@ApolloPlus40 - Spinoffs
NASA has long touted the unplanned technological side effects of its cutting-edge research and engineering work.
Scientists, engineers, and contractors told the Wall Street Journal about a life raft with a bucket keel to prevent capsizing in rough water and an inner tube that inflated automatically to keep the raft afloat if its outer skin was punctured, a computer system to track down deadbeat dads, the inertial navigation systems that became standard equipment on commercial aircraft, and a thermal mapper developed for satellites used to prospect for oil, diagnose cause of sinking airport runways, and find sources of water pollution.
The list went on:
Other space age spinoffs were plastic resin marketed as commercial laminates, adhesives, and coatings ; devices to monitor internal stress in dams during earth tremors; data-processing techniques to record train traffic and to match power-generating capacities to demand; electromagnetic hammer that smoothed and shaped metal without weakening it; and luminous devices for aircraft exit signs, map reading, and gun sites. Medicine was benefiting from miniaturized electronic devices in cardiac pacemakers, remote-handling and manipulation equipment that had improved prosthetic devices like artificial limbs, space-helmet-like hoods to measure oxygen consumption while patient exercised, and computer to provide sharper x-ray photos.
From Astronautics and Aeronautics, 1969 Chronology on Science, Technology, and Policy [pdf]
For a sneak preview of the future, check out NASA's modern Spinoff website, which also has a document listing Apollo-era spinoffs [pdf].
Photo: Dialysis machines like this one were simplified by NASA's water recycling technology / NASA
