How Our Trip to the Moon Pushed Innovation Here on Earth
Welcome to Apollo Week, celebrating 50 years since the Apollo 11 mission, explaining what it means today, and exploring how its legacy will shape the future of space exploration.
The Apollo program wasn’t all about getting us to the Moon. Innovation and technology developed for those lunar voyages often have had second lives here on planet Earth. Here are eight examples.
Innovation: Freeze-Dried Meals
Invention Date: 1965, developed for the Gemini missions and improved for the Apollo program.
Moon Use: Coated in gelatin to prevent crumbling, provided appetizing meals for astronauts, like shrimp cocktail, chicken & veggies, and butterscotch pudding.
Current Use: Available in camping supply stores for the overnight hiker. Of course, “astronaut” ice cream remains a best-seller at museums.
Innovation: The Dustbuster
Invention Date: 1971, NASA partnering with Black & Decker.
Moon Use: To collect lunar rock and soil samples for Apollo 15, NASA developed a lightweight, battery-powered drill vacuum to suck up particles from hard-to-reach Moon crevices.
Current Use: That underlying tech was used to create the handheld, cordless vacuum cleaner that has sucked up dirt in hard-to-reach home crevices for the last 40 years.
Innovation: Temper ("Memory") Foam
Invention Date: 1968, NASA scientists at the Ames Research Center in Silicon Valley.
Moon Use: The open-cell polyurethane silicone plastic foam was used for more comfortable and more shock-absorbing seat cushioning in air and space crafts.
Current Use: Mattresses, particularly the popular shipped “boxed” mattresses like Tempur-Pedic, Nectar, and Leesa.
Innovation: Anti-Fogging Coating
Invention Date: First used in the later Gemini missions in 1965-66.
Moon Use: To prevent fogging on capsule windows during take-off and on helmet visors while on the Moon, which would have been catastrophic.
Current Use: Now used in consumer-grade ski goggles, diving masks, and eyeglasses.
Innovation: Nike Airs
Invention Date: 1977, when former NASA engineer Marion Franklin Rudy brought a unique production idea to the shoe company.
Moon Use: A process known as “blow rubber molding,” where hollowed-out plastic parts are formed and filled with compressed, dense gases, is used to provide extra comfort and protection in Apollo-era astronaut helmets.
Current Use: First premiering in 1978 in the Nike Air Tailwind, Rudy helped Nike develop a shoe with a hollowed-out heel filled with compressed air providing extra cushioning, shock-absorbing, and buoyancy. Nike Airs remain a bestseller to this day.
Innovation: Studless Winter Tires
Invention Date: First developed by NASA and Goodyear for January 1971’s Apollo 14 mission.
Moon Use: Apollo’s 14’s “Rickshaw,” a mobile equipment transporter pulled by Alan Shepard across the lunar surface, rolled on tires made out of this flexible rubber specifically developed to remain pliable even in extreme cold temperatures.
Current Use: Goodyear uses the material to create studless winter tires that provides traction in the snow without destroying road surfaces.
Innovation: LVAD
Invention: Early 1970s, NASA working with Cleveland Clinic Foundation.
Moon Use: Developed during World War II, rocket engine turbopumps shot the Apollo 11 crew to the Moon.
Current Use: Using similar tech, NASA engineers designed a left ventricular assist device (LVAD) that kept blood flowing in a patient while they wait for a heart transplant. This cardiac pump has saved hundreds of lives.
Innovation: Beta Cloth
Invention Date: 1967, in the aftermath of Apollo 1’s deadly fire during a test exercise.
Moon Use: After Apollo 1’s tragic fire that claimed the lives of three astronauts, NASA engineers redesigned the spacesuits to be fireproof. Made from ultrafine glass filaments coated with Teflon, “Beta cloth” proved to keep astronauts safe for the rest of the Apollo program.
Current Use: A modified version of the fireproof fabric is now used in tensile roofing for domed sports stadiums across the world, including Dallas’s AT&T Stadium, London’s Millennium Dome, and Atlanta’s Georgia Dome.
Plus: Other Moon Firsts
We all know that on July 20, 1969, Neil Armstrong became the first human to walk on the Moon. But what other Moon “firsts” have we achieved over the years?
🌙 The First Manmade Object
A decade before Apollo 11, on September 14 1959, the Soviet Union crash landed a spherical probe called Luna 2 onto the lunar surface. Impacting at a speed of more than 6,500 miles per hour, it’s believed that the stainless steel “pennants” that the Soviets wanted to scatter across the Moon were vaporized upon contact.
🌙 The First Close-Up Images
On July 31, 1964, we finally were able to see what the Moon looked up close. Filled with craters, pock marks, and rocks, the lunar surface revealed itself in grainy images taken by the Ranger 7 before it also crashed landed.
🌙 The First to Carry Terrestrial Life to the Moon
In September 1968, months before the first humans, two steppe tortoises were actually the first Earth-bound beings to orbit the Moon in the Soviet Union’s Zoid 5.
🌙 The First Meal
After their long trip to the Moon, Armstrong and Aldrin were mighty hungry, so they ate their dinner earlier than the mission had planned. That meal consisted of peaches, sugar cookie cubes, coffee, and, yes, bacon squares.
🌙 The First Holy Communion
Shortly after landing and before stepping on the Moon, Buzz Aldrin took communion while sitting in the lunar module. Sipping wine and biting off a piece of a wafer, Aldrin said his prayers quietly while Armstrong looked on. For years, NASA kept this act of faith quiet due to an ongoing lawsuit around Apollo 8’s reading of Genesis.
🌙 The First Color TV Broadcast
While Apollo 11’s landing was in black and white, a global audience got to see the crew of Apollo 12’s descent to the lunar surface in beautiful color. Unfortunately, those live broadcasts are now lost to history of the inadvertent mistake of pointing the camera directly at the Sun, which destroyed the SEC tube inside.
🌙 The First Bribery Scandal
On July 30, 1972, the crew of Apollo 15 landed on the Moon with smuggled specialty stamped envelopes. When they arrived back on Earth, the envelopes were sold by a German stamp dealer for a reported sum of more than $150,000. In exchange, the three astronauts were to have trust funds set up for their children. However, when the plot was uncovered, the astronauts were reprimanded and their space exploring careers all but ended.
🌙 The First Golf Game
During the Apollo 14 mission on February, 6, 1971, Alan Shepard pulled out a six-iron that he had smuggled on board in a sock and hit two golf balls across the lunar surface. The last one, as he said to the TV-watching audience around the globe, soared “miles and miles” thanks to the lack of gravity.
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