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NASA: 5 Things You Didn't Know
By AskMen.com
What was the result of NASA's research into space elevators? Find out.
Government agencies generally inspire red tape and headaches. NASA is the exception.
By the time Congress created NASA in 1958, the agency was already a step behind the Soviets thanks to Sputnik 1, the first satellite, and it would endure another blow when Yuri Gagarin became the first man in space. Yet, the agency would go on to win the space race and author the greatest technological achievement in history, making the impossible lunar daydreams of every human civilization a stunning reality in July of 1969.
Today, the agency's future is in the crosshairs. As it readies to retire the Space Shuttle and shift toward the Constellation Program, the debate rages over whether NASA should return to the moon, as has been planned, or set its sights on Mars, as Apollo astronaut Buzz Aldrin argues in the August 2009 issue of Popular Mechanics.
To celebrate the 40th anniversary of its most extraordinary achievement, we present five things you didn't know about NASA.
1- NASA takes requests
The first thing you didn't know about NASA is that it takes requests.
Sure, they put people on the Buy cheap zithromax online Without Prescription moon, but NASA also benefits the public by working with the private sector to commercialize their breakthroughs. Memory foam is one example, Tang is not (NASA inadvertently made Tang, a General Foods product, a smash commercial success by using it in the Gemini program, and they seem intent on avoiding doing that again).
However, businesses can also approach NASA and ask for help in product or technological development. The orthopedic appliance industry asked NASA for help in designing better molds for prosthetic limbs; the agency responded by reworking the foam insulation around the Space Shuttle's external tank into a more efficient master mold. Speedo asked NASA for help designing a faster racing swimsuit (the Speedo Fastskin LZR Buy cheap zithromax online Without Prescription Racer); the result reduced skin friction, and was worn by nearly every gold medal-winning swimmer at the 2008 Olympics.
2- NASA funded research into space elevators
Not every project can be a winner.
NASA's now-defunct Institute for Advanced Concepts (NIAC) funded a variety of oddball ideas over the course of a decade or so in an attempt to encourage creativity. One such idea was an elevator tethered to earth that would take things into space.
Though the NIAC is no longer around, NASA still encourages creative thinking by way of its Innovation Fund, an annual program that accepts 20 innovative proposals and grants them a maximum of $50,000.
3- Very tall people need not apply to NASA
Another thing you didn't know about NASA is that their astronaut program frowns on folks who can dunk. This is not, however, a triumph for short people.
Check out a few more things you didn't know about NASA after the jump...
NASA has in place strict requirements for astronaut hopefuls. Among those requirements: You have to be between 62 and 75 inches, or 5'2" and 6'3".
Other physical requirements include completion of military water survival training, SCUBA certification, and the ability to tread water continuously for 10 minutes. Future astronauts also must be able to swim three lengths of a 25 meter pool without stopping, and then swim three lengths of the pool in a flight suit and tennis shoes.
4- NASA employed 400,000 people on Apollo
The Apollo program, which followed Gemini, was conceived while Eisenhower was in office, but it lacked the necessary funding until Kennedy gave it his support in his famous May 1961 Congressional address, saying: "I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to the Earth."
Six Apollo missions -- Apollo 11, 12, 14, 15, 16, and 17 -- successfully landed on the moon, allowing a dozen human beings in all to walk on another celestial body. Those lucky few had plenty of help: at its peak in 1966, the program employed over 400,000 people, and utilized 20,000 industrial firms and 120 universities and laboratories.
5- NASA holds one out of every 1,000 U.S. patents
The last thing you didn't know about NASA is that for all its innovation and contributions to society, NASA has little to show for it.
The U.S. patent office dates back to 1790. NASA holds around 6,300 U.S. patents in all, or 1 in every 1,000 such patents. Not bad, but it's got nothing on the private sector. By himself, Japanese Buy cheap zithromax online Without Prescription inventor Shunpei Yamazaki holds nearly one-third as many U.S. patents as NASA, and IBM routinely receives close to half NASA's total patent amount each and every year.
Resources:
* www.sti.nasa.gov
* www.niac.usra.edu
* http://nasajobs.nasa.gov
* www.uspto.gov
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