When leaving the US I had to power up my HP48 and try to explain it was a calculator and how to do a sum using RPN.

It was in 1998, shortly after the Swissair 111 flight and there was no explanation for the crash.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swissair_Flight_111

Not only Trantor, but Earth itself as in The Caves of Steel.

Similar concept appears in Clarke's The City and the Stars.

I went to NY for a week with my family in 1998. As I was just starting my engineering degree I took the opportunity to get a HP 48G calculator which at the time was much cheaper in the US.

I remember having to explain in broken english to the security guard (pre-TSA) that this was a working calculator and that it could do math. RPN here didn't help at all, but eventually she let me go.

This happened shortly after Swissair 111.

I would donate too, and I'm not even american nor live there.

Those trillion dollars would create a lot of jobs building a thing like this.

Or all those billions going to the moon were wasted and nothing good came out of it?

I'd settle for decent shelf space at the local book stores.

As I see it, sci-fi get relegated to the bottom shelf on a hidden corner of the store, while esoterism, alternative medicines crap, and the latest celebrity endorsed diet gets to the front window.