Life Sciences in the Space Program 



Among other matters, the act mandated a minimum 15-percent royalty to be paid 

 to inventors for their licensed innovations, established a cash awards program to 

 reward scientists and engineers for their innovations, and established a Federal 

 Laboratory Consortium to assist in advising, training, and promoting technology 

 transfer. President Ronald Reagan summarized the accomplishments of the 

 legislation as follows: 



A vigorous and technological enterprise involving universities, industry 

 and government laboratories is essential to our economic growth and 

 national security .... With the Federal Technology Transfer Act of 

 1986 . . . the government has removed many of the barriers to industrial 

 use of publicly funded technological research. 



Table 2. Vie 16 Commercial Centers for the Development of Space, 

 Their Host Facilities, and the Year of Their Inauguration 



1. Center for Advanced Materials, Battelle Columbus Laboratories, Columbus, Ohio. 1985. 



2. Center for Advanced Space Propulsion, University of Tennessee Space Institute, Tullahoma. 1987. 



3. Center for Bioserve Space Technologies, University of Colorado, Boulder. 1987. 



4. Center for Cell Research, Pennsylvania State University, University Park. 1987. 



5. Center for the Commercial Development of Autonomous and Man-Controlled Robotic Sensing Systems in 

 Space, Environmental Research Institute of Michigan, Ann Arbor. 1987. 



6. Center for the Commercial Development of Space Power, Auburn University, Auburn, Alabama. 1987. 



7. Center for Commercial Development of Space Power, Texas A&M Research Foundation, College Station, Texas. 

 1987. 



8. Center for Development of Commercial Crystal Growth in Space, Center for Advanced Materials Processing, 

 Clarkson University, Potsdam, New York. 1986. 



9. Center for Macromolecular Crystallography, University of Alabama - Birmingham. 1985. 



10. Center for Mapping, Ohio State University, Columbus. 1986. 



11. Center on Materials for Space Structures, Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, Ohio. 1987. 



12. Center for Space Automation and Robotics, University of Wisconsin - Madison. 1986. 



13. Center for Space Processing of Engineering Materials, Vanderbilt University Nashville, Tennessee. 1985. 



14. Center for Space Vacuum Epitaxy University of Houston, Texas. 1986. 



15. Consortium for Materials Development in Space, University of Alabama - Huntsville. 1985. 



16. ITD Space Remote Sensing Center, NASA National Space Technology Laboratories, Mississippi. 1985. 



NASA Policy on Applications and 

 Technology Transfer 



Since its inception, NASA has pioneered in technology transfer and applications 

 research and has led Government agencies in this effort. A separate NASA Office 

 of Applications was first established in 1971. Following a 1984 reorganization, the 

 Office of Commercial Programs (OCP) was formed to disseminate technical 

 information and to encourage technology transfer into the commercial sector. To 

 meet these goals, the OCP sponsors seminars and meetings to acquaint non- 

 NASA personnel with potential applications ot NASA technology to industry, it 





