During the past four decades, a wide-ranging array of Research and Development (R&D) activities has been conducted by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. They continue to provide large volumes of Scientific and Technical Information; and each year, hundreds of transferrable new technologies have resulted from such efforts.

The taxpayers investment has been immense; the benefits returned to mankind even larger. Although NASA's budget has decreased, the versatility in R&D efforts continues to spring forth sophisticated technologies ready for application in the development of commercial products. Thus, industry profits from the agency's Commercial Technology Program with its array of services geared to assist in the maintaining global competitiveness.

The following pages demonstrate once again the U.S. engineering ingenuity assisted by NASA's Commercial Technology Network. Extensive outreach activities and bold partnerships between application and development engineers and NASA have created many new and diverse commercial products and services--we refer to them as "spinoffs," and some of them are highlighted here.