There are always discussions about the benefits of the Space Program. The most tangible benefits are consumer products people use every day. Most don’t realize how many everyday products are direct results of the Space Program. This list includes: Dustbuster, shock-absorbing helmets, home security systems, smoke detectors, flat panel televisions, high-density batteries, trash compactors, food packaging and freeze-dried technology, cool sportswear, sports bras, hair styling appliances, fogless ski goggles, self-adjusting sunglasses, composite golf clubs, hang gliders, art preservation, and quartz crystal timing equipment.

Another benefit from the Space Program is providing answers on how disasters happen and how they can be detected in the future. An article from Caltech News, Pasadena CA discussed the magnitude 9.0 Tohoku-Oki earthquake and resulting tsunami struck off the northeast coast of Japan on March 11, which caused widespread destruction and death. Using observations from a dense regional geodetic network (allowing measurements of earth movement to be gathered from GPS satellite data), globally distributed broadband seismographic networks, and open-ocean tsunami data, researchers have begun to construct numerous models that describe how the earth moved that day.

Researchers now have the ability to build detailed maps of how the event happened and its effects while building models of how it might happen again based on simulation software. All thanks to the Space Program. The commercialization of Space will continue to provide new products to help our everyday lives and offer answers to events we cannot control.