Planetary Radio: Space Exploration, Astronomy and Science - 50 Years of Space Spinoffs

Episode Date: August 3, 2009

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They came from outer space. Spinoff technologies, this week on Planetary Radio. Hi everyone, welcome to Public Radio's travel show that takes you to the final frontier. I'm Matt Kaplan of the Planetary Society. Everyone has heard of them. Everyone benefits from them. Space spinoffs make life easier, business more profitable, and our environment more sustainable. They also save lives. Daniel Lockney edits NASA's annual spinoff publication.

He'll join us to talk about 50 years of spinoff technology. Bruce Betts has the lowdown on the up-high, and that includes a trivia contest question about our solar system's most famous Martian. Bruce also says the Perseid meteors are coming soon to a sky near you. Space rocks make a more sinister yet inspiring appearance in Bill Nye's commentary, which is moments away. Bill will be filling in for Emily Lakdawalla this week on the Planetary Society blog. Emily is back from maternity leave and she'll be back with us on the radio beginning next week.

Did you know you can also keep up with Ms. Lakdawalla on Facebook and Twitter? Bruce and I are also tweeting. I'm Matt underscore Kaplan, while Bruce is, what else? Random space fact. There's already lots of great stuff waiting for you in the Planetary Society blog, including Janie Radabaugh's spectacular trip to an Iceland volcano, and another update from Mark Raymond on the Dawn mission to the two biggest asteroids in our neighborhood. You'll find them at planetary.org. Here's Bill. Hey, hey, Bill Nye, the planetary guy here, Vice President of Planetary Society.

The last couple of weeks, there's been a lot of concern because we landed on the moon 40 years ago. And what have you done for me lately, space explorers around the world? Well, my friends, lately space explorers around the world. Well, my friends, you can complain about a lack of interest in space unless you live anywhere else besides the United States. People in India are very interested in space. People in China are very interested in space. And you know when everybody is going to be interested in space? Everybody. When we find an asteroid or some other significant satellite headed our way, it's going to be time to negotiate. It's going to be time to build a nice rocket. It's going to be time to design an amazing mission and give this thing the slightest tug out of the way. Everybody's going to want to know what's

going on. Over the next couple of days, I'm going to be blogging on the Planetary Society website, planetary.org. And I'm going to talk about this because I've traveled around the world with the International Astronautical Federation, and I've met a lot of people from around the world who are very concerned about asteroids, space debris, and humans learning to navigate in places way above Earth orbit, out in Lagrange points, out where there's crazy amounts of dust, and these asteroids have stable orbits. And we're going to figure this out, and we're going to, dare I say it, change the world. So I hope you all get a chance to log on to Planetary.org this week, and I will blog on.

I'm Bill Nye, the Planetary Guy. by the Planetary Guide. I remember the first time I saw NASA's annual spinoff report. It was before the web and before NASA TV, so news like this was harder to come by. I was amazed by the diverse collection of inventions, processes, tools, and applications that had come directly from the space agency's work. The latest issue of Spinoff celebrates 50 years of this technology transfer.

Did you know that you can get a free copy? That's one of the things I heard from Dan Lockney, editor of the annual publication. Dan joined me by telephone from his office, where he and his staff are combing the nation for the spin-offs that will make it into the 2009 edition due this fall. Dan, thanks for joining us on Planetary Radio and congratulations on 50 years of spin-offs, at least 50 years. Does the current crop look as impressive and exciting as what we've seen in the past? look as impressive and exciting as what we've seen in the past? Sure. You know, NASA's always doing new and exciting, innovative things, and from those missions, we're always finding new technologies and new applications for them.

Yes, it's as exciting as ever. No one, certainly I would not say, that spinoffs are the primary reason for us to be exploring and developing space. But they're not a bad side benefit, are they? Correct. And they've never been the primary justification. The primary justification for space exploration is this is what all great nations and cultures have done throughout history, explored and discovered and seen what's next and pushed the boundaries. These are secondary side benefits, these NASA-derived products and technologies that in doing the things that have never been done before, NASA creates innovative

technologies that can find secondary practical applications on Earth. It is also part of the mandate that created NASA in 1958. Congress said, you can have this money for space exploration, but the dollars can't just go up. We need to see some of these investments come back down to Earth in the form of practical and tangible benefits. Congress created NASA in 1958. They said they'd like to see some of these things. And that's where the technology transfer initiatives got started, and that's where a few decades later, in 1976, the spinoff publication came about.

