Technology We Can Thank NASA For

welcome to tech Stuff. My name is Chris Poulette. I'm an editor here at how stuff works dot com, and as usual, I have sitting next to me senior writer Jonathan Strickland. Ola, Amigo, I'm wondering when you're gonna run out of countries. Uh, there are many of them. He watched Anomaniacs. You would know the names of all of them. Actually, I have that c anyway speaking, and you can see all these countries if you are looking at the Earth

from space No. Nine. That was that was a quickly manufactured So yeah, we're gonna talk today about uh inventions that we can we can attribute to our wonderful space race and space exploration programs. This actually as an idea that we got from an email we received. So I'll let me let me start off by reading the email. Okay, so this is from Justin in Chicago. I know how you love to receive haikus from fans. Oh wait, wrong podcast.

I've always wondered whether people knew what they were talking about when they credited NASA with the invention of certain technologies velcro, m r eyes, and that delicious dehydrated ice cream, to name a few. Is the alleged government origin for dozens upon dozens of everyday products just a public exaggeration or misconception Which of these are actual NASA technologies. I'm too lazy lazy to research it myself, so I'd like to hear you guys talk about it for fifteen or

twenty minutes instead. You got it justin excellent. Yeah. Now, first of all, um, well let's go ahead and and uh and crush velcrow, Well, crunchy noise. So Velcrow is not a NASA invention. It was a Swiss invention dating back to the nineteen forties. Yeah, that's much older than NASA, right, Yes, NASA was not around in the nineteen fourties. No, they were, say space was actually out there in I think I think space first appeared on the scene somewhere right around

six o three. Um, please don't write me. I know I'm making that up. The so so yeah, dated back from the nineteen Fouries is a Swiss invention. Now, NASA did use velcro in the Apollo missions. Um, and that kind of made velcro more famous, So that might be where people got the idea that NASA invented it. They did not. Um. Also, let's go ahead and get the other two big ones out of the way. They did not invent teflon, and they did not invent tang as

the powdered sweet sweet drink. No. According to the end the NASA website, Tang predates the Space missions by a few years. However, astronauts do find it yummy, yes, and NASA did use it in various kind of promotional materials, So that'd be where you'd get that idea from. Too. Well, there are lots of things like that that uh you know,

I mean vell Crow, NASA loves ll grow. It's it's great environment, very useful stuff, and I'm thinking that's probably why, you know, and Tang was still fairly new when the astronauts were going up in the space, so you know, it kind of makes sense that public perception might have been that NASA picked those up and they amended him, right.

I briefly debated on arguing that UM that Nicholas the second Infinite Oval Team, but then I realized that that would spreading misinformation is not what we do here, just going to get more emails. So he did not, to my knowledge anyway, I just made that up. So if it's is true, I was totally by chance. Moving on to the actual inventions that NASA is responsible for, there are many of them. Justin he asked us if there were some if if if that was just kind of

a misconception. No, it's not a misconception. There are plenty of inventions out there that we can credit NASA for bringing to life. And we have an article on the site called ten NASA inventions you might use every day, written by our colleague Kristen Conger, who is an excellent writer here at how stuff Works dot com and UM. She mentions that NASA has filed more than sixty three

D patents with the US government. Uh, and not all of those are specifically for things that can only apply to space exploration or or space you know, uh missions. Many of those things that that NASA has filed patents for we now use in uh in everyday applications. Should I should I mention one? I it sounded like you had one on the top of your head. Well, the very first one, she mean gins I guess I can

kind of go in descending order. We're not going to mention all of the ones in the article because there's some she doesn't mention that I like. Yeah, there's quite a few that we wanted to talk about and we didn't want to just you know, regurgitate the article. But the first one she mentions, um, would be invisible braces. I never had them. However, if I had, you'd never have known it, right. Uh. They're made from translucent poly

crystalline alumina t p A and uh. The reason why we can credit NASA for this is that they were using this material to protect infrared antenna of heat seeking missile trackers. Yeah, but it turns out that there was another company called Unitech that was working on a new kind of design for braces, and so you take the material created by NASA essentially, but Sara Dyne was the company that really developed it, but NASA was behind the

whole research stage. And then you take Unitech that's making this brace the um this new form of braces, and you apply the material to the design and you come up with invisible braces. Wow. Yeah, So thank you NASA for straightening out some teeth. And you know they can chew on some missiles. Um. I guess I wasn't done being goofy. You know my favorite on that list? What's that memory foam? Memory foam? That some good stuff. Man.

