Never a Dull Place

By Daniel Lockney, Editor, NASA Spinoffs

Scientists and engineers are some of the most fascinating people in the world. They look at things differently, figure out how they work, and come up with ways to make them better. NASA scientists and engineers are at the top of that class, working on some of the world’s most challenging problems, expanding humanity’s understanding of the universe, sending robot explorers to distant planets, keeping astronauts alive and safe in the harsh environment of space, and studying our home planet from the unique vantage point of space. These folks are the best and the brightest on or off the planet. I can say that without humility, because I’m not one of them. I’m a writer. I tell their stories.

I am the editor of an annual NASA publication called Spinoff, which highlights the ways that technologies originally designed for NASA missions are now found in everyday life. At Spinoff, we cover everything from cutting edge medical technologies to items that you might find on your own kitchen counter. Each story is different and with a surprising result, but each follows a similar story pattern: NASA was working on something cool and high tech that had never been done before. Along the way, one of the engineers said, “Hey, I know we’re building this for a space mission, but you know where it might also work?” And then I come in a little while later and tell the story of how a tracking device designed for a satellite is now being used to automate farm equipment or how pattern-matching software developed for the Hubble Space telescope to map the stars is now helping biologists track endangered whale sharks and polar bears, both of which have life-long distinctive markings similar to a human’s fingerprints.

This job is never boring. In addition to interviewing and working with some of the best minds on the planet, each story we cover is different, so I am constantly learning about new and exciting projects. For example, NASA is currently experimenting with ways to make fuels out of algae. It turns out that algae is a great source for oil, and NASA has developed a method for using algae as both a fuel source and a way of cleaning sewage—by floating bags containing algae and sewage on the surface of the ocean. The algae remove carbon dioxide from the air, preserve useful nutrients while cleaning the sewage, and then release clean water into the ocean. The algae can then be made into biofuel. Other cool projects on the horizon are using nerve signals in the throat that control speech to create thought-controlled robotics. This may lead to the world’s first silent cell phone conversations!

NASA is never a dull place, and if you are interested in finding more about the ways NASA is bringing its space technologies back down to Earth, you can read on our website (http://spinoff.nasa.gov) about the over 1,650 cool spinoff technologies we’ve covered in Spinoff, or you can check out a colorful flash feature called NASA City that we created to show how NASA technologies are all around you: www.nasa.gov/city.