If NASA Didn’t Exist, We May Not Have Had These Inventions There are a lot of things we wouldn’t have today if it wasn’t for the fact NASA developed them to be used by their devices. JPL had been working on creating a small camera with good optics for a multiple of uses in their devices. This led to the development of a camera small enough to fit into a cell phone. The first cell phones to use a digital camera which were publicly available came out in 2002,and the world has never been the same ever since. One of the companies to come out with it was Nokia who advertised a large 176 by 208 pixel color display. Boy have we come a long way since then. Before that, the only person who was able to communicate with a mobile device which had a camera was Dick Tracy, a cartoon detective of the time. He had a watch with a camera and phone built in. CAT scans were an offshoot of NASA’s work creating digital images. Using digital imaging was a big part of the invention of the CAT scan and it wouldn’t have happened when it did without the help of a NASA agency called JPL. We all enjoy our televisions so much, many of us have several and some even have them in every room of their house. We couldn’t have done this years ago with the big heavy sets of the past, but today televisions have become very light comparatively speaking, and much brighter making a picture watchable even in a well- it room. LED technology was brought to the forefront by NASA and this has contributed to both consumer and medical devices and it has spread also to other areas. Did you ever notice people in movies who get lost hiking or exploring sometimes breakout a foil blanket to put around themselves? Where did we get the idea from to create these foil blankets? The idea came from NASA and was based on insulation which NASA had developed to protect people in spacecraft and also to protect the spacecraft themselves. Some simple devices have a fascinating story behind them. One of the last things in the world you would guess would be one of these items is a Dust buster. It turns out NASA had told Black & Decker, the maker of many household appliances, it wanted a device which could collect samples on the moon. This is why the Dustbuster was invented in 1979. Think about that the next time you’re using one to vacuum your seat cushions. Today, wireless headsets are all the rage. They give one the freedom to be able to walk around while still hearing audio. Many people got tired of having to have wires trailing behind them and being limited where they could go by the length of the wire. NASA had invented them to allow astronauts to do their work while still being able to talk to each other. One thing which was developed by NASA is something most of us may not have tried. It is freeze-dried food. I tried astronaut ice cream and didn’t think much of it. I guess this food could come in handy in an emergency shelter, but I don’t think anybody is going to order it just because they like the way it tastes Many of our veterans who came back with tragic wounds that involved limbs are very grateful to NASA. The reason for this is NASA has been a pioneer in designing artificial limbs and they have some pretty complex models. It is said they have studied robotic and extra vehicular activity and use the experiences from this to design state of the art arms and legs. Besides our monitors, what device is the most used on a desktop computer? If you said the mouse you would probably be correct, but that doesn’t really matter because it certainly makes a desktop computer much more convenient to use. This is precisely why in the 1960s a NASA engineer decided a mouse was the best way to manipulate data. Why it got called a mouse was because of its appearance. The body of a mouse was equated with the body of a computer mouse and the tail was equated with the thin wire which used to connect all of them to the computers. Many years ago, NASA was sponsoring experiments into nutrition because they wanted to be able to develop food made from algae for long space trips. One of the offshoots of this experimentation turned out to be the development of baby formula. As you lay on your new mattress, you probably aren’t thinking about where it was derived from. There are all kinds of mattresses out there, but if yours happens to be foam, it is based on a foam developed by NASA in the 1970s. NASA was involved in a project to make the pilot’s seat on a commercial airliner more comfortable. This is ironic when you think about it, because as airliners were making the pilot seats more comfortable, yet they were making the passenger seats more uncomfortable by moving them closer together so they could take more passengers on the plane. Memory foam, which is a direct descendent of the NASA foam was used in the space shuttle. There is a relationship between the Jaws of Life used by emergency workers to get people out of mangled wrecks and a tool used by NASA the separate devices on the space shuttle. Somebody must’ve come up with the idea it would also be good for extracting someone when more strength is required to get them released. It is hard to say which one of their inventions might be the most important, but I think it has to do with the situation of the person making that decision. For example, if a person lived in a place where water was scarce, he might vote for the water purification system developed by NASA. Today that system is used all over the world to kill bacteria in swimming pools. Someone else who has problems with their eyesight might vote for the scratch resistant coating which was developed to protect glasses. I don’t know about everyone else, but I always order the scratch resistant coatings for glasses. If one was in the military, they might say the most important invention by NASA is their landmine removal tool. The system uses surplus rocket fuel to produce a flare which can then burn through the landmine without an explosion taking place. It is amazing to me; how many different things have come into being just because they were developed to make life easier for astronauts.
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