The space technology that we use daily

The program Apollo wasn’t only a space race, infact, the Moon landing produced even incredible technological discoveries, which then become of common usage. The space technology infact get spread in the civil usage because it is able to substantially improve the life’s quality.

The space technology that makes our life easier

The human eye is really sensitive to the blue and the green light and, in the ’90s, a scientist of the Ames Research Center, thanks to the NASA’s funds, developed some optical filters to stop the blue light. It is useful to make the camouflage objects much more visible, for example in the forests, now they are commercialized in the realization of ski glasses.

From a project set aside by the Nasa, the one of the silver-zinc batteries, which didn’t give many results in the space field, the company ZPower realized some batteries which are perfect for the hearing systems, because their live is much more longer than normal.

Even the HD cameras come from the NASA technology. Their engineers infact made light and powerful devices by using the technology of the CMOS (Complementary metal-oxide semiconductor), to realize some sensors with active pixels. Which are used even for the GoPro cameras to realize videos from our own bike or motorbike, that reached an income of 10 billion of dollars.

The drills and screwdrivers

Maybe they aren’t used by all, but the modern drills owe a lot to the space research. Let’s just think that, in the space, isn’t easy to get electric cables that fly around while we have to repair something outside the structure.

For this reason the NASA signed the Black & Decker and the Martin Marietta to better develop the prototypes of drills and screwdrivers without wires. They were so able to make them more easy to handle and with more power.

But even the realization of the drill with impulses was born right to avoid a problem that there is only in the space: the one of the bolts’ floating in lack of gravity.

The space technology helps the firefighters

Important discoveries in the space field were extremely useful for the ones that every risk their own lifes while fighting with the fires.

Systems like the antigases masks, used in the whole firefighters’ world, were realized in the NASA laboratories. Even if it wasn’t them to directly invent it, were able to make the filtering and purification’s system light and easy to handle. Which is much more easy to bring in the space but especially on the earth, in extreme situations.

Infact in the ’70s the breathing’s devices were such bulky that often they weren’t used, by exposing the firefighters to huge risks. The NASA so, together with the department for the technology and the fires of the commerce ministry, developed a lighter and more compact system of breathing. It is even equipped with a larger mask, to give more visibility to the firefighters.

Always in the project Fire field has been introduced the usage of the polymeric textures. Materials realized with long chains of molecules, that have important proprierty of strenght and heat proof. They were discovered by Carl Marverl for a research in the airspace field, the NASA adopted them for its mission.

Infact, after the disaster of the Apollo 1 of the NASA they were looking for a texture that wasn’t inflammable and even stable in a large range of temperatures. The discovery of the polybenzimidazole, it was so introduced even for the firefighters uniforms, but not only. the polymeric textures are infact used in many sectors like the car race, the army and the industry.

The fakes about the space inventions

Between the inventions that instead don’t really come from the space technology, there is the teflon, cover extremely resistant to the heat, which is in reality an idea of the 1938 of Roy Plunkett.

Another error is the one to assign the discovery of the velcro to the NASA, the velcro infact was born in the ’40s in Switzerland by an idea of George de Mestral.

In entrambi i casi si tratta di scoperte utilizzate dagli astronauti, ma non nate per lo spazio.

This post is also available in: Italiano