficient cleanup solution to underground pollution that poses a contamination threat to fresh water sources in the area. This technology has potential use for the cleanup of environmental contamination.

WHICH OF THESE DO YOU THINK NASA WAS INVOLVED WITH?

WHAT MY THOUGHTS ARE... ON WORLD POVERTY

To begin with I thought my answer would be to end world poverty.. Full stop!

Having looked at different reports on the internet on ending world poverty and the benefits of NASA I now see it slightly differently!

YES... We need to end or reduce world poverty and should continue as countries to work towards this.

NO single country can do it on their own. Also as we have seen what is poor in one

country might not be poor in another country depending on the society we live in.

WHAT MY THOUGHTS ARE... ON NASA NASA is not just a large body which only deals with

space exploration The benefits I’ve listed, of which NASA has

contributed in some way, are amazing and have helped everyone in society.. And I’m sure I haven’t included them all!!

Funding from the government to NASA is relatively small in comparison to overall US government funding to other social funds.

So what do I think now? Yes we can continue to help reduce poverty however to do this we need to provide employment for all and in funding NASA employment is being provided as well as benefiting from its findings.

Thank you for listening! Did you like it

or love it?