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Athletes Go for the Gold with NASA Spinoffs

NASA technology tends to find its way into the sporting world more often than you’d expect. Fitness is important to the space program because astronauts must undergo the extreme g-forces of getting into space and endure the long-term effects of weightlessness on the human body. The agency’s engineering expertise also means that items like shoes and swimsuits can be improved with NASA know-how.

As the 2024 Olympics are in full swing in Paris, here are some of the many NASA-derived technologies that have helped competitive athletes train for the games and made sure they’re properly equipped to win.

The LZR Racer reduces skin friction drag by covering more skin than traditional swimsuits. Multiple pieces of the water-resistant and extremely lightweight LZR Pulse fabric connect at ultrasonically welded seams and incorporate extremely low-profile zippers to keep viscous drag to a minimum.

Swimsuits That Don’t Drag

When the swimsuit manufacturer Speedo wanted its LZR Racer suit to have as little drag as possible, the company turned to the experts at Langley Research Center to test its materials and design. The end result was that the new suit reduced drag by 24 percent compared to the prior generation of Speedo racing suit and broke 13 world records in 2008. While the original LZR Racer is no longer used in competition due to the advantage it gave wearers, its legacy lives on in derivatives still produced to this day.

Trilion Quality Systems worked with NASA’s Glenn Research Center to adapt existing stereo photogrammetry software to work with high-speed cameras. Now the company sells the package widely, and it is used to analyze stress and strain in everything from knee implants to running shoes and more.

High-Speed Cameras for High-Speed Shoes

After space shuttle Columbia, investigators needed to see how materials reacted during recreation tests with high-speed cameras, which involved working with industry to create a system that could analyze footage filmed at 30,000 frames per second. Engineers at Adidas used this system to analyze the behavior of Olympic marathoners' feet as they hit the ground and adjusted the design of the company’s high-performance footwear based on these observations.

Martial artist Barry French holds an Impax Body Shield while former European middle-weight kickboxing champion Daryl Tyler delivers an explosive jump side kick; the force of the impact is registered precisely and shown on the display panel of the electronic box French is wearing on his belt.

One-Thousandth-of-an-Inch Punch

In the 1980s, Olympic martial artists needed a way to measure the impact of their strikes to improve training for competition. Impulse Technology reached out to Glenn Research Center to create the Impax sensor, an ultra-thin film sensor which creates a small amount of voltage when struck. The more force applied, the more voltage it generates, enabling a computerized display to show how powerful a punch or kick was.

Astronaut Sunita Williams poses while using the Interim Resistive Exercise Device on the ISS. The cylinders at the base of each side house the SpiraFlex FlexPacks that inventor Paul Francis honed under NASA contracts. They would go on to power the Bowflex Revolution and other commercial exercise equipment.

Weight Training Without the Weight

Astronauts spending long periods of time in space needed a way to maintain muscle mass without the effect of gravity, but lifting free weights doesn’t work when you’re practically weightless. An exercise machine that uses elastic resistance to provide the same benefits as weightlifting went to the space station in the year 2000. That resistance technology was commercialized into the Bowflex Revolution home exercise equipment shortly afterwards.

Want to learn more about technologies made for space and used on Earth? Check out NASA Spinoff to find products and services that wouldn’t exist without space exploration.   

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This is a free coupon/excuse for you to infodump on the current topic you’re obsessed with. Take some time away from internet discourse and share with us something you find interesting.

Today I read about Precambrian animals!

The above one is Thectardis, which is an animal so weird we have almost no inclination of how to categorize it. We know it was alive and it was cone shaped. That’s it.

The thing about fossil life from 500+ million years ago is that there often aren’t really any living analogs for it? Many of the animals from that time were sessile, many filter feeders, without much in common with what comes to mind when we think “Animal”—something that moves around and has a brain and thinks. The strata that preserve these animals are very rarely accessible, and these glimpses we have are hard to interpret.

