According to Investopedia, „when a company creates a new independent company by selling or distributing new shares of its existing business, this is called a spinoff”. In the last decades, NASA has invested a lot in inventions that have become in the meanwhile commercial products, or services we use daily. „Spinoffs” magazine is a NASA publication that has documented since 1976 and published in time more than 2,000 of those technologies.
The life of many of us has reached a superior level of comfort and one of the reason for this is the influence of the space inventions in the 21st century. So, which one of the objects you use the most has origins in the NASA space inventions?
Baby formula
Baby formulas contains nutritional enrichment ingredients which were tested for the first time by NASA. At that time, NASA was trying to use algae as a recycling agent. This way Formulaid was created, an algae-based vegetable oil. Formulaid contains two fatty acids that can also be found in human milk.
Computer Mouse
In 1960s, Taylor and Doug Englebart had a goal: to make computers more interactive. They were trying to discover a way of manipulating data on the computer screen. This led to the invention of the computer mouse.
Camera phones
In the beginning of the 1990s, NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory invented a miniature system that used little energy to take photographs in the outer space. Nowadays, this technology is being used in cell phones and computer cameras.
Portable computer
Grid Compass was the world’s first portable computer. In the 1980s, Grid Compass the was being used on shuttle missions. This computer was used in communication and launching satellites.
Many of these inventions are improving our lives and we cannot imagine not using them anymore: smoke detector, satellite navigation, tap water filters, ear-thermometers, and other inventions are space spinoff technologies. How would your life be without them?