How many products, how many inventions have made it into a spinoff publication, Camelbone. How many products, how many inventions have made it into a spinoff or have been, you know, pumped out into the commercial world? Two different questions, two different answers. Since 1976, we've featured a range of about 40 to 50 commercial products per year, giving us a total of 1,662. But that number is just the number of NASA products or NASA-derived products that have been featured in the publication. It's by no means a comprehensive list of all of the ways that NASA technologies have made it into the economy or the private sector.

It also doesn't include or incorporate some of the non-commercial benefits that we get from space exploration, like improved weather forecasting. Here's a current example. Out in California right now, we've got an unmanned aircraft called the IKANA that is surveying wildfires and relaying that information to ground crews. So rather than staring at a blaze, they actually have a more comprehensive understanding of what's going on on the ground. a blaze, they actually have a more comprehensive understanding of what's going on on the ground. And we wouldn't call that a spinoff necessarily so much as just, you know, a benefit of having NASA research.

And I'm sure there are lots more benefits that are even less direct. Broader than spinoff, I mean, NASA has a great deal of attention that they pay to making sure the technologies developed by or for NASA make it out there into the world, as you've just said. And I found references to a couple of offices, scientific and technical information, and also innovative partnerships program. Does spinoff fit into that? Correct. The innovative partnerships program works to bring NASA technologies out to the public and also bring technologies developed by the public back into NASA

to meet NASA mission needs and also benefit the economy. A portion of that work that they do is involved with technology transfer, and that is getting these NASA-derived technologies out to the public or partnering with small businesses to create technologies that are beneficial to both the agency mission needs and to the company's needs. So there's a couple different ways that NASA's Innovative Partnerships Program brings these technologies both in and out of NASA. Spinoff is a small portion of that, kind of highlighting the successful transfer of the NASA technologies and the commercialization. The ultimate success in technology transfer is that the company is able to use this product and get it out to the American people.

You know, I got to mention one that came up just the other day because my wife mentioned it. She read it somewhere, and it's this old saw about, oh, space pens. The United States spent X number of dollars developing a pen that would write in space, and the Russians just used a pencil. And I mentioned to her, you know, they've made a lot of money over the years off of space pens. Well, let's unwrap that one. Starting with bursting the bubble, you can use a ballpoint pen in space. Oh, I'm disillusioned. Next, you wouldn't want to use a pencil in space.

The tip could break off, and you've got things floating around in microgravity, Next, you wouldn't want to use a pencil in space. The tip could break off, and you've got things floating around in microgravity, and you don't want the tip of your pencil floating around. It's potentially catastrophic. You could choke a hazard and poke it in the eye. It's not a good idea to have things untethered in space. The pencil is not the answer. The space pen was created by a guy named Fisher.

That company is still around today. I believe they're out in Colorado. They claim that it can write upside down and it can work at crazy temperatures, high and low, extremes. But it was actually a small company, got inspired by NASA, got inspired by the early space program. This guy wanted to be able to help and contribute in some fashion, and he created the Fisher Space Pen. No NASA funding went into it, And it has been used in space. Now I think that I don't know if it's currently being used in space, although it's not entirely necessary for writing in space. I'm sorry. I'm told by pilots, including my brother, that it's very popular among pilots who never make

it out of the atmosphere. Listen, while we're at it, let's talk about the big three space spinoffs, which are not spinoffs. Okay. I assume you're referring to Tang, Teflon, and Velcro? You bet. Tang was developed by General Foods prior to NASA even being formed. It is not a NASA spinoff. It was popularized during astronaut food testing in space. John Glenn drank it once in 1962 in orbit, and he liked it.

It has since forever been cemented in the history of NASA. And the company's been milking it ever since, if you'll pardon the expression. Correct. Correct. And that's probably the biggest, you know, NASA drive technologies. You mean Tang. Let's start from the beginning. Velcro was invented by a Swiss engineer in the 1940s. Legend has it that he was taking a walk and burrs were sticking to his wool pants.

The light bulb, you know, went off and we have Velcro now. Very useful in space applications for securing things in microgravity. Again, you don't want things floating around. If you can tether it or attach it to some surface, it's much preferable than losing things. So Velcro, again, not a NASA spinoff. The other one is Teflon, and that is just DuPont. Again, it's got great practical applications in space, including the exterior of the astronaut spacesuits, the early ones, but no NASA credit on that one. Other ones we hear often are the smoke detector, no NASA connection, the MRI, and quartz timekeeping, quartz clocks and quartz watches.