Many of these creatures are known from a single fossil. Many are too weird to interpret or classify even tentatively.

Here’s another organism from that time, Eoandromeda:

Look at this thing. I can’t explain why, but Eoandromeda makes me feel some kind of deep dread. Like...we don’t know what this thing was. We don’t even know if it was an animal. I look at that shape and I want someone to tell me what that thing is. But we don’t know. We don’t have the words for What That Thing Is.

Imagine something so alien, so divergent from the paths life took to the present day, that we can’t look at it and say “That’s a worm” or “That’s a sponge” or “that’s a jellyfish” or...anything. The words for it literally don’t exist, because nothing like it now exists, and we know nothing about it. We’re not looking at different versions of the same categories of creature we have now. We’re looking at something that is too obscure to have a category. We can guess what it might have looked like. But it is so utterly unlike anything that exists now that we know nothing—except that undeniably, it existed.

Namacalathus. Be honest, doesn’t this make you scream inside? Or is it just me? This was a real animal that existed. It doesn’t know or give a fuck what a “snail” or “bird” is.

Learning about dinosaurs is DIFFERENT. We know what bones are. We have them! When we say that sauropod dinosaurs ate plants, we can imagine those plants. We can describe dinosaurs as having a “neck” and “claws” and “legs.” And I think that’s comforting because whatever I feel when I look at Namacalathus is not that.

This one invented muscles! Muscles are okay! I have muscles! That should make me feel better, right!

...Not really! Put it back!

For millions of years these things existed, living their unknowable lives. There was an entire world of these organisms. This was EARTH, our world.

People mostly haven’t heard of these. I think people care less about these strange early creatures because they seem less charismatic, not having brains or doing anything, but I think there is a lot of charisma to the Unknowable Cone Animal, the Dread Spiral, and all the other unsettling animals of the Precambrian.

We got you buddy

Just Do It: Advice for Young Friends

By Bud Koenemund

(Written: January 2014)

A few weeks ago, a friend of mine mentioned she was about to begin her last year as a twenty-something; 30 would be upon her before she knew it. She went on to list 50 things she wants to accomplish in the coming year – many of which involve money and her art (she is a wonderful actress). It is an ambitious list. I wished her luck, and gave her a few words of advice. Since then I’ve been thinking about what I said, and realized I needed to add some more – both for her and for my other young friends, many of whom are artists of one type or another.

If I can give you one piece of advice: DO IT! Do everything on your list! Don’t wait around thinking there will be a better time to start. There won’t be. There is only time, and it goes a lot faster than you realize. Before you know it, you’ll be 30. You’ll go from 30 to 40 in about 10 minutes. And, from 40 to 50 even faster. Albert Einstein, Stephen Hawking, or Neil deGrasse Tyson might argue with me, but time really does speed up as you get older.

When I was your age, I thought 30 was old, and that I’d never get there. Hell, there were a few days when I was in the Army, I didn’t think I’d make it to 22. Now, I’m 45 and there’s very little I wouldn’t trade to go back to 25 knowing what I know now.

I wish I could make you understand me. I know you don’t. You can’t. This is not an insult. It’s just the way life works. You don’t know what you don’t know until years down the road. I was young. I had plans, and I didn’t want to listen to “old” people. I had all the answers. I know so much more now.

One of the most important things I’ve learned about life is that it doesn’t mean shit. In a hundred years, you’ll be dead, and very little of this will matter. What people think of you now or then won’t mean a damned thing. Sure, you might change the world; bring about peace in the Middle East; cure cancer; win a dozen awards – but it won’t affect how your private life is judged.

Whether you graduated first in your class at Harvard, or at the bottom of a community college; if you’re buttoned-down and conservative, or you get caught running naked through Times Square; even if your ex- posts your “No, Baby, I swear I’m the only one who’ll ever see it” sex tape on-line; it might rate a line or two in your Wikipedia entry, and that’s it. And, if you’re dead – and if everyone you know, and who judged you, is dead too – what will you care?

