TECHNOLOGY

NASA-invented objects that we use in our daily lives

Traditionally, two very specific things periodically give enormous impetus to scientific development: wars, and thus military funding, and space exploration, and thus government and public funds.

The largest and most famous space agency on the planet, Nasa, has influenced a great many fields, including electronics, medicine, energy and the environment, from the first moment of its founding back in 1958.

A recent article published at Space.com sought to trace the history of Nasa's contribution to our daily lives by listing 10 objects, the result of the development of space exploration, that we use every day today.

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Nasa: 10 inventions we use in daily life
Traditionally, two very specific things periodically give enormous impetus to scientific development: wars, and thus military funding, and space exploration, and thus government and public funds. The largest and most famous space agency on the planet, Nasa, has influenced a great many fields, including electronics, medicine, energy and the environment, from the first moment of its founding back in 1958.A recent article published at Space.com attempted to trace the history of Nasa's contribution to our daily lives by listing 10 objects, the result of the development of space exploration, that we use every day today.
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Satellite television
The July 10, 1962 launch from Cape Canaveral, Florida, of the Telstar satellite, which enabled the first television signal to be sent and received across the Atlantic, from Andover Earth Station, in the United States, to Pleumeur-Bodou Telecom Center, in France. In the few months that it was operational, Telstar enabled more than 400 telephone, telegraph, fax and television transmissions.
Flickr.com/The Sleep Judge
The memory foam
Would you have ever thought that memory foam technology, which we use in our pillows and mattresses today, is actually the result of a project devised by Nasa in the 1970s? The purpose was to improve seat cushioning and impact protection in space flight.
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The anti-scratch lenses
Anti-scratch coatings can also be traced back to an old NASA project. At Nasa's Lewis research center, in fact, work was done on the visors of astronauts' helmets and diamond coatings on aerospace systems, obviously looking for ways to make them more durable and less prone to scratches. Similar work, however, carried out by the guys at JPL (Jet Propulsion Laboratory), allowed the birth of sunlight-filtering lenses, which later were also fitted to everyday objects such as sunglasses, ski goggles and of safety masks for welders.
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The smoke detector
In this case, it is not a true invention, but more of a total implementation that improved, by a lot, the existing object. The smoke detector was invented, specifically, by Francis Robbins Upton in 1890. Tuttava, it was not adjustable and gave a lot of false alarms. Later, Nasa designed the Brunswick incipient fire detector, a sensor designed for Space Shuttle orbiters that could detect the presence of combustion particles in the air.
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The wireless vacuum cleaner (and household appliances in general)
This information is taken from the Q&A section of the official Nasa website. The U.S. space agency did not in fact invent wireless home appliances (credit goes to Black & Decker in 1961). However, the company almost immediately began collaborating with Nasa in order to design small appliances to make life easier for astronauts in space.
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Water filters
During the Apollo missions of the 1960s, water filters already existed. However, the space agency needed to store huge amounts of water, for long periods, keeping it fresh, clean and drinkable at all times. For this purpose, Nasa designed a solution that used carbon oxidation to filter out pollutants. This was later taken up by industrialist Mike Pedersen, creator of Western water international, who implemented it to his water filtration system. This system is still used today in industrial, residential or poor sanitation environments.
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The microchip
Nasa's credit is not that it materially invented the microchip (the credit here goes to Texas Instruments in 1958) but that it gave a giant boost to this field. Nasa implemented this microchip in the Apollo guidance computer, an on-board computer mounted on both the command module and the lunar module. In fact, it was the first computer to use integrated circuits.
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The shoes with the cushioned sole
Cushioned soles were devised by Nasa, during the Apollo missions, so that astronauts' feet would not be fatigued during moon walks. Many decades later the idea was proposed to Nike by Frank Rudy, a former Nasa engineer, and cushioned-sole sneakers were created that are still used today.
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Golf balls
It seems that Robert Thurman, a former Nasa space systems engineer, applied what he had learned from analyzing air loads on the Space Shuttle's external tank to analyzing the aerodynamics of golf balls for Wilson Sporting Goods Company. The result was the famous Ultra 500 ball, which has three dimples of different sizes in 60 triangular faces (as opposed to the 20 used until then).
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The joystick
The joystick was invented with remote rover controls in mind on the early Apollo missions. In the early 1980s, a T-shaped joystick with a toggle capable of controlling steering came out, allowing a vehicle to be steered with one hand. From video games to aircraft consoles, everything comes from this early invention.
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