how far we have come in a short period of time, let’s compare one of humankind’s greatest achievements to the

smartphone.
308 13 • Positive Externalities and Public Goods

In 1977 the United States launched Voyager I, a spacecraft originally intended to reach Jupiter and Saturn, to send

back photographs and other cosmic measurements. Voyager I, however, kept going, and going—past Jupiter and

Saturn—right out of our solar system. At the time of its launch, Voyager had some of the most sophisticated

computing processing power NASA could engineer (8,000 instructions per second), but today, we Earthlings use

handheld devices that can process 14 billion instructions per second.

Still, the technology of today is a spillover product of the incredible feats NASA accomplished over forty years ago.

NASA research, for instance, is responsible for the kidney dialysis and mammogram machines that we use today.
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