All three of those, similarly, not NASA technologies. More from NASA spinoff editor Dan Lockney in a minute, including some of his personal favorites. This is Planetary Radio. I'm Robert Picardo. I traveled across the galaxy as the doctor in Star Trek Voyager. Then I joined the Planetary Society to become part of the real adventure of space exploration. The Society fights for missions that unveil the secrets of the solar system.

It searches for other intelligences in the universe, and it built the first solar sail. It also shares the wonder through this radio show, its website, and other exciting projects that reach around the globe. I'm proud to be part of this greatest of all voyages, and I hope you'll consider joining us. You can learn more about the Planetary Society at our website, planetary.org slash radio, or by calling 1-800-9-WORLDS. Planetary Radio listeners who aren't yet members can join and receive a Planetary Radio t-shirt. Our nearly 100,000 members receive the internationally acclaimed Planetary Report magazine. That's planetary.org slash radio.

The Planetary Society, exploring new worlds. Welcome back to Planetary Radio. I'm Matt Kaplan. And I wonder if you're benefiting from a space spinoff right now. It's a pretty safe bet. The radio or computer you're listening to probably relies on some technology that NASA developed in the last 50 years. While not exactly a spinoff, the integrated circuits or chips that are inside almost everything electronic got a huge development boost from space exploration efforts, going back at least to the Apollo program. Dan Lockney edits the American Space Agency's annual spinoff report.

Well, let's go on to the real spinoffs. Has anybody ever tried to put a value on at least the 662 that you've managed to fit into a spinoff over 33 years or 32 years? It's 1,662. And people have tried. You know, I've often referred to it as the Holy Grail of spinoff. Being able to find that number would be fantastic. And one of the problems we run into, though, is a product may contain a small piece of NASA technology

and be wildly successful. At that point, how do you calculate, once it's that far removed from the agency, how much credit NASA should get for it? Some of these things are more difficult to measure in terms of dollars, since they're private companies that manage these things now. Some of the heavy hitters would be Tempur-Pedic, the viscoelastic memory foam. It's everywhere now.

That was a direct NASA invention. There's also the Black & Decker Dust Buster, the first cordless handheld vacuum cleaner. That's another big one. But, you know, a few decades later, looking at it, how do you calculate that number? And NASA is not entirely about making, pumping the money into the economy or creating a product that would sell tons. You know, it's more focused on benefits. So if we could point to something like an Apollo-era life raft, the astronauts came back from space, landed in these life rafts, they'd come so far, you come over top of them with a helicopter to rescue them,

and the blades spinning in the helicopter create so much wind that the life raft tips over. That's no good. So NASA developed a water-ballasted life raft, licensed it to a small company still around today called Givens Marina, or Givens Marine Services, I think. And that company, you know, has over 400 confirmed lives saved using this device. Or NASA's work with Micromed Medical Company and Dr. DeBakey, a renowned late heart surgeon. NASA worked with that company and that surgeon to develop this ventricular assist device, kind of a bridge to a heart transplant, and that's been successfully implanted in, I think, 440-some people, saved another 400-plus lives.

So we don't have those economic numbers. Here's another wide-reaching one. Early experiments into using algae as a food source and water treatment and air purifier for long-duration space flight led to the discovery of a nutrient that had previously only been found in human breast milk. That nutrient was commercialized by a small company out in Columbia, Maryland, now a huge company out in Columbia, Maryland, now a huge company out in Columbia, Maryland, and their product, traces directly back to the NASA research, is found in over 95% of the infant formula sold in the United States and the infant

formula sold in 65 countries around the world. It's a small portion of the infant formula, this small component, but it's believed to be important in the development of brain and eyes, the kind of fatty tissues and the fatty organs that are very important to us. So putting a dollar figure on that one's kind of tough, but it does show the stretch of NASA's benefit. Another quick example is the winglets, the upturned wings, the vertical blades that you see on the modern aircraft. It's estimated that that aeronautics invention, which comes back to NASA, by the year 2010 will have saved 2 billion gallons of jet fuel. And if you look at the price of fuel and you look at the money saved there, that's impressive. But also you look at the impact

of the environment, and that's even more important. That's a lot less carbon and other stuff thrown up into the stratosphere, too. Right. We're almost out of time. People can find back issues of Spinoff online at your website, and we'll put up a link to that at planetary.org slash radio. How do you find these? How do you decide what goes into Spinoff? I mean, NASA has centers all over the country,

and hundreds, I imagine thousands, of contractors and subcontractors developing items to NASA specification. It's a little tricky sometimes. Once the technologies leave NASA, it's somewhat difficult to keep track of them, but we do. We also have contacts at each of the field centers around the country who send us information. And we hit the streets and we attend trade shows and conferences and read magazines and set up news alerts, and we just look for them, and they find us, and we find them. Latest issue is 2008. When will the 2009 spinoff appear?