If you've ever put your hand on a memory foam mattress and watched your fingerprints stay there after you pulled your hand away, thank an astronaut or probably a NASA researcher. Yeah. The whole temper pedic mattresses, that all comes from the whole NASA research. Yeah. I'd like to be on one right now. Me too. I was just thinking that. I'm like, why did you go with that? Yeah, I'm sorry, I've been thinking. This is the end of a very long day. People.

We have recorded two other podcasts today. I hate to break the veil here, but uh yeah, So the idea of laying down on foam that develops you and comforts you since really really nice. We need a we need a house. Stuff works dot come like nap room anyway, right, making a note, Ok, moving on, so yes, yes, the memory foam that also comes from NASA research. Um oh she Kristen also mentions shoe in souls, which we can

thank Moon Boots for. Yeah, we're talking about like the insoles and shoes that are used to help your you know, give you a little bit of a boost with athletic shoes and and make it breathable and comfortable like a felon like Magellan. We should get paid for by them, I mean we don't anyway. So again we're talking about you know, it seems kind of silly that you're thinking like, oh, just chee in souls, but no, seriously, there's this. The technology for these cushy shoe and soules that give you

a lot more support came out of NASA research. Well, honestly, if you if you think about some of the other stuff, like invisible braces, well we could use visible braces, but it does add something and adds a quality of life and not everything is um you know, it has to be some kind of groundbreaking new science, you know, for it to be useful and functional for us. So it's

you know, these are good things. Now, there are a lot of things that are different between Chris and yours, truly, you know, there are a lot of things that you know, we don't. There are a lot of things that we we feel very differently about. But um, we also share a few similarities. One of those that we both wear spectacles glasses. Do you have scratch resistant lenses? Um? I certainly hope so, because my youngest daughter likes to grab them and rip them off my face and try to

eat them nice. Um, they have not scratched yet. My jackerosal terriers like to do the same thing. Perhaps they all get together while we're at work and plot things to do to us. But yes, scratch resistant lenses, that's another thing we can thank NASA for now. NASA the reason they developed this material the special coding to help

protect equipment and face because I mean it's very sensitive equipment. Uh, and there are particles out in space that are floating around and you could come into contact with it, and you definitely don't want something scratching up your your equipment while you're out in space, especially if it's going to end up, you know, endangering the people on the mission,

much less endangering multibillion dollar equipment that's up there. So this material they've created, the special coding they you know, scientists adapted it to create the scratch resistant coding they put on lenses. So if you have glasses that have this coating on them, you can thank NASA for it. Definitely, thank you, NASA, Thank you very much. Otherwise I couldn't see. So do you want to diverge from the well, I think I have one. I think I have to tell

me which one is you like? So the other one I was thinking about talking about long distance telecommunications, that's a gimme. Yeah, And the satellite dish was when I was going to bring up. But they're they're sort of intertwined because they use satellite technology to communicate, right, and uh, yeah, we're talking about the you know, the NASA had to create telecommunication devices that would be able to span enormous distances.

Because you're talking about trying to maintain contact with people in outer space. It's hard to get further away than that. Yes, otherwise Tom Hanks would be stranded in space right now. Yeah, but then we would have been spared that horrible haircut from the what was it the Da Vinci Code. But anyone don't know whether to thank them or curse them. I'm keeping him in mind. Of course that was a movie,

right exactly. Of course, again, they would have been in bad shape if they hadn't been able to communicate with Houston, and we're very thankful that they were. But yes, the same technology that they developed in order to communicate with astronauts was then of course used to for you know, broadcast technology, for telecommunications technology, uh, you know, with out Without NASA, I'm sure we would have gone down those roads eventually anyway, but probably not with the same kind

of alacrity that we did thanks to NASA. With the alacrity. Yeah, I like a lot of throw that in there. And the other one that I thought I mentioned from the article, uh was water filters. Yeah, which again you're talking about if you're gonna send people out up in space, you may need a way to filter some water so that they can have something to drink or something else that you have to filter some sort of liquid so that you would have drinkable water. It doesn't take a whiz

to know what we're talking about. So um so again water filters, the same sort of water filters we use for our tap water. We can thank NASA for creating that kind of technology, and I thank them for that horrible joke. You can blame them for it if you like. All Right, So now we can go and talk about some of the stuff that is not on the in the actual article, and then there are more on in

the article if you want check it out. Yeah, speaking of lenses, they helped invent some sunglass technology that works with polarization and keeping out frequencies of light that may be harmful to your eyes. Well, that makes sense because I mean, you know, you're out in space. You don't have that kind of you don't have the benefit of

