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NASA tries to justify its existence yet again:
The 2018 edition of NASA's annual Spinoff publication, released Tuesday, features 49 technologies the agency helped create that are used in almost every facet of modern life. These include innovations that help find disaster survivors trapped under rubble, purify air and surfaces to stop the spread of germs, and test new materials for everything from airplanes to athletic shoes.
[...] In Spinoff 2018, you'll learn how:
- Ultra-sensitive radar technology used to detect gravity fluctuations was repurposed to identify the vital signs of disaster survivors trapped under rubble;
- A technique developed to preserve plants in a spacecraft led to devices that eliminate bacteria, viruses, molds and volatile organic compounds from air, surfaces and even laundry;
- One company's work on high-speed stereo photogrammetry for space shuttle analysis now enables low-cost, highly-accurate materials testing to improve designs for everything from running shoes to jetliners.
[...] Other highlights include: artificial intelligence that helps drones avoid collisions and could one day enable self-driving cars; a business jet that is both the fastest and the most efficient in its class; and a computer program that, 50 years after its creation, is still used to design cars, buildings and much more.
[...] The book also features a Spinoffs of Tomorrow section that highlights 20 NASA technologies ripe for commercial application and available for licensing. These include an algae photobioreactor that cleans wastewater while producing biofuels, a revolutionary all-in-one gear and bearing, and the combined technologies of the highly dexterous humanoid robot Robonaut 2.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday January 30 2018, @05:49PM (1 child)
NASA is actually in pretty good shape compared to most military programs:
https://youtu.be/8J18TjRqnUM [youtu.be]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oHOmkifd2wg [youtube.com]
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 0, Flamebait) by khallow on Tuesday January 30 2018, @06:30PM
Not in space, NASA's home ground. DoD (US Department of Defense) spends more and gets more for its money (GPS, recon and communication satellites, etc) and the DoD did more to advance human access to space. The latter deserves some elaboration. The DoD sponsored the Evolutionary Expendable Launch Vehicle (EELV), the first program in the history of human space development to encourage competition for orbital launch (here, of US commercial launch providers) which immediately encouraged competition between the two primary launch providers of the time, Boeing and Lockheed Martin.
Meanwhile what was NASA's contribution? A monopoly on all US payloads from 1975 to roughly 1985 and the establishment of a launch cartel after that. EELV finally did what NASA should have been doing for a generation or two. It's also likely to be the trigger for the formation of SpaceX since Elon Musk would have been encouraged by the creation of a DoD launch market for his rockets (SpaceX has since won several EELV contracts). Orbital ATK is also entering the EELV program with a rocket based on the ATK solid rocket motor as first stage.