Time to release in October. In the meantime, we still have plenty of copies of spinoff 2008, and they are free to the public, and you can request one at spinoff.nasa.gov or sti.nasa.gov slash TTO, or you can Google NASA Spinoff and find us that way. Or read it online as a PDF, but it is awfully fun, and it's a beautifully put-together publication, by the way. The 2008 cover, I think, is particularly attractive. Thank you. I'll throw just one more at you. Out of that 1,600, I think, what did I say earlier? 662? 1,662 items that have made it into spinoff. Do you have any personal

favorites, perhaps because they're maybe a bit off the wall? Well, I always wear my Outlast socks, which control temperature, six degrees plus or minus, according to body heat. And I'm a big fan of my eagle-eyed sunglasses, which were developed at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory using the same optics that they assumed or believed was in the eye of the eagle that allowed them to see farther. Those are two of my favorites. But there are some bigger reaching ones like water treatment designed for the International Space Station that's saving lives in remote villages in Iraq and Afghanistan with small portable devices with low power requirements.

And those are some of the big ones. Thank you for making all of these known to us, Dan. You're welcome. Thanks for having me. Daniel Lockney is the editor of Spin-Off, the annual publication from NASA, which is a big and very visible part of how NASA manages to turn its technology into our technology for the benefit of folks around the world. Well, we hope that you'll find some benefit in this week's edition of What's Up with Bruce Betts, which is just moments away. Stay with us. Here is Bruce Betts, the Director of Projects for the Planetary Society. It is time for What's Up on Planetary Radio. Welcome back. Thank you. It's good to be back.

I hear you're going swimming right after this, so we better get right on through it, because I know it's hot up where you are. It is. Too close to the sun. Funny you should say that. You're prescient, or some word like that. We're not falling into the sun, are we? Why don't we just wait a little bit, and then I'll let you know. Oh, I saw that twilight zone. Okay, tell us what's going on. bit and then I'll let you know. Oh, I saw that twilight zone. Okay, tell us what's going on.

No, we are not falling into the sun. Let me assure everyone. It's actually really, really hard to make us fall into the sun, but that's a whole other story. Let's talk about things you can see in the sky besides the sun. In the evening sky, low in the west, you still might check out Saturn, but it's getting tougher and tougher as the weeks go by. We've got Jupiter, however, getting easier. You can see it in the early evening over in the east or in the middle of the night, high up overhead. And then in the pre-dawn, Venus just dominating the eastern sky, super bright. Above Venus is Mars, looking dimmer and reddish. And Mars, just to keep things interesting, if you look over to its right, you'll see another thing that's reddish. That's Aldebaran,

a star. And that's the planet wrap-up. We've also got the Perseid meteor shower, traditionally the second most prolific meteor shower of the year, with 60 meteors per hour from a dark site peaking on August 12th, but better than average for several days before and after that. Go out, stare up at the sky, relax, and look for little streaks of light that are dust and sand, gray and objects coming into the Earth's atmosphere. I'm going to be up in central California on the 12th. The only problem is it'll be darker up there, but it'll also be really foggy and cloudy, I'm sure. But I'm going to give it a shot.

I hope we get a clear night just as some kind of miracle. Yeah, I suggest a nighttime hot air balloon flight. Oh, that's a lovely idea. Thank you. Up above the fog. You're buying? That'll be a no. You're willing?

Oh, yeah. I would go for it. No question. Yeah. It's just coming down is the problem. Going up is perfectly okay. Well, in any case, just to be clear, no, I'm not paying for it. Okay.

On to this week in space history. We'll see if next year we can announce that it was the year that radio host Matt Kaplan disappeared in a nighttime hot air balloon flight. But for now, we will have a couple launches. Five years ago, Messenger launched on its mission to Mercury. It's done a couple of stunning flybys. It'll still be until 2011 when it actually goes into orbiter on Mercury. It's the first orbiter.

And it was two years ago that Phoenix launched to Mars. On to random space fact. Oh, what do you call that when it's an abrupt finish like that? I forget the musical term. Some listener will remind us. Staccato? Staccato? No, I don't think that's it.

