The new issue of NASA's Spinoff magazine is out today, so I took a look at some of the futuristic technologies featured in its pages in the 1970s
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1977: "Footwarmer, small powerpack at right in photo above, fits on back of skiboot to activate heating circuit in soles."
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1976: "Showride—a cross between a movie and an amusement-park ride—combines features of each in 12-person 'moving' cabin. Development emerged from technical information provided by a NASA industrial applications center."
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1976: "Driverless electric tram, an outgrowth of several aerospace technologies, follows small cable on a roadway."
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1977: "The support structure for Disney World’s roller coaster, called 'Space Mountain,' was designed with the help of the NASA STRuctural ANalysis computer program, or NASTRAN."
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1977: "Michael Condon, a quadraplegic from Pasadena, California, demonstrates the NASA-developed voice-controlled wheelchair and its manipulator, which can pick up packages, open doors, turn a TV knob, and perform a variety of other functions."
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1977: "These Boeing 747 escape chutes, for rapid evacuation of passengers in a ground emergency, are inflated by filament-wound pressure vessels, 60 percent lighter than earlier inflation cylinders."
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1976: "Immune-deficient child leaves hospital sterile room for up to four hours carrying germ-free environment with her in a modification of the astronaut's isolation garment."
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1977: "The NASA/Army Tilt Rotor Research Aircraft has large helicopter-like rotors for takeoff and landing, but in cruise flight the rotors tilt forward to become propellers."
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1978: "This electric car uses nickel-zinc batteries, adapted from space technology, which offer double the range of conventional lead-acid batteries"
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NASA’s promotion of Spinoffs originated in 1963 when congressional and public support for the space program was beginning to erode.
Originally the term used to describe unrelated technological benefits resulting from space R&D was — believe it or not — “Fallout.”
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September 8, 1963: The Washington Post reports that in an effort to stem criticism of NASA spending and the Apollo program, the space agency has opened an Office of Technology Utilization to promote the ways in which space R&D will improve the daily lives of Americans. 1/2
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