6 Ways the Space Race Transformed Everyday American Life

In the early 1960s, state-of-the-art computers like the IBM 7090 were room-sized, power-hungry giants. They weighed several tons, radiated tremendous heat and were rented for about $500,000 a month in today’s dollars. NASA relied on these machines, alongside mostly-women “human computers” made famous by the film Hidden Figures, for the complex calculations behind the U.S. space program. Women working as human computers at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), which later became part of NASA, helped calculate the trajectory of Explorer 1, America’s first satellite, launched nearly four months after Sputnik.

To send astronauts to the moon and back, NASA needed a categorically different computer, one small and light enough to fit inside a spacecraft, rugged enough to survive the violence of launch and frugal enough to run on no more power than a small light bulb. The key was dramatic miniaturization, using integrated circuits that packed multiple electronic components, including transistors, onto tiny semiconductor chips—a technology developed just as the Apollo program was taking shape.

The result was the Apollo Guidance Computer, or AGC, built by Raytheon under MIT’s guidance. It packed roughly 4,100 integrated circuits into a briefcase-sized volume that could calculate the spacecraft’s position and help control its guidance, navigation and propulsion systems on about 4 kilobytes of erasable memory and 72 kilobytes of fixed memory. That hardware, says Pyle, is now central to today's technology.

“A modern cellphone has about 3 million times more RAM than the AGC," Pyle says. "And a well-optioned iPhone contains more computing power than the planet Earth had in the early 1960s.”

At its peak, the Apollo program alone consumed an estimated 60 percent of all integrated circuits manufactured in the U.S., giving chipmakers steady revenue to scale production and drive prices down from $1,000 a chip to just $15 by the time astronauts landed on the moon in 1969, paving the way for the low-cost electronics that have since become indispensable to everyday life.

Today, the integrated-circuit technology accelerated by the Apollo program underpins nearly every piece of modern electronic technology. In addition to smart phones, the technological lineage helped pave the way for the flight computers now standard in commercial aircraft, drones and satellites. And it powers laptops, smartwatches and fitness trackers, as well as the automated systems in everyday home appliances, from smart refrigerators and washing machines to internet-connected thermostats. 

Would it have happened eventually? “Probably,” says Barry, “but it certainly happened a lot faster because suddenly in the 1960s, integrated circuits became cheap, highly reliable and readily available, and that’s driven almost exclusively by the NASA demand for integrated circuits for the space program.”

Before NASA could land humans on the moon, it first had to know where to land them. NASA’s Ranger program sent a series of uncrewed spacecraft toward the moon in the early 1960s, transmitting television images of the lunar surface during the final minutes before impact. The goal was to learn whether that terrain, still largely a mystery, could safely support astronauts and their landing craft.

But the cameras aboard Ranger sent back analog signals that produced grainy, distorted pictures. To fix that, JPL scientist Robert Nathan led the development of early digital image processing software capable of converting the analog signals into digital data that a computer could enhance and refine. The resulting techniques could sharpen edges, reduce noise and reconstruct a clearer picture from imperfect raw information.

By the late 1960s, JPL researchers were applying space-derived digital image processing techniques to medical images, including X-rays and electron microscope images. The technology later found widespread applications in medical imaging, including CAT scans, MRIs and ultrasound. Today, digital imaging helps doctors see inside the human body in remarkable detail, aiding in the diagnosis and treatment of conditions ranging from cancer to cardiovascular disease.

The Apollo program helped advance the technology behind familiar cordless tools used in garages across America. One of the key tasks for Apollo astronauts was to collect subsurface lunar rock and soil samples for scientists to study back on Earth, which meant NASA needed a drill capable of boring several feet below the lunar surface. Like everything bound for the moon, it had to be lightweight and compact, and most importantly, it needed its own independent power source.

“If you’re working out on the lunar surface, you can’t really drag around cables—there’s no power socket to plug into,” says Barstow.

To meet this requirement, NASA worked with American manufacturer Black & Decker, which developed a computer program to optimize the design of the drill’s motor and minimize power consumption. A Black & Decker-developed lunar drill was first used on Apollo 15 in 1971. The company’s work for NASA helped advance battery-powered motor technology that Black & Decker later applied to cordless consumer products, including the Dustbuster handheld vacuum.

The moon posed a more basic challenge too: keeping the astronaut’s vision clear. NASA needed to protect astronauts’ plastic helmet visors from scratching during spacewalks in an unusually abrasive environment. Sharp and fine, moon dust clung to everything it touched, including the plastic visors astronauts relied on for clear vision on the moon’s surface.

In the 1970s, NASA scientist Ted Wydeven was working on a water-purification system at the agency’s Ames Research Center when he developed a process that deposited a thin, abrasion-resistant coating on plastic surfaces. American eyewear manufacturer Foster Grant later licensed the technology and combined it with its own research to create a lens that lasted about 10 times longer than standard plastic lenses.

Freeze-dried food, commonly seen today from the baby food aisle to hikers’ backpacks, got a major boost from the early space program, when astronaut meals needed to be light, compact and stable enough to survive extended missions in space.

After Mercury astronauts complained that their meals, which included bland powders and pastes squeezed from tubes like toothpaste, were unappetizing, NASA poured funding into better preservation methods, testing dehydration, freeze-drying and irradiation, all in search of food that would last without losing its taste or nutritional value.

“Freeze-drying food was pioneered and improved for lightweight, storable meals for the Apollo program,” says Pyle.

Water is heavy and expensive to launch into space. So when NASA needed a long-term water supply for the Apollo missions, engineers had to find a lightweight way to keep it clean.

One solution NASA explored was an electrolytic system that released electrically charged silver ions into water. Instead of using chlorine, NASA commissioned a small device that released silver ions into the spacecraft’s water supply to kill bacteria, thereby sterilizing the drinking water without leaving behind an unpleasant taste.

“NASA was looking for all these ways to make the spacecraft safer and not expose the astronauts to hazards that they didn’t have to expose them to,” says Barry.

The silver ion-based purifier never actually flew on a NASA mission. Here on Earth, however, the technology was adopted by private entrepreneurs and incorporated into filter systems for home faucets, pools, spas, hospitals and more.