I have heard how NASA brought us the ever so great tasting TANG and also invented velcro. Are there any other “technology” we benefit from, and where can I learn about them?
You might find some good stuff at these sites:
Nothing beats those pens that write upsidedown, though!
Arjuna34
http://www.velcro.com/ABOUT/history.html
Not to nitpick, but NASA doesn’t seem to have been involved in the invention of Velcro.
Can’t forget Freeze Dried Ice Cream!
I can tell you the one greatest spinoff of the space program, you’ll never see it listed because it’s too abstract. I used to get lectured on this at length because I learned compsci from a bunch of NASA-affiliated EEs and physicists.
That innovation is Systems Engineering. It is the second great innovation of the Industrial Revolution, right up there with the invention of standardized interchangable parts. Consider that all the thousands of systems in a spacecraft, most were built by different vendors, and all the systems would only be put together during the actual mission, yet they had to work perfectly the first time. Millions of components were built without ever coming in contact with the devices they’d be installed in. This required a completely new approach to engineering, they called it Systems Engineering because it was a systemic approach to how to keep all the vendors working from compatible specs. It’s a very complex system, I won’t bore you with the details because they’re more of interest to bureaucrats than you or I.
Without SE, none of the great accomplishments of the Apollo program would have been possible, and neither would many of the common technologies we take for granted today. Even the computer chip would not be possible without SE.