That's the first one I thought of. Staccato is when it is short. But alas, this is not a random music fact. So I will go straight into talking about the sun and how, no, it is short, but alas, this is not a random music fact, so I will go straight into talking about the sun and how, no, it is not hot here in the northern hemisphere this time of year because we are closer to the sun. In fact, we're near aphelion. We're about as far in the orbit as we get around this time of year, closest to the sun in January. Of course, as you know, the season's caused by the axial tilt of the earth and whether your particular hemisphere is tilted towards the

sun, as we are in the north right now during summer, or away from the sun as they are in the south right now. But January is actually when we're closest, and we're about 2-3 million miles closer at that time. Actually get 7% more solar flux for the whole planet at that time. What's interesting is we actually have lower global temperatures in January, even though we get a little bit more flux, because most of that flux is hitting in the southern oceans, far more ocean than continent down there, and those just don't heat up as much. This, of course, being one of those things that there are millions, if not billions, of people around our planet who have no idea, who just assume that we're closer to the sun for summer. But then we just read that two-thirds of Americans can't name

the three branches of government, so I guess we shouldn't be surprised. The Nina, the Pinta, and the... No, that's not it. And the Judicial. That's right. And the Nina, the Pinta, and the Judicial. That was the flagship. And we're always closer to the sun. All right. What's next?

Anywho, on to trivia contest. We asked a question which turned out to be far trickier than I thought because of conflict and sources out there. The question was how long were the Apollo astronauts in quarantine? A number of days after coming back from the moon when they wanted to make sure there were no super scary secret weird bug infections that they had gotten. Tell us, Matt. Tell us what you have found. bug infections that they had gotten. Tell us, Matt, tell us what you have found. So interesting, because so many listeners who are almost always accurate may have relied on the Wikipedia. Now, far be it from me to cast doubt on the veracity of the all-powerful Wikipedia,

but the Wikipedia has it wrong. It says that they were in quarantine from the 24th of July, from right there on the deck of the Hornet, until the 13th of August. That's wrong. And we checked this out. NASA has it right on a history site. And we also found it in the New York Times that they got out of prison on August 10th. So we had to go through a few people here. Random.org chose them first, but they had it wrong until we got to our friend Uwe Voigt.

Uwe of the European Space Agency, good friend of Planetary Radio. He is the head of flight dynamics at the ESOC facility. He said, indeed, 17 days is how long they spent in that Airstream trailer. 17 days is how long they spent in that Airstream trailer. It's UVA that we're going to be sending a Planetary Radio t-shirt to and maybe an Oceanside Photo and Telescope rewards card. I got some other cute stuff. You want to hear it? I would love to. John Gallant said that the fourth member who was stuck in the trailer with them

was photo technician Terry Slezak. He was part of the photo film recovery team at the Lunar Receiving Lab. His bare hands picked up a film magazine he didn't realize had been dropped by Neil on the lunar surface. He was thrown in the trailer and got to spend the next few days with the Apollo 11 Astro. Did they have room in there? Okay, the best one of all, the best response came from our friend, Reverend Brent,

who said, you know what? It doesn't matter about Apollo 11's quarantine. We're all still in quarantine. Let's get off this rock and release ourselves from this self-imposed asylum.

To stay here is just plain, wait for it, lunacy. Lunacy. It's worse than being stuck wearing the same pair of bell bottoms for over 30 years thank you reverend brent we couldn't agree more oh gosh please tell me he hasn't worn the same pair of bell bottoms wow you know there's just too much uh too much seriousness in our our trivia questions lately has there been? I tend to agree, but... Actually, no, because our listeners

are always funny no matter what I ask. But in this case, let's delve down the important direction of true Martian history. What year did Marvin the Martian first appear in a cartoon? What year did Marvin the Martian first appear in a cartoon? I would ask about his dog, but I think I've done that long ago. His dog named Canine. We're looking for Marvin. When did Marvin first appear in a video? What year? Go to planetary.org slash radio and find out how

to enter. I'm so glad. My last appearance on your program was far too long ago. I hope he doesn't vaporize me. Now, the only line I can really do for Marvin is, I'm afraid I'll have to disintegrate you. Me too.

I love it. Well, thank you so much. I'm glad to have Marvin return to us on the show. We should let people know that they need to return their answer to us by Monday, August 10th at 2 p.m. Pacific time. All right, everybody, go out there, look up at the night sky, and think about Pluto, the dog. Thank you, and good night. You think they ever met?

Oh, well, he's Bruce Betts, the director of projects for the Planetary Society. He joins us every week here for What's Up. Join us next time when astronomer Heidi Hamel will tell us about Jupiter's new black eye, probably delivered by a monster asteroid. Planetary Radio is produced by the Planetary Society in Pasadena, California. Have a great week. Thank you.