Date: December 24th, 2012

Title: NASA Spinoffs: From Andy Warhol to Stem Cells

Podcaster: McKenna Roberts and Kate Roberts

Links: ER-200431 Fact Sheet.” 2010. 9 Dec. 2012 http://www.serdp.org/Program-Areas/Environmental-Restoration/Contaminated-Groundwater/Persistent-Contamination/ER-200431
Fire-damaged paintings – NASA.” 2012. 9 Dec. 2012 http://www.nasa.gov/offices/oct/home/tech_life_oxygen.html
NASA – An Atomic Innovation for Artwork.” 2012. 9 Dec. 2012 http://www.nasa.gov/offices/oct/home/tech_life_oxygen_prt.htm

Description: This podcast is about NASA spinoffs. Spinoffs are products that use NASA technology for commercial use. In this podcast we highlight three spinoffs. First, the bioreactor, which grows human cells. Second, EZVI, a product that helps clean up chemical spills. Third, we talk about the new uses NASA has found for atomic oxygen.

Bio: My name is McKenna Roberts. I am in 10th grade and living in Riga, Latvia. This podcast is part of my IB personal project. Kate is my sister who wanted to help record the podcast. She is in 8th grade

Today’s Sponsor:  “This episode of 365 days of astronomy was sponsored by Clear Skies Observing Guides, a Modern Day Celestial Handbook. www.clearskies.eu ..Clear skies observing guides, or CSOG, is a new concept in visual amateur astronomy. The observing guides contain thousands of objects to observe through amateur telescopes, with matching tours for GOTO telescopes and matching AstroPlanner plan-files. CSOG allows you to target deep-sky objects and carbon stars you never observed before, night after night. Wishing astronomers around the world: Clear skies..! ”

Transcript:

M:  hello and welcome to 365 Days  of Astronomy.  MY name is McKenna Roberts.

K:  And my name is Kate Roberts.

M:  and today’s podcast is about NASA spinoffs.  I chose this topic because many times it seems like space exploration and studying astronomy don’t help us that much on earth.  How can that help us, since we don’t live in space or spend much time up there.  Especially right now, everyone is talking about the fiscal cliff and it looks like the federal budget is going to shrink, it is easy to cut programs that taxpayers don’t see as helping their everyday lives.  Not only are spinoffs interesting, and hopefully entertaining for you,  but they can really show us how much space exploration had enriched our lives.

K:  Spinoffs are products for commercial use that use NASA created technology.  NASA created some of the technology in smoke detectors, and some athletic shoes use technology created for the boots astronauts used to walk on the moon. NASA has also helped develop technology for laser heart surgery.  Spinoffs are everywhere.

M: Presently, there have been 1,800 spin offs.  They have saved 12,000 lives, and affected 86 million more.  They have saved airline 2.7 billion gallons of fuel, the equivalent of $4 billion dollars.  Overall they have saved companies and their customers  $6.2 billion dollars. They have also created numerous jobs.  The company that sells the bioreactor, which we will be talking about, has increased it’s employees from 3-40.

K: Today we are going to highlight 3 spinoffs.  These are IC 531, which protects steel from corrosion, the bioreactor, which grows cells, EZVI, which is a water and biodegradable oil emulsification that helps with environmental clean-up, and new uses NASA has found for atomic oxygen.

M: Our first spinoff is IC 531.  We chose IC 531 because it really shows how some of the problems that arise when you are trying to go to space, are problems that are everywhere.  IC 531 is a coating used to protect steel against corrosion.  It was created in the 1970’s by NASA scientists to protect the launch site at Kennedy space center.  Kennedy space center is on the coast in Florida so there is a lot of salty sea spray and fog that was corroding the launch site.  NASA needed a coating to protect the launch site from the salty air and that could withstand really high heat and dramatic temperature changes.

K:  The coatings available at that time took too long to cure, so NASA needed to make it’s own.  Scientists focused on water based zinc-silicate coatings.  These had been around since the 1940s but scientist sought to improve them by increasing the ratio of potassium to silicate, while keeping the solution stable.

