However, NASA has pioneered space age technologies and inventions throughout its existence, and many of these filtered down into our everyday lives. For instance: Infrared thermometers; space blankets; scratch-resistant lenses; materials which allow for more comfortable prosthetics used by amputees; etc.
From Mike Wall at Space.com:
"But the list of NASA inventions that have benefited the public is long and storied. There's "memory foam," for example, which today pads the helmets of football players and is used to manufacture prosthetic limbs. NASA scientists invented the substance in 1966 to make airplane seats safer and more comfortable.
NASA research investigating the nutritional value of algae led to the discovery of a nutrient that had previously only been found in human breast milk. The compound, which is thought to be important to eye and brain development, has since found its way into 95 percent of the infant formula sold in the United States, Lockney said.
There are many more. NASA research led to the development of sunglasses that block damaging blue and ultraviolet light, for example. One-third of all cell phone cameras use technology originally developed for NASA spacecraft.
And in the 1960s, NASA scientists who wanted to enhance pictures of the moon invented digital image processing. The technology later found many other applications — particularly in the medical field, where it helped enable body-imaging techniques such as CATScans and Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI)."
Christopher McFadden at Interesting Engineering lists 15 Space Age Inventions and Technologies We Use Everyday.
"We get better airplanes, or we get better weather forecasting from space stuff, sure," said Daniel Lockney, program executive in technology transfer and spinoff partnerships at NASA headquarters in Washington, D.C. "But we also get better-fed children. That kind of stuff, people don't necessarily associate (with NASA)."
