Voyager, Apollo, and Hubble. Everything else NASA has done is a distant 4th place. And it's not like 4th place is trash, it's just that the big 3 are just so impressive.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ingenuity_(helicopter)
It was sent to Mars with a plan for 5 flights and a total of 7 or 8 minutes flight time. It ended up flying for over 2 hours in 72 seperate flights before it damaged itself with a bad landing. Not quite the "this thing is still doing science almost 50 years later" that Voyager can claim, but impressively engineered so it lasted way beyond it's initial mission plan.
Curiosity was intended to operate from 2011-2013 and is still active now, just shy of 5000 days after landing. Really impressive.
Picking from top GDP per capita, I'm not sure that UAE or Qatar are countries to look up to.
They had pretty good results post WW2. The problem is that they ended up lagging behind the western bloc because of a lack of resources and innovation. Basic healthcare doesn't mean much if you don't have good treatment in the first place. It is a common problem with communist countries, they usually have good access to healthcare, but they don't have the resources to give proper treatment.
Stop being a capitalist hellhole, and maybe try being a country that happens to operate under bounded capitalism, and just maybe, maybe, you can see some of that progress.
But what am I saying, cmon, that'll never happen.
There has to be profit first to be able to fund big things like Apollo. Profit is good.
But only one country landed a man on the moon.
What is progress exactly?
I would argue that a healthy population is what allows great things like Apollo to happen. For such a program to succeed, we need lots of highly skilled people. Scientists, engineers, astronauts, tradesmen, managers, etc... Everyone needs to be at the top of their game. Such talent doesn't develop when you are struggling for your life, you need good conditions like health, confort and stability to be able to focus on your craft.
If we use life expectancy as a proxy, we could say that the US had a healthier population during the cold war than the USSR, and they are the ones who succeeded on the most ambitious project in the space race, despite the USSR having a head start. To me, it is not a coincidence.
Also, the cold war era was not just about space, it is also a time of major advance when it comes to medicine, life expectancy has seen a dramatic improvement, so we can put men on the moon and keep a population heathy.
Fuck all of it is useful besides satellites. Even the HST is only marginally useful; useful for fields of research which will almost certainly never have tangible benefits for life on Earth, built to satisfy our curiosity about phenomena too large and far from Earth to ever be put into use here on Earth.
Nonetheless, interesting? You're bonkers if a system like the Apollo program and all associated hardware isn't at least interesting.
just be happy there's no cats in space to take pictures of otherwise all would be lost.
Or is this an unserious argument you can use to nitpick anything? Why is my local government building another playground when they could be feeding African orphans??
and another playground isnt really comparable investment (or i am really jeolous of the kids in your neighborhood damn!) :p
Heat-resistant fabrics for fire fighting
Smoke detectors
portable oxygen
memory foam
kapton insulating foil
cordless tools
solar panels
modern water purification
clear optics grade plastics
freeze dried food
the dustbuster
CMOS digital image sensors
Vacuum packaging
Shock-absorbing shoe soles
modern artificial limbs
insulin pump
scratch resistant lenses
LASIK
wireless headsets
grooved pavement
air purifiers
LEDs
de-icing systems for aircraft
Why is is that science and technology exploration ventures are held to a much higher scrutiny?