"Whether you’re talking about the GPS applications on your phone; The Weather Channel; blood flow and monitoring devices and pressure devices; pacemakers and artificial hearts; LASIK eye surgery; the soft goods protective devices that our police, firefighters and military personnel utilize; the benefits of our space program are all around us. Sometimes we just don’t realize it."
-- Robert D. Braun, David and Andrew Lewis Professor of Space Technology at the Georgia Institute of Technology. Braun, a 1987 Penn State alumnus, gave his talk, “Our Generation’s Space Race," at the Nittany Lion Inn as part of the Penn State Forum speaker series. A manned spacecraft to Mars, thriving commercial space exploration industry and other developments would have a significant impact on quality of life, according to Braun.