Have you ever heard the story about  NASA inventing cordless power tools?

Or inventing that orange drink  powder advertised by an orangutan? Well, those particular  stories actually are not true.

But being a Space Age research organization means that NASA does have a lot  of inventions to its name. And sometimes, private companies  realize how valuable that technology could be to an average consumer, and they sell it as a product based  on that original NASA research. Today, we’re covering eight examples  of NASA spinoff technologies, and I all but guarantee you have  owned at least one of these things.

And you might have even eaten one. [♪ INTRO] Do you live in a part of the world  where summer or winter rolls around and you would rather not have the  temperature inside of your house match the temperature outside of your house? Well in order to do that, your walls  might be lined with a technology that NASA makes ample use  of, called radiant barriers. Because much like you, NASA engineers  are concerned with protecting both people and spacecraft from the extreme  temperatures found in outer space.

For example, the exterior of the  International Space Station reaches a whopping 200 degrees Celsius during the day. And it plunges to negative 200 degrees at night. Now on Earth you would  typically solve this kind of temperature regulation problem  with a bunch of insulation.

Like if you’re a seal, you would  have a thick layer of blubber. Or if you’re a human, you might fill  the walls of your house with fiberglass Which you should not put in your mouth, no matter how much it looks like cotton candy. Insulation regulates temperature by  slowing down how fast thermal energy will transfer to or from a given object.

In other words, it takes a  lot longer for that object to gain energy and warm up, or  lose energy and cool down. But wrapping a space station or a space  telescope in a bunch of synthetic blubber would be, like, bulky and heavy. So NASA engineers went a different direction.

What if instead of trying to  slow down the transfer of energy, they could just bounce it wherever they wanted? Well, that is what a radiant barrier is. It blocks the energy that  comes in the form of light, also known as electromagnetic radiation, and it redirects it back to where it came from.

And based on the materials you use, a  radiant barrier can work in either direction. By pointing a shiny, reflective side  outward you can keep excess heat out. Or by flipping it around, you  can keep heat trapped inside.

Now, NASA did not invent radiant barriers. But like with so many things,  they perfected the technology by figuring out the best stuff to make it out of, and how important layering those materials is. So NASA counts that as an official spinoff.

And Yes! NASA has been publishing  its Spinoff magazine since 1976, which highlights and celebrates  commercial products and services that came about thanks to  some kind of NASA support. If you’re a fan of camping, you  might notice a NASA-inspired radiant barrier lining the  inside of your all-season tent.

Or you might recognize it in the form  of those emergency blankets that you keep in your car's glove compartment. They’re shiny to keep your warmth in. And some of you, if you were to open a  wall or pull up a floorboard in your house, will find a thin, shiny layer of foil  bouncing your body heat right back at you.

Maybe don’t do that if you rent, though. Landlords: not generally a fan of  just pulling up parts of your house, even if it’s done in the name of science.   Radiant barriers are a pretty  cool innovation, pun intended. But NASA scientists are always open to multiple solutions for that  temperature regulation problem.

Enter: the very futuristic-sounding aerogels. Aerogels were first invented in the 1930s, more than two decades before  NASA came into existence. The exact ingredients and structures vary, but they are all synthetic,  ultralight, and low-density. Now, the reason they are so  light and so not-dense is because they are absolutely riddled  with tiny pores filled with gas… which is why you might hear aerogels get  called by another name: frozen smoke.

But gasses, like the air around us,  are actually great thermal insulators. So if you trap some gas in  enough structurally sound pores, you can build yourself a strip  of aerogel that is over 99% air, but can both keep a flower  safe from a bunsen burner and support the weight of a brick. Which is amazing!

But the  original aerogels had a problem. They were all incredibly fragile and brittle, which made them difficult to shape or  move without breaking them into pieces. In the 1990s, NASA needed a way to insulate  their rockets’ cryogenic fuel tanks.

So, they partnered with a  private company to develop a flexible yet durable  version of this frozen smoke. And once they had succeeded, this  new kind of aerogel found its way into construction projects,  insulating the inside of walls, and even in home appliances. Some refrigerators use aerogel  to help keep the cold in.

