By Randall Turk

Transcript Business Editor

Launching astronauts into space requires a host of specialized products that eventually could wind up on the shelves of grocery markets and hardware stores.

The Norman Economic Development Coalition could have a hand in that, by helping researchers with “technology transfer,” or the nuts and bolts of commercializing and marketing products.

But the journey between research labs and the commercial market could take longer than the six years the National Aeronautics & Space Administration (NASA) estimates astronauts will be gone on their mission to reach Mars and return.

Velco fastening material, Tang breakfast drink, cell phones, magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) machines and computers are among 60,000 products that began with NASA research and made their way into private industry, says Victoria Snowden. “NASA has recognized that in Oklahoma, we’re making sincere efforts to encourage technology transfer. But this is an area very difficult for researchers to achieve by themselves.”

Snowden is Oklahoma director of the NASA Space Grant Consortium and a newer initiative, the NASA Experimental Program to Stimulate Competitive Research (EPSCoR). The programs are administered from within the University of Oklahoma’s College of Geosciences.

A former classroom teacher from Colorado, Snowden came to OU to initiate the NASA Space Grant program in 1990. Primarily, space grants fund an outreach program to provide scholarships and fellowships to promising college students, and stipends for students attending NASA academies. The program also funds teacher conferences to increase awareness of NASA opportunities and promote “scientific literacy” in the public schools.

The NASA EPSCoR program, initiated in 1992, produces research projects that can benefit both the space agency and private industry. The program involves research at OU and other colleges and universities throughout Oklahoma. “One of our priorities has been to stimulate collaboration among universities in the state,” Snowden said.

Currently, researchers from OU, Oklahoma State University and Tulsa University are working on two projects that will be vital to NASA’s three-year flight to Mars. One involves “second generation photocatalytic oxidation processes for NASA’s advanced water recovery system.” The objective is to develop processes for recycling water from body fluids.

Researchers are working with NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston. “Some of the research may have applications for municipal water supplies,” Snowden said.

The second NASA project is to develop technology for generating and storing electrical power in space. The long duration of space travel will depend on reliable power for functions such as life support systems. The Oklahoma research group is working with the John Glenn NASA Center in Ohio. “The research on battery development and thin films could be transferred to John Q. Public,” Snowden said.

Part of the EPSCoR program also provides funds for college students to travel to NASA centers and gain insight into the needs of the space agency. Those successful in the NASA visits can apply for research initiation grants averaging $21,000 to help develop ideas into research programs.

In July, NASA invited the Norman Economic Development Coalition to help the state EPSCoR program find commercial applications and markets for research products. Ross Robinson, NEDC Director of Technology Development, is in charge of identifying aerospace-related research at state institutions, developing links between researchers and NASA, and identifying how research can benefit businesses in Oklahoma.

“Technology transfer is everything you do involving startup companies,” Robinson said. “Usually, people may have a good idea or a patent, but are a long way from getting it to the marketplace.” Technology transfer includes getting a product out of the laboratory and into production, developing sales and marketing systems and finding the money to achieve those goals, he said.

The problem, Robinson said, is that researchers and entrepreneurs are “amateurs” in commercial development. “If they’d wanted to be businesspeople, they would have gone to business school.”

The bulk of his work with NASA has involved educating research innovators on what is involved in turning ideas into products, Robinson said. “Part of their Congressional charter is to move products to commercial applications. They are at a loss on how to do that.”

Good research projects take time, but much more time can be required to bring good ideas to market, Robinson said. “We can point out what to do, but people must implement it themselves. Presumably, we’ll keep working on that.”

Oklahoma and 17 other states with EPSCoR programs have much ground to gain in obtaining federal research funds, Snowden acknowledges. “After World War II, there was an increase in federal dollars for research and development. The funds were concentrated in states positioned to take advantage of that funding.”

In 1978, she said, the National Science Foundation was the first government agency to establish an EPSCoR program “as an outgrowth of federal concern about the unequal distribution of research funds.”

EPSCoR priorities regard scientific talent as “randomly distributed throughout the country without regard to gender, genealogy or geography,” she said.

Snowden began her career as a classroom teacher in Denver. “I was taught inner city kids for 13 years,” she said. “I was just learning to fly. I began using aviation subjects like math and geography. I learned that NASA and the FAA had been doing theses things 40 years before.”

Later, Snowden earned a doctorate degree in space science education. Work with the U.S. Space Foundation in Colorado Springs furthered her interest in NASA. “The space program was just being developed,” she said. “I came to Oklahoma and wrote the (NASA Space Grant) proposal for the state in 1990.”

Snowedn, who administers a budget of about $1million from NASA, matched by state funds, said Americans get more bang for the NASA buck that most realize. The agency has produced technologies that were adapted for health and medicine, transportation, pubic safety, environmental management and many other uses.

“Less than 5 percent of one cent of the U.S. tax dollar goes to NASA,” Snowden said. “Everything NASA does belongs to the general public.”