M: They ended up with a 5.3:1 ratio of potassium to silicate.  And this worked  very well.  THe coating took only 30 min. to dry and created a ceramic like finish.  IC 531 lasts at least 14 years, but is expected to last more than 25 years.  It is also water based, so it is non-flammable, non-toxic, and has no harmful organic compounds or chemical waste, which makes it very environmentally friendly.

K:  The most famous item it’s been used on is the Statue of Liberty.  It has also been used on the Golden Gate bridge, military tanks, oil rigs, and power stations, just to name a few.  So this technology has been extremely helpful.

M: This next spinoff is much more recent.  It shows how current NASA research is playing a big role in helping advance newer fields of science.  The breakthrough for this spinoff technology occurred when  David Wolf & Ray Schwarz went back to the lab to see who wanted lunch  colleeg with drill and syringe gave idea for current project.

K: The project that they were working on was the bioreactor.  Now, the bioreactor is a cylindrical device that grows human cells. NASA needed a bioreactor to grow human kidney cells in order to produce a hormone that regulates blood cell production. But the scientists were having a problem with the bioreactor.  They couldn’t find a way to keep the liquid growth medium moving, in order to stop stagnation, without damaging the cells.

M: Seeing the syringe on the drill gave them the idea of not only moving the liquid growth medium, but also the container.  This would help because it would lower the velocity gradient between the wall  of the container and the liquid inside.

K: The velocity gradient is the difference in velocity between two objects that are next to each other.  A large velocity gradient, which occurred when the liquid was spinning and the wall was not moving at all, hurt the cells because when they ran into the wall, they hit the wall really hard.  But, when the container  spun along with the liquid, the velocity gradient was low and the cells didn’t hit the wall as hard.

M: One way to understand this is walking into a wall, versus walking into the person next to you who is walking the same direction you are.  Walking into the wall will hurt more because you hit the wall as fast as you are walking.  If you run into someone walking the same direction as you, it won’t hurt as much because it is not such a sudden stop.

K: So in this new design where there is less of a velocity gradient, the container is spinning with the liquid.  The liquid is still moving, so there is no stagnation, but the difference of velocity between the wall and the moving liquid has been taken away.

M: When Wolf and Schwarz got the idea of spinning the container, they skipped lunch and decided to try their idea out.  They worked on it all day and they had it set up by that night.

K: When they got back to the lab in the morning, they found the same result as before.  All the cells were dead.

M:  But, after examining samples of the cells, they found that the reason the cells had died was that they had run out of nutrients in the liquid growth medium.  The bioreactor had actually worked extremely well.

This new design kept the cells in a free-fall-like state so it was extremely gentle to the cell.  Also,  The cells that it grows are much more accurate than cells grown in a flask of petri dish.  This is because cells grown in petri dished r flasks are more 2D since they affected by gravity.  This makes them less similar to human cells, which are 3D like those grown in the bioreactor.

K: Another reason the bioreactor is superior to other means of growing cells is that it can produce more cells.  This is because it treats the cell so gently.  The cells don’t have to spend as much time on repair so they can grow and divide more quickly.  Since the cells are not beaten up they are much more efficient, too.

M:  The bioreactor can be used to make proteins, like insulin for people with diabetes.  This works really well because since the cells are so healthy, they produce proteins more quickly.  They can also be used for some types of implantable human tissue and are great for drug tests since they are 3D like human cells. The bioreactor has even successfully grown umbilical cord stem cells.

K:  The bioreactor is now produced by Synthecon Incorporated in Houston, Texas  and they have made it even better than before.  They have made the bioreactor much cheaper so that it is disposable and also so that the growth medium can be changed while the cells are growing.

M: Our last spin off was created to clean up launch site 34 at Kennedy Space Center.   This launch site was where the saturn rockets for the Apollo program were launched.  To clean parts of the rocket, NASA had used chlorinated solvents, which are a type of chemical called dense nonaqueous phase liquid, or DNAPLs. At launch site 34, 88,000 pounds of these chemicals had seeped into the soil surrounding the launch site.

K:  This all happened before they learned that chlorinated solvents are really bad for the environment, so they weren’t very careful about not letting them get into the soil.  NASA had to find a way to clean them up.  At this time, there were already some ways to neutralize areas where DNAPLs had been spilled, but they were extremely expensive, could take decades to finish, or had a risk of spreading the chemicals while trying to treat them.

