NASA'S MISSION

CREATES NEW

TECHNOLOGY

THE COMPUTER TECHNIQUE developed to clarify photographs transmitted from the Moon and Mars to Earth can also enhance the value of X-ray pictures for medical diagnoses.

Rainy-day auto accidents are being reduced as much as 90 percent in some places by grooving pavement, as a result of NASA studies of aircraft skidding on wet runways.

A sensor for wind tunnel research, smaller than the head of a pin, can be inserted by means of a hypodermic needle into a vein or artery to measure blood pressure without interfering with a patient's circulation. A West Coast hospital has used the sensor to evaluate implantation of artificial heart valves.

These are some of hundreds of uses of space technology in industry, medicine, education, and other activities here on Earth. The results of aerospace research and development-inventions, data, concepts, designs, discoveries, materials, processes, devices, techniques, computer software, and managerial methods are made widely available by the NASA Technology Utilization Program that this booklet describes.

The scope, breadth, and complexity of NASA's mission to explore and develop peaceful uses of outer space demand a great variety of new knowledge. Space research is yielding both incremental advances in fabrication processes and quantum jumps in the state of some arts. This is obvious when you consider such unprecedented requirements as these:

A communication network of 21 stations (extending from Point Barrow, Alaska, to Carnarvon, Australia), controlled through two computer centers, to direct faraway vehicles. . . Heat shields to withstand 20,000°F, batteries that do not weaken at -100°, and gloves with which a man can hold an object at any temperature from -170 to 250° for 5 minutes. . . . Packaging

SPECIALIZED TRANSDUCER.....a transfer example

A transducer developed for the Manned Spacecraft Center to measure the impact of the Apollo spacecraft Command Module during water landings is being used in the fitting of artificial limbs. The transducer is smaller than a dime and weighs less than an ounce. The sensing diaphragm is stainless steel and the whole unit is waterproof. As used in the Command Module, or in the hospital, it will respond to static or dynamic changes in pressure, and is not affected by temperatures between freezing and 120°F.

of 36 rocket engines, a power plant, air-conditioning and environmental control equipment, escape and survival aids, instrumentation, and guidance, control, communication, and recording apparatus, along with three men, in a relatively small vehicle. . . . A braking system to slow a vehicle from 24,000 mph to the landing speed of a helicopter without atmospheric help.

To meet such needs, thousands of scientists and engineers are producing new technology faster than it can be disseminated by traditional means. How can this great national resource be tapped by a machine operator in Wisconsin, an educator in Oklahoma, a medical researcher in Boston, and a design engineer in Cleveland? This is the challenge that the NASA Technology Utilization Program was created to meet. It has four basic purposes:

• To increase the return on the national investment in aerospace research by encouraging additional use of the results.

• To shorten the time gap between the discovery of new knowledge and its effective use in the marketplace.

• To aid the movement of new knowledge across industrial, disciplinary, and regional boundaries, and importantly

To contribute to the development of better means of transferring knowledge from its points of origin to other points of potential use.

Breathing Sensor...... a transfer example

Infants, comatose children, or adult patients sometimes require surgical implantation of a tracheotomy tube in the windpipe to ease breathing. If the tube is clogged, cutting off breathing, brain damage or death. can result within from two to four minutes.

Ordinarily a full-time nurse is required, who checks the tube visually and takes immediate corrective action when necessary. Integrated circuitry, designed and fabricated for aerospace use by NASA's Ames Research Center,

has been modified to note differences in temperature of air passing through the tube, and actuate an audible or visible alarm within 10 seconds of any change. The signal can be given at a nurse's station, or in another room if the patient is at home. Thus the patient's care is improved and facilitated.

43-329 O-70-6

HOW NEW

TECHNOLOGY IS

RECORDED

NASA COLLECTS THE RESULTS of aerospace-related research and development from all parts of the world to support its work. This collection now totals nearly 600,000 indexed documents, most of which have been abstracted and microfilmed. This aerospace data and information collection is a useful national resource which is made available to the industrial, educational, medical and professional complex through the NASA Technology Utilization Program.

Each of NASA's field installations has a Technology Utilization Officer. His assignment is to identify, document and evaluate new technology generated by NASA and its contractors and to assure its rapid availability to potential users outside as well as within the aerospace community. These officers administer a special clause in NASA's contracts with private companies that requires them to report to NASA new technology developed in the course of their work. New technology that is thus reported and deemed to have commercial potentialities is announced to business and industry in appropriate ways:

A Tech Brief is the most commonly used announcement medium.

