The Glory Days of Space Labs

Many of the lab researchers and technicians that I have had the chance of working with over the last ten years were lucky enough to have started in their labs just as the last generation of true basic research programs were being transformed into modern corporations. Many people are familiar with some of these mid twentieth century power house invention factories, which produced many of the technologies that are ubiquitous now. The most famous are Bell labs and Xerox PARK, which were sectors of large corporations, but whose inventions were not limited to an assigned market within the company. These were not the only two where this type of basic research was taking place, which is easy to see if you read any of the scientific literature of the period. Labs at DuPont, Cabot and BF Goodrich had such esoteric, but important work being done on mathematical modeling, quantum particle physics and even nano-science (before that term was invented), that it is hard to recognize that this research came out of corporations, rather than government facilities. The people who I mentioned working with are the next generation, who look back in envy at their predecessors, who had no marketing reports required in order to justify the research they were doing. These discussions have been on my mind ever since I started reading about the Obama plans for NASA, and the opportunities it may provide for private firms doing space research and exploration. What I continually wonder is whether these new companies engaged in this work will be more like the corporations of the past, who published important, even ground breaking work, with direct market feasibility, or if they will be more like the quarterly profit driven corporate lab environments we currently experience in so many sectors. Mostly I think that for the next few years privatization of space labs and space travel is encouraging, as the entrepreneurs in these fields, such as Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos and Richard Branson are real visionaries. When though does the next generation start, when post IPO companies of the future begin to ignore major findings, and governments are no longer there to unconditionally support them? It will be fun to watch and participate in, and when I am old look back at the glory days of the corporate space lab.