Meanwhile, if you’re the outdoorsy  type, there might be aerogel inside of your camping gear, insulated  winter coat, or even your shoes! In fact, one mountaineer claimed  that she was able to keep her toes nice and cozy while climbing Mt. Everest… wearing only a single pair of socks  and aerogel inserts inside her boots.

Now, you might not see late night  commercials hawking aerogel shoe inserts and boasting how their product  features a material invented by NASA. But you probably have seen at least  one that is hyping its product by claiming it is based on NASA  tech: memory foam mattresses. And that claim is true.

Memory foam, also known as temper foam, really is an honest-to-goodness NASA invention. In the 1960s, NASA-Ames  scientists were looking to create crashproof seats for commercial aircraft. And sure, there is a limit to how much  you can expect foam to protect your body in a crash, but temper foam  was a wild leap forward, and every bit of protection counts.

Compared to other foams, it absorbs  more energy and compresses more when you apply force to it, whether  it’s just your butt being weighed down by gravity, or your butt pressing into it as  your plane’s fall is stopped by the ground. And after it deforms and absorbs the shock, memory foam slowly returns to its original shape. The force on your butt gets spread out  over time, making the impact hurt less.

NASA’s innovation worked so well  that within just a few years, temper foam started to spread throughout  a bunch of different industries. And today, you can find it in everything  from X-ray table pads to football helmets. To of course, those mattresses  and pillows that mold to your body and easily retake their shape, for all the people who like their mattresses and pillows to do that.

But NASA doesn’t just need to  think about protecting the bones and squishy organs of its astronauts. It also needs to protect astronaut eyes! Which leads us to our next example.

Electromagnetic radiation comes in many forms. Some kinds, like visible light,  are not too dangerous unless they’re coming at you in large amounts. But other forms, like ultraviolet  light and x-rays can be dangerous even in small quantities.

They’re known as ionizing radiation  because each particle of light has enough energy to knock  electrons off…or ionize…atoms, damaging delicate structures inside your body. You know, delicate structures like your DNA. And when astronauts are up in space, they are at greater risk of  exposure to ionizing radiation.

So NASA scientists are tasked with  finding ways to protect against it. But after one team of researchers left NASA, they grew interested in protecting  people down on Earth doing activities that expose them to a bunch of dangerous light. Stuff like welding and laser work.

So these scientists took what they  learned while they were at NASA and combined it with previous research from  a totally unrelated field: ornithology! That’s the study of birds. But It turns out that birds of prey have  unique oil droplets in their eyes that absorb harmful ultraviolet light,  as well as violet and blue light, while allowing red, orange, and  green light to pass through.

It’s those longer visible wavelengths  that are more helpful for hunting down tasty little rodents and distinguishing  them from their natural environment. So the team was able to mix their  own version of these oil droplets with some other natural components,  such as dyes and zinc oxide, to create a filter that protects welders. And eventually, that technology was adapted for sunglasses and other commercial protective lenses.

Meanwhile, there is a completely different  NASA spinoff technology out there helping to keep something  else harmful out of your body. This SciShow video is supported by Ground News, a website and app that lets you compare how major events are being covered so you  can see more sides of more stories. These days, a lot of us get our news  from one side of the political spectrum and totally miss stories that outlets  more aligned with another party covered.   That's where Ground News comes in.

Ground News gathers news from  50,000 news sources around the world to help you read between the lines of media bias. You can go to ground.news/scishow  to see how it works for yourself. If you look at the coverage of  Alaska’s Juneau icefield melting, 54% comes from the center, 36% from  the left, and just 11% from the right.

Outlets across the political  spectrum report that it’s melting nearly five times faster than in the 80s. But the left calls it a “death spiral,” while  the right calls it’s “incredibly worrying.” So we can agree this is bad. Keeping up with the latest  science news can be tough with all the different narratives out there,  and it takes some serious fact-checking to feel confident about what we're sharing.

You can go to ground.news/scishow  or click the link in the description to get 40% off unlimited  access with their Vantage plan. Water is a limited resource on any space mission. It would be way too expensive to  continually ship up potable water to the ISS and let the astronauts  vent their waste out into space.

So if you’re an astronaut, you gotta  reuse what you’ve got, over and over. Including the water in your pee. Which means that the spacecraft you call  home has to have really good filters inside its wastewater treatment system.