Too many people in this world give a shit about things that don’t matter a bit, especially other people’s business. I figure, if you’re not hurting someone else, and what you’re doing works for you, fuck what other people think. It took me a long time to develop that attitude.

You have to do what makes you happy. Do it your way, but do it. Sing your song. If people don’t like it, fuck ‘em. You’re on your journey, not theirs. You have to do what you can with the time you’ve got.

But, remember, it’s also important to stop and look at the world around you once in a while, to sit down and relax; take your bearings, and make sure you’re on the right path. I should say, make sure you’re on the right path for you!

It’s OK to be a waitress, or a tire salesman, or a security guard, as long as you’re also working toward what you love. If you have five minutes, sit down and read the trade papers, or scribble down the words banging around in your head.

Wayne Gretzky says, “You miss 100 percent of the shots you don’t take.” That applies to everything in life. 100 percent of the sonnets you don’t submit get rejected. You’re passed over for 100 percent of the parts you don’t audition for. You don’t get 100 percent of the raises you don’t ask for. The worst anybody can say is no.

Now, I’m not saying you’re automatically entitled to anything. This is life. It’s not fair. The world doesn’t owe you shit; not money, not love, not happiness, not success. You have to work for what you want, and keep at it. And, in the end, it may get you nowhere. But, if you don’t go after what you want, you’ll end up nowhere anyway. You pays your dollar, and you takes your chances!

Oh, and one more thing: Don’t spend too much time sitting around, listening to old men – like me – spout off about what you should be doing. There is no instruction book for life, and most people who claim to have things figured out are faking it, just like the rest of us.

January 26 1988 - Burnum Burnum plants the Aboriginal flag at the cliffs of Dover, claiming England for the Aboriginal peoples of Australia, exactly 200 years after Arthur Phillip claimed Australia for the British. [video] The full Burnum Burnum Declaration:

I, Burnum Burnum, being a nobleman of ancient Australia, do hereby take possession of England on behalf of the Aboriginal people. In claiming this colonial outpost, we wish no harm to you natives, but assure you that we are here to bring you good manners, refinement and an opportunity to make a Koompartoo - ‘a fresh start’. Henceforth, an Aboriginal face shall appear on your coins and stamps to signify our sovereignty over this domain. For the more advanced, we bring the complex language of the Pitjantjajara; we will teach you how to have a spiritual relationship with the Earth and show you how to get bush tucker.

We do not intend to souvenir, pickle and preserve the heads of 2000 of your people, nor to publicly display the skeletal remains of your Royal Highness, as was done to our Queen Truganinni for 80 years. Neither do we intend to poison your water holes, lace your flour with strychnine or introduce you to highly toxic drugs. Based on our 50,000 year heritage, we acknowledge the need to preserve the Caucasian race as of interest to antiquity, although we may be inclined to conduct experiments by measuring the size of your skulls for levels of intelligence. We pledge not to sterilize your women, nor to separate your children from their families. We give an absolute undertaking that you shall not be placed onto the mentality of government handouts for the next five generations but you will enjoy the full benefits of Aboriginal equality. At the end of two hundred years, we will make a treaty to validate occupation by peaceful means and not by conquest.

Finally, we solemnly promise not to make a quarry of England and export your valuable minerals back to the old country Australia, and we vow never to destroy three-quarters of your trees, but to encourage Earth Repair Action to unite people, communities, religions and nations in a common, productive, peaceful purpose.

Burnum Burnum

لا أستطيع أن أكتبَ عن دمشق، دون أن يُعرِّشَ الياسمين على أصابعي. ‏ ولا أستطيع أن أنطقَ اسمها، دون أن يكتظَّ فمي بعصير .المشمش، والرمان، والتوت، والسفرجل

Nizar Qabbani, A Green Lantern on Damascus’ Door (via fatimahabdullahm)

Still Life with Roses, c. 1860. Adelheid Dietrich (German, 1827 - 1891)