the Earth's atmosphere to to filter that out. That's true, and from what i've from what I read, it was also because they were working on welding and the incredibly bright light from you know, certain kinds of welding can do serious damage to your eyes, and they needed an inability to you know, protect the eyes of the astronauts. But with the blast shield down, I can't see anything. How am I supposed to be able to fight? Okay, so I'm gonna have to pick another one. Huh um,

thermal gloves and boots. Oh yeah, okay. I mean it's cold in space, very cold, very cold in space, thank you, con So you know they the astronauts need protection. I didn't mean to do that, I swear, um, but that trains slates. You know. It's also very cold in certain parts of the Earth, and you know, applying that technology white weight technology and not so much a matter in space, but when you're you know, dressed in that stuff to get into the cockpit before you blast off, it's kind

of heavy. Those early space suits were pretty gargagein yeah, you know, they were not smelled no, but you know, as a result, we have lighter and thinner uh and warmer fibers. And on a similar note, uh, we've had the same sort of material coming handy for things like

a firefighting equipment. So we're talking about like the suits that that firefighters wear, that our fire resistant fabrics, I mean the a lot of that fabric was originally developed um to be used in space suits, which have to not just be able to withstand intense uh well the intense heat and intense cold. So um. Yeah again, NASA came up with the technology and that's that's on the ways we use it today. Um. Apparently they're also responsible

in in some way for redundant flashlight technology. UM. Well, you think about it. You may need a flashlight and then you might need another one. The thing is, uh, if you have one of those flashlights that is supposed to be have multiple sources of power in case, uh the electricity goes out in one of the batteries isn't charged,

or you're in a fire, um, and you need a flashlight. Well, they you know, one of the projects that came out of NASA was you know, the multiple backup power systems for flashlights built in, which is again not exactly glamorous, but very useful. Nice And of course you know justin mentioned MR eyes which the m R e s and cat scans we can we can trace that back to NASA. Do you have information on those? That was one of the ones that I read may have been amiss. Go ahead.

I have heard they have done work with medical um imaging technology and I think that's part of it too. But because uh, there's a NASA website that goes into all the different things, and the thing is, I think what happens is uh NASA says, oh my gosh, that's brilliant. We absolutely need this in the space program. And it gets so well known and so associated with the space program that people assume that, you know, well, those geniuses and NASA, I've done it again, when in fact it's

genius that NASA is working with. Sure, sure you know, I think I think yeah. And in that case, I think they were using that technology in order to to look for vulnerabilities within the various UH equipment they were using to make sure there weren't any cracks or anything like that. And you absolutely need to check the integrity of your equipment if you're going out in the space, as we have all found out unfortunately. Um, do you have another one? I have a favorite one, don't you know?

If I should go ahead and drop your favorite on? Man, I'm looking through my list space pens. The space pen is awesome. I know, I know. It's the space pen for the uninitiative and initiated uninitiated. There we go. Um is a pressurized ballpoint pen. He may be saying, Yeah, that's really exciting there dude, Well, no, okay, it's not. But you can write in all kinds of different environments

using the space pen. And it's very handy if you have one and only one pen to use, and keeping in mind, this is not the kind of environment where you're going to take your favorite fountain pen and have little drops of ink floating all over the capsule. So well, you would do it just for fun. Uh you know, anyway, other other ballpoint pens wouldn't write in space a fountain pen again, blobs of ink. So what do you do? You pressurize a ballpoint pen and you can still buy it.

It's it's very widely available. You can get it from pen companies. You can't even get it from office supply stores. It's a little bit more expensive than a regular pen, but you know, it can rune in virtually any environment. So kind of nice that and I like pens. How about joysticks? Oh yeah, you're gonna you're gonna argue with me with joysticks. Well, you know what do they used to fly those planes before NASA? Yeah? I saw that too. I saw that on a NASA website. Going, wait a minute,

that that seems well, it says a little different. I mean the joy sticks they're talking about are probably are more along the lines of the ones they're using for UM. Uh, you know it's it's almost the multi button video game style. Yeah, you're talking about you know, that's the same sort of stuff that you see in video games now. Really kind of Trent goes back to the NASA uses for various vehicles. UM. You know, you think about it. When you're in these

space suits. Uh, you've got very limited mobility, so you have to have controls that are easy to grip and use when you're you know, otherwise a little encumbered, so you may not be able to use the same sort of control devices that you would for other kinds of vehicles, like a steering wheel. Um. You know. One of the other things I discovered as I was going through my research for this podcast was, UM, I learned about the group that I didn't know about before, which is the

NASA Inventions and Contributions Board. UM. They've actually giving out more than nine thousand awards according to their website, for different technologies related to the Space program. And it can be from NASA, from other government agencies or you know, even public industry or or academic environments. UM. They give away awards that they can't be any more than a hundred thousand dollars unless they talk about it with Congress first.

