Stale Spinoffs: Tang and Teflon Anyone?

National Space Society’s International Space Development Conference: Benefits of Space Exploration, NASA HQ

“Speakers from many walks of life will present stories of how space exploration led to products that benefit people on Earth, such as:

– Space suit technology that has given children afflicted with an unusual disease a new lease on life.
– Technology used to monitor astronaut health in space that has been used by doctors to help treat people in remote regions across the globe.
– Microspheres that have been used by industry to clean up major oil spills.
– Digital implantable hearing aid technology that has restored hearing to over 60,000 people.”

Editor’s comment: NASA needs to get some new spinoffs to hype. These ones are all at least a decade old and are quite stale. Indeed, given that NASA’s new charter, the VSE, is centered around exploration – for exploration’s sake – why even bother with pushing these quasi-relevant, often quasi-contrived spin-offs at all? But, if the ISS is also to do science other than that which is directly in support of the VSE, then shouldn’t NASA be looking for better, more current public justifications for such research?

Editor’s update: If you tuned into this morning’s Senate hearing on ISS science, you’d have heard a rapid-fire recitation of very recent – indeed current – direct-benefit/spinoffs/dual-use technologies from Bill Readdy, Micke Fincke, and Howard Ross. It would seem that one part of NASA (Exploration Systems Mission Directorate’s Innovative Partnerships Program Benefits Manager) does not know what other parts of the agency (ISS – Space Operations Mission Directorate) are doing.