While the race to the moon has create all kind of spinoffs to make society i.e. in the man on street life great. The general public has no clue how NASA and its programs has returned mega benefits (i.e. TV dinners, Microwave ovens). What are some more things?
Velcro
Cordless tools
For a while I was receiving NASA PR release by email and I always cringed at the attempts to be clever and sort of plain speaking. I would rather see NASA communicate a formal, high-tech, and intellectual image. Competence, able-to-solve-problems, lots of brain power being applied to complex problems that have both intellectual and down to earth significance (like, for example, understanding global warming). They do a good job of communicating with educational programs and they also have terrifically open access to deep-space encounters with planets and other bodies in the solar system. The also do well with letting scientists and engineers speak (as long as they are speaking non-politically sensitive topics!) If I had to boil down into one phrase what the NASA mission should be it’s “Understanding our place in the universe – starting with our own home planet.”
Tang!