To Infinity and Beyond….

Why NASA was the most important exhibitor / participant at SXSW 2015

Pick up your smartphone phone and take a hard look at it.

Then, head on over to the NASA Spinoff Technology Program site and consider the following: the device you are holding in your hand to make phone calls, text your friends and family, share your stories on Facebook, and post photos on Instagram, has more compute power than the computers onboard the Apollo spacecraft that took our astronauts to and from the moon.

During the SXSW Trade Show, NASA in a corner of the Austin Convention Center promoting its “Experience NASA at SXSW” presence.

In addition to the trade show, NASA took part in no less than eleven festival sessions, held a meetup for the space community, showed an IMAX screening of the Hubble Telescope movie, and was busy busy busy engaging on the social web on its social media accounts.

Just about everything we do today that involves computing, telecommunications, health and medicine, transportation, public safety, agriculture, and more are the direct result of NASA spin off technology.

Sending people and very large objects into earth orbit, the moon, Jupiter, Mars and beyond all involve the need to shrink, squeeze, and do more with a whole lot less.

As a child growing up in the 60's I saw our nation come together from a speech given by then-President John F. Kennedy on the campus of Rice University in Houston, a little more than one year before he was assasinated.

Kennedy’s vision to put our men on the moon and bring them back safely to earth not only was accomplished less than ten years, but inspired millions of us to later be involved in some way in the democratization of technology.

Fifty plus years later, and now in my work with the Rackspace Startups Program in Israel, I wonder what could be next with NASA’s next big initiative to get us to and from Mars.

Ten years from now, it will be interesting to walk the show floor and the halls of SXSW and meet another generation of entrepreneurs who hopefully will be inspired by the work NASA is doing and the spinoffs that will come from it.

Pay attention to NASA.

Support what they are doing and let your Congressional leaders know you care.

It’s not just good for you, it’s good for all mankind.