Space Foam
IMPORTANT NOTE: This is not a medical site. You should always discuss medical matters with your doctor.
What Is Space Foam?
Space foam is an informal name frequently used for visco-elastic memory foam used in everything from mattresses to footwear. Why is it called that? Did it fall to Earth on a meteor? Was it recovered from a crashed UFO at Roswell?
Nothing so exciting I'm afraid. Although memory foam is high-tech it's definitely of earthly origin. The "space" version of the name comes from its associations with NASA and the US space programme.
NASA
Memory foam was created during the 1970s for NASA. They wanted something to help cushion astronauts against the huge G-forces experienced in space travel. The foam was intended to be incorporated in the seating. It's interesting to note that although memory foam is today mainly associated with bedding it was never intended by NASA to be used for this purpose. Its use in mattresses and beds only became feasible once in was developed further for commercial applications.
Unfortunately the original NASA memory foam never did get into space. Although it was effective at cushioning and supporting astronauts if had one major problem: "off-gassing". That's the process by which some chemicals break down and are released, resulting in an unpleasant smell. Even the advanced memory foam you can buy in the stores today still tends to have a distinctive smell when new.
For the space program this was obviously a show-stopper: the astronauts would be cooped up in the spacecraft and unable to open a window or anything! As a result memory foam never
"got off the ground". However it's a great example of a technological advance that resulted from the space programme even if it wasn't eventually used by NASA.
The memory foam you can buy today follows the same basic principles of the original NASA foam, however 30 years of commercial development have resulted in a far superior quality product which ordinary people can afford to buy.