I had to get Congress, is okay, So it's like getting permission from Dad before you can you know, right right, and actually you can. You can learn about a lot of the technologies that are going around that NASA came up with. There's a magazine that they offer, uh called Spinoff. UM. It's available in print. You can't buy a subscription to it. UM. It's a little you know, you have to be in

certain groups. I mean, it is available to the public, but uh, you know, members of Congress, the NASA community. It's it's not the kind of thing that I would imagine most people want to read. But you can sign up for a free trial issue, which um, which I said, which you did because you know, I'm interested in this stuff. UM. And you know there are other tools too that people give NASA credit for, um, such as barcodes um and

quartz clocks. So you know these things some of them and you know are used by NASA in different forms, but you know the ones that you see on the package at your local grocery store, you know, not really Yeah, just because it says space age does not necessarily mean that it came from NASA, although I could. I think I know what my favorite, my favorite invention based off

of NASA's research really is. And I'm talking about the the Speedo suit swimming So okay, because all right, so you've got NASA, You've got this, uh, this enormous organization that I don't think there's another organization out there in the world that knows more about friction than NASA would. They've got to be at least among the top elite,

top three, top three, easy, ye. So yeah, So Speedo goes up to NASA and says, hey, you know so much about friction, what's the best way to reduce it so that we can create a product that will move through the water effortlessly. Oh so you're not talking about the standard issue Speedo. You're talking about that Superla swimsuit

reduces drag, breaks records, NASA spinoff. Yes, yes, that that Speedo and um and so according to NASA, the resulting suit reduces skin friction drag twenty more than the previous Speedo racing suit. You won't see me wearing one of these at the local pool because there are laws against that kind of thing. And thank the legislators who passed them. Yes, so I'm done. Oh you know there was there was one that neither of us mentioned that that it did

come in the email. Oh yeah yeah, freeze dried ice cream. Freeze dried. They absolutely did have something to do with that. Yeah, you can blame them, but yeah, I mean they need freeze dried food. There's not there's not a fridge on the Space Shuttle. But not dippin' dots. They didn't do the No, I don't think they did dipping outs, but there are no sense why would you have dipping dots

floating around the space cabin? You would, well, I mean I would, but that's because i'm you know, very Homer Simpson asked, as far as my astronaut training goes, Yeah, I don't. I mean, they're they're tons more. But those are just some of the more fun ones to talk about, right right, And like we said, patents actually more than that now. But um, yeah, it's a lot of rebound to have. Yeah, you're bound to have some some applications

that go beyond just the space race. So justin there are plenty of inventions out there that meet your strict criteria, just not all the ones that you mentioned. Now, usually this would be the part where I would say that we have listener mail, and Chris would hide under the table because the alarm would go off. But we I don't have listener mail for this particular episode. And this is this is why it's not the legislators again to do it, because I will, I will go down and

kiss their boots. No, I actually do have listener mail. But the listener mail I have comes in the form of questions, and there are several of them. And we thought, rather than throw in a listener mail at the end of an episode and try and answer the question at the very end of something that's totally unrelated, we're gonna try and do an episode that's really just questions from listeners and we're going to answer them. And we've got

several stored up already. So we'll be trying that in the very near future and hopefully it'll be a big success. And if it is, then I certainly hope people will continue to write questions in because it makes it a lot easier when Chris and I sit down and say, so, what do you want to talk about? Yeah, So it's a lot easier when you just put listener mail jamboree, which is exactly what we're calling it because I just came up with it, So listener mail jamboree in the

near future listen for it now. If you want to write to us, you can write to us at tech Stuff at how stuff works dot com. Remember, the homepage how stuff works dot com has links to our blogs, the tech stuff Blogs. You can go there and read up on all the little interesting things we find out about during the week that we don't necessarily podcast about but we think are pretty interesting for you to know. Yep. And of course there are tons and tons of articles

on our homesite, how stuff works dot Com. Go check it out, read about the these inventions from NASA, and we will talk to you again really soon for more on this and thousands of other topics. Is it how stuff works dot Com brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera. It's ready, are you