Cool as the Super Soaker is, we're not sure it's an essential in our daily lives. Not now the temperatures have started to drop and blasting cold water into the face of kids has gone from fun recreational activity to ASBO-worthy behaviour, anyway. Which is fine, because it's not the only invention to have come out of NASA's various technical and scientific innovations - in fact you'd be hard pressed to count all the spin-off technologies that resulted from the space agency's developments, including a bunch of things we use every day and take for granted. As it stands, NASA has filed more than 6,300 patents with the US government, and not all of them are rockets. Some of them, but not all of them. Some of the inventions are a little less surprising - of course freeze dried and microwaveable meals come from the stuff astronauts eat in zero gravity! - whilst others make sense when you think about them, like the existence of cordless power drills and vacuum cleaners, which were used to dig up Moon rocks during the Apollo missions. Don't want to be trailing a long power cord out of the lunar lander, do you? More surprising, then, is that we have NASA to thank for such things as ear thermometers, insulation you get in your average loft, invisible dental braces, memory foam, smoke detectors, shoe insoles, water filters, and the majority of the equipment you get in your local gym. Oh and the joystick, so NASA are pretty much responsible for all of video games, too.
Tom Baker is the Comics Editor at WhatCulture! He's heard all the Doctor Who jokes, but not many about Randall and Hopkirk. He also blogs at http://communibearsilostate.wordpress.com/
