Add FedEx and Home Depot to the list of who are trickling down

a reply to: Aazadan

...these technologies are being marketed all over the place in all sorts of ways.

Exactly... as long as there is a market and a known path to production, private industry is the way to go.

NASA is a little different because they're purely research. Few corporations are purely research, they need a plan to monetize their developments, where as NASA doesn't really monetize, instead it can look into areas that are currently unprofitable, and blaze a trail so that others can profit later.

You explained my point perfectly well.

In engineering, Bachelor holders do the detail work to develop new products and upgrade old ones. Masters holders typically lead teams and handle research into new technologies. Doctors create the new technologies. The typical engineer in private industry holds a Bachelors, while a small percentage of them hold a Masters. In grant-funded research, the typical engineer holds a Masters, some hold a Bachelors and do support work, and a few hold Doctorate degrees... they lead the teams and do the theoretical work. These few research people (engineers and scientists) develop the basic theories and uncover new technology, that then goes to private industry to monetize. The more a theory has marketable implications, the faster the transferal from pure research to industry.

A good example: the Internet we use today was developed by scientists as a way to share data worldwide. It was not profitable... as a matter of fact, many scientists probably thought it was a useless money pit at the time. Once the protocol was developed and working, industry picked up on it and took it farther into a world wide web, streaming video, and remote control... and public forums like the one we are posting on right now. None of that would have been developed had someone not took the immensely unprofitable step of developing the protocols.

We need both.

TheRedneck