Tech Briefs: Concise descriptions of inventions, discoveries, and other technological advances from NASA programs.

It is a one- or two-page bulletin concisely describing an innovation and explaining its basic concepts and principles. The reader may obtain more information about it, including test data, drawings, and specifications, by writing to the Technology Utilization Officer whose address is given on the Tech Brief. Many of the innovations announced in this way must be modified to be useful to the readers of these briefs, but the concepts stimulate thought, and analogs of the hardware described often can be developed for many uses.

Six categories of Tech Briefs are issued: Electrical (electronic), Physical Sciences (energy sources), Materials (chemistry), Life Sciences, Mechanical, and Computer Programs. Cumulative indexes to Tech Briefs are issued to lead engineers to NASA's solutions to problems similar to those that may arise in their own work.

TU Compilations provide a collection of many related ideas into a single book, covering the general subject. These are collections of brief statements of innovations, all in a related field, generously illustrated and, taken together, a workbook on a particular field at the practical level. Recent examples include "Machine Shop Measurement" and "Tools, Fixtures, and Test Equipment for Flat Conductor Cables".

Technology Utilization Reports describe innovations of special significance or complexity. These are more detailed announcements than Tech Briefs, and bear such titles as "Joining Ceramics and Graphite to Other Materials", "Induction Heating Advances: Applications to 5800°F" and "Constructing Inexpensive Automatic Picture-Transmission Ground Stations".

Technology Surveys consolidate the results of NASA-sponsored research-and-development efforts which have advanced whole areas of technology. Noted authorities on the subject matter write these "guidebooks" for NASA to help others benefit from the accomplishments described. Magnetic tape recording, solid lubricants, thermal insulation systems, high-velocity metalworking, and advanced valve technology are examples of the topics that have been surveyed.

Conference Proceedings are also published to disseminate technology. NASA sponsors several conferences each year for particular industries and groups. At such meetings scientists and engineers who have made major contributions to technology review their work for potential beneficiaries of it in an industrial community. Conferences held on "Pavement Grooving and Traction Studies" and "Selected Technology for the Electric Power Industry" are typical examples.

SPECIALIZED INFORMATION

SERVICES

REGIONAL DISSEMINATION CENTERS

NEW KNOWLEDge is acquired in bits and pieces more often than in readily usable packages. To solve a problem in one context, information acquired for a dozen other purposes often must be pulled together, applied to the specific situation, and possibly expanded by further study of individual requirements.

Six Regional Dissemination Centers established by NASA help potential users of new technology obtain it in packages appropriate to their needs. No two of these centers are alike. Each one, however, is based at a university or not-for-profit research institute, and staffed with professional personnel skilled in the use of computer search-and-retrieval techniques to assemble information. These centers establish Government-universityindustry partnerships by serving fee-paying industrial clients, both large and small, in a variety of ways:

Current Awareness Searches: Computer tapes bearing 6000-or-so new citations of scientific and technical reports are searched each month for items of likely value to each client. This is done by machine matching an "interest profile" of the client's objectives, problems, needs, and desires against indexed descriptions of aerospace researchers' findings. Specialists then screen the citations obtained in this way for relevance and quickly forward the results to the client. He then may request and receive full copies of whichever documents among those cited that he decides may be useful to him.

Retrospective Searches: More thorough searches are made in response to clients' specific questions. Computer tapes bearing citations of previous as well as the most recent additions to the aerospace library are machine searched. The output is evaluated by the RDC's experts and sent to the company or person who posed the question. Full copies of the documents located in this way are also sent when requested.

Standard Interest Profiles: The regional centers prepare and use profiles of this type when they have numerous clients with closely related interests. Like readymade clothing, these profiles reduce the cost to customers who do not require custom-tailored information service.

Listings of Technology Utilization Publications

Abstracts and listings of all Technology Utilization Publica-. tions are provided in the booklet entitled "Transferable Technology-Fall 1969". This booklet can be obtained from the Technology Utilization Division, NASA Headquarters, Washington, D.C. 20546, or from any NASA installation Technology Utilization Office listed on the inside back cover.