M:  The technology that NASA invented is called Emulsified zero-valence Iron or EZVI and EZVI can be used to clean any site contaminated with DNAPLs.  EZVI neutralizes the chemicals using nano or micro sized iron particles in water surrounded by a biodegradable oil membrane.1  First the DNAPLs diffuse through the oil.  Then the chemicals are dechlorinated by the bits of iron in the water.  This process creates no harmful byproducts.  Afterwards, all that is left is hydrocarbon and water.

K: Currently, EZVI is the Most licensed NASA technology.  There are 6 companies that hold EZVI licenses and there are several more licenses in the works.

M:  And it makes sense that it is the most licensed technology because there are so many places it can be used.  60-70% of superfund sites are contaminated with DNAPLs.  DNAPLs are used to manufacture many products.  For example, Dye, Chemical, Pharmaceutical, Adhesive, Aerosol and Paint.   They are also used in Dry cleaning, Leather tanning, Metal cleaning, and Degreasing.  So there are lots of opportunities for DNAPLs to be spilled.

K:  There are some major advantages to using EZVI.  First of all it only takes 2-3 months to treat a site, when more common treatments can take decades.  It is also cost competitive.  And lastly, treating a contaminated area with EZVI ensures that the contaminants will not spread, since the entire process occurs in the area.

MAYBE THIS INSTEAD OF PREVIOUS ONE?

M:  This next spinoff is a good example of how some technologies for space can be used to do completely different things on earth.

K: On Earth, Oxygen is usually in the form of O2, but the oxygen in space gets split apart into single oxygen atoms.2  Since oxygen bonds with other substances so easily, it is very corrosive to the coating that protects orbiting objects3 like satellites and the International Space Station.

M: To stop corrosion from atomic oxygen, scientist tried to build a device that simulates this environment and used it to test different coatings to see which one held up the best.  This worked really well for them and they were able to create a coating that fixed the problem.  While they were doing this research, though, they found that atomic oxygen mostly corrodes organic material.

K:  Using this knowledge, they partnered with churches and museums to help restore pieces of art that had soot on them from being in a fires.  This worked out really well because while the oxygen atoms removed the soot, they did not damage any of the paint.

M:  Scientists tested this technology on two paintings from St. Alban’s church in Cleveland, Ohio.  One of these paintings had already undergone restoration using solvents, which is a common technique for restoring artwork, but the atomic oxygen worked much better.  If you want to see for yourself search for painting restoration at www.nasa.gov.  The article is the first that pops up.

K:  They also used this technology on an Andy Warhol painting that had been vandalized by a woman who kissed with lipstick on.  The atomic oxygen successfully removed the lipstick stain.  It did create a small area of lighter paint, but this was easily fixed by a conservator.45

M: scientists are also using this technology to find places where wills checks have been altered.  The atomic oxygen slowly eats away the ink layer by layer. This makes it possible to see if any numbers have been written over or changed, by seeing if there are extra layers of ink.  Atomic oxygen has biomedical applications as well.  Researchers at NASA are looking into using atomic oxygen to decontaminate orthopedic surgical hip and knee implants prior to surgery.,

K: The surfaces of these implants can have biological contaminants on them, including endotoxins, which are naturally occurring compounds found within bacteria. These can cause inflammation, joint loosening and even the need to remove the implant.  Atomic oxygen can remove these contaminats,  since it can corrode organic material. .  Before now, there was no way to clean the implants so this technology could prove to be very useful.

M:  After looking at these spinoffs, we can really see how much we are affected by space reearch.  Just in the spinoffs we have mentioned we see how researching space helps advance medical technology, keep our environment clean, and preserve our culture.  And these are only a few there are many more.  It’s is definately something to keep in mind when people talk about cutting NASA funding.

K: Hopefully you found our spinoffs  as interesting as we did.  If you want to learn more, there is a website through nasa entirely devoted to spinoffs.  the URL is www.spinoff.nasa.gov.  I strongly recommend that you take a look.  There are some really amazing inventions on it.

M:  We had a really hard time trying to decide which 3 spinoffs to do because they are all so interesting.  Thats all for today.  We wish you a merry christmas and happy holidays!

K&M:  Thank you for listening to 365 Days of Astronomy!

End of podcast:

365 Days of Astronomy
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