Exploring the Unknown - NASA's History Office

398
SPACE AS AN INVESTMENT IN ECONOMIC GROWTH
found that information dissemination concerning new inventions and innovations was not
an effective way to encourage industry to use the information. More direct methods, such
as interpersonal contacts, were found to be superior ways to transfer technology. The recommendations
of the study centered around having more interactive exchanges between
NASA and its regional development centers and giving the centers a longer time frame
and more money to develop and focus the target technologies to their civilian uses.
There have been a number of attempts to measure the benefits of the transfer activities.
As with the macroeconomic measures discussed earlier, the studies date from the mid-
1970s, coinciding with the overall decline of NASA budget allocations. The most visible set
of documents produced by the office of technology transfer has been the annual Spinoff
publication. 30 The reports of many different applications of technology give the impression
that the payoff from space investments has been very large. Indeed, it may have been.
However, most of the reported technological successes in Spinoff are either demonstration
projects (that is, not fully commercialized) or are public-sector uses of space technology.
Public-sector applications may well have large social value, but that is not quite the same
as a measure of productivity increases from privately produced and sold goods and services.
31 The benefits that accrue to commercial firms are also more easily measured, and
in theory, some of the costs of the transfer activities of the government may be recouped
through royalties and through eventual tax payments from the profits of the firms.
Studies of technology transfer activities in the mid-1970s were conducted for the same
reasons as the macroeconomic analyses. NASA had a need to justify its budget by showing
that there were more and longer term benefits than successful space missions. Agency officials
were trying to answer the political questions raised by statements such as: “It’s fine to
walk on the Moon, but what have you done that improves the everyday life of the average
American citizen?” The technology transfer studies were designed to provide concrete
cases that illustrated advances such as heart pacemakers and other medical instrumentation,
new materials such as anti-fog glasses, and new construction and building techniques.
In 1977, two studies were performed that attempted measures of these cases of technology
transfer that could be traced to the specific efforts of the agency. One was the
Denver Research Institute study of the NASA Tech Brief program. This study analyzed the
users of the information publications that NASA produced that were made available to
industry in the hope that technology developed by NASA would be adapted and extended
by private firms. The results showed that there were few new products or commercial
sales from these technologies, but that the information was particularly helpful to industry
in improving the production process. [III-28]
Although the thinking in government was that this “free” information would be very
valuable, the government overlooked three important factors. First, industry had to invest
time and people to search for the information, which had a significant cost. Second, the
published information was available to anybody, and there were no property rights that
could be claimed by industry in the innovation, therefore making it risky to invest additional
development funds in the technology. Third, very often government technologies
30. Every year since 1976, this publication has been distributed by NASA. It is a glossy paper report that
describes successful technology applications that have been fostered by NASA program offices and/or the office
responsible for technology transfer. The discussion is descriptive in nature, and in some ways, the report looks
like a corporate annual report, without the financial statements.
31. One reason that the emphasis has been on public-sector benefits is that, until recently, NASA was
reluctant to focus its transfer efforts on private companies because of the possibility of the allegation of an unfair
competitive subsidy to one company or industry over another. In more recent years, NASA (and the government
in general) has been more aggressive in helping firms and industries directly. One way this has been accomplished
is through competitive awards and joint ventures with firms.