1. Shoe Insoles aerogel-shoe-insoles
Aerogel is a material invented by the business Aspen Aerogel Inc., and is a rather unusual substance indeed. It’s a lightweight substance that’s been compared to sponge or Styrofoam. And although it has many properties with them, if dropped, it sounds like glass.
It’s also one of the best insulators we have on the planet. In one example, crayons were put on a thin piece of aerogel and a blow torch was lighted on the other side. The crayons were entirely undamaged. Now as you might guess, blasting a large rocket full of people out of the atmosphere may become a little hot, so NASA stepped in and helped to develop this product further than Aspen Aerogel had previously.
The outcome was the aerogel that we have today and, aside from putting it on spaceships, it has been offered as insulation, carpet, medicinal bands, and insoles for shoes. It may sound small, but aerogel’s sponginess removes a stunning amount of pressure of your feet and legs, allowing you to walk about for far longer periods of time pain-free.
2. Virtual Reality Helmets vr-helmet
Virtual reality is one of those innovations that has developed slowly, and has yet to fully take off in a popular fashion. Only a few years ago, we all assumed we’d soon be sitting in the centre of our favorite sitcoms, or donning a snazzy helmet to play video games. While this isn’t the case, VR may still be entertaining at places like Disney World, or those “4D” cinemas we’ve probably all gone to once and never again.
While virtual reality had been used to teach pilots in flight simulators as early as the 1930’s, it was a NASA scientist who invented the headgear in 1985. These helmets were not just connected with tiny displays, but were also attached to a computer that could detect the motions of the wearer’s head, so the visuals represented where they would be looking in a real setting. This was a tremendous stride forward for the technology, and was utilised in training.
It was so excellent in fact, it is presently being used to educate people in CPR, since it turns out they learn quicker that way. This is because there’s a fading picture on their VR displays of an instructor performing the CPR properly, and the learner only needs to line up with what the teacher performs.
3. Camera Phones camera-phone
As if it wasn’t enough that NASA helped build equipment that could work without a plug-in power source, they also likely helped design the camera for the phone you take with you everywhere.
It was a scientist in 1965 called Eugene Lally from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (the same men who helped build sunglasses) who came up with the sensor that captures photons and transforms them into electrons. The ensuing electrical signal is translated into an image, giving us digital photography. Tiny, robust, high-quality cameras were necessary to doing research in space, and Lally had radically altered the way we capture images (he also came up with the name pixel.)
The already-small gadget only became smaller with time, and from the ’90s forward, they were sold to the general public, ultimately finding their way into phones. So once again, we took one of the largest scientific discoveries in recent history, and exploited it for incredibly petty objectives, like posting photographs to Instagram and decreasing their quality. It’s believed that around 1/3 camera phones employ the technology created by NASA.
4. Freeze Dried Food freeze-dried-food
While not exactly the shining picture of healthy eating, freeze dried food may be quite crucial for many people’s survival. While it may today be used largely for frozen meals, freeze dried food is a vital aspect of existence for individuals like travellers, submarine workers and, of course, astronauts.
NASA cooperated with Oregon Freeze Dry Inc. in the 1960’s, and together they devised a technology to freeze dry foods that, following a simple injection of water, would become edible. This allows food to be packed more effectively and survive longer, helping anybody who needs to carry food on a lengthy voyage, whether it on Earth or beyond.