But those really good filters also have  to be small enough to launch into space, so it’s no wonder scientists have adapted the tech and made it portable for humans down on Earth. If you’re an avid camper, or live  in a place with an inadequate water filtration system, you  might even have one of these in your cupboard right now. Because multiple companies are  selling water bottles that rely on the same technology NASA has  developed for use on the ISS.

For example, some of these bottles  use a filter made out of nanoceramics with a bunch of teeny tiny pores  less than 100 nanometers in size. That means they’re small enough to trap particles of sediment or chemical contaminants. And also to kill potentially  harmful microorganisms, these filters also have a bunch of silver ions that can disrupt those microbes’ cell walls.

So you might be using NASA  technology on your next hike to keep something unhealthy outside of your body. But what about using NASA technology to  get something healthy into your body? Sometimes it takes a few steps to connect a bit of NASA research to a commercial product.

Like how is Mars connected to…baby food? Back in the 1980s, NASA funded a private  company to find a single-celled algae that could be used as a biological  multi-tool on long-term space missions. You know, like, something that can  provide you with a bunch of oxygen to breathe in your Martian habitat  right up until you need to eat it.

And scientists from that company  walked away with one particular species that they could use to create a nutritional  supplement for commercial foodstuffs. Including stuff for literal babies. The species of algae is called  Crypthecodinium cohnii, and it is great at producing a critical omega-3 fatty acid  called docosahexaenoic acid, or DHA.

DHA is really difficult for our  bodies to make on their own, even when we get the base  ingredients from a normal diet. But it plays a lot of essential  roles, from helping us maintain our cardiovascular health, to helping  infants with their brain development. And that is why this  algae-derived DHA supplement is claimed to be found in over 90% of  the infant formula sold in the USA.

But if your doctor’s telling you to  get a little more DHA in your life, you do not have to, just like,  add baby food to your diet. A few weekly servings of a seafood like salmon or herring can help you out with that. Speaking of babies though, you know  when you take a kid to the doctor, and a nurse checks their ear with  that funky looking thermometer?

That is an infrared thermometer. And it’s thanks to NASA that no one  has to take a child’s temperature via that more traditional route anymore. Whether it’s at the doctor's  office or in your home.

See, infrared radiation is  just another form of light. And it’s a big deal in the world of  space science because astronomers can use it to peer through dust  that is opaque to visible light. So infrared telescopes can see deep  into the core of our home galaxy, or out towards the oldest  galaxies in the universe!

But infrared light also corresponds to the heat emitted by astronomical bodies, including planets. And based on the exact wavelengths  of infrared light emitted, you can literally take a planet’s temperature. And that, is just a hop skip and a jump  away from capturing the heat radiated by a human body, and spitting  out a temperature for that, too.

The infrared thermometers you can find in  doctors’ offices, or purchase yourself, were first developed using NASA  funding back in the early 1990s. Due to a nursing shortage, medical  facilities were looking for a new kind of thermometer that was quick to use, easy  to sterilize, and a lot less invasive than an oral or rectal thermometer. So they turned to NASA for funding.

And aren’t we all happy? I, for one, am glad that NASA was  able to help them out with that one. Our final entry is also tied to telescopes.

And we’re going to end with a NASA innovation that you won’t just find inside a home. You might be holding it in your hand, right now. Because one of the most important  spinoffs to ever come out of NASA research is a kind of image sensor that you  will find inside your smartphone.

See, digital photography might not  have been as ubiquitous in the 1990s as it is today, but it was certainly a thing. And at the time NASA was  designing and launching Hubble. And the main digital sensor tech that astronomers were using was CCDs, or charge-coupled devices.

But as amazing as CCDs were for  the time, NASA was also looking for something a bit less bulky and power  hungry, and a bit more efficient. So one team developed a brand  new digital imaging sensor that goes by the acronym

CMOS: complementary  metal oxide semiconductor. While many telescopes still make use of CCDs, CMOS sensors soon found their way into  all sorts of commercial digital cameras. From the cameras in mobile phones, to the camera that we are using  to film this episode right now! And also that one!

So thank you, NASA, for all of the  brainpower and money you put into developing technology that works for you  that can also work for us normies, too! [♪ OUTRO]