Ordered by Congress to serve a stimulating function, the agency has a technology transfer (T2) program designed to push out the information ore to the private sector as rapidly as possible. Its T2 website, technology.nasa.gov, serves as a kind of engineering eBay, a catalogue of tempting technologies available for licensing.
Read MoreIt really wasn’t that long ago when the two greatest superpowers were vying to put satellites into space. Now, 50 nations have their own satellites in low Earth orbit. If you’re a Thailand, say, you can call Space Systems/Loral, a Canadian-owned company based in Palo Alto, California, and tell them you want to put a satellite into geostationary orbit for television broadcasting or military communications. You can have the thing in orbit 25,000 miles above Earth within two years.
