Ask most people about the everyday things NASA has developed and the answers will likely include Velcro and Tang. But while both were used by the aeronautics and space agency, neither was invented in house.

Similarly, memory foam and certain power tools popularly associated with NASA were developed for the organization, not by it.

But as of last year, NASA had identified 1,800 technologies it did spin off, including breakthroughs that enabled or improved low-power heart pumps, Lasik vision correction surgery and video image stabilization.

In other words, there is a long history of technology transfer and exchange between NASA and private industry. And it goes on to this day, as became increasingly evident during a tour of NASA's Ames Research Center near Mountain View on Thursday, organized by Littelfuse, the Chicago company that probably built the fuses in your car, phone and computer.

"We're the friendly front door to Silicon Valley," said David Morse, chief of the technology partnerships division at NASA Ames, our host for the day. "It's a big advantage to have the startups and venture capitalists right outside of our door."

Stunning PhoneSats

One of my most eye-catching initiatives in this vein was PhoneSats, an effort to build cheap, tiny satellites driven by smartphones. The basic brain, camera and sensors in the first generation was the software and hardware in the Nexus One, an Android handset developed by Google and HTC.

NASA engineer Jim Cockrell and his team of researchers (average age 23) pursued the project after realizing that the average smartphone has more processing power than many satellites in orbit. By taking advantage of off-the-shelf technology, instead of inventing their own operating system, miniature sensors and more, they were able to build prototypes with components that cost less than $7,000. The cube-shaped satellites, which can be held in one hand, feature antennas from an even more common household item: a tape measure.

They believe the devices, three of which were lofted into the atmosphere aboard Orbital Science's Antares rocket in April, could be the cheapest satellites ever flown in space.

"We like to think of it as crowdsourced science," said Jasper Wolfe, an engineer on the project.

In a nearby building on the 1,500-acre campus, where NASA and its predecessor organization have operated since 1939, scientists are working with businesses in a reciprocal fashion on what's known as forward osmosis technology. It's an effort to improve the ability to recycle water in space.

Mimicking intestines

As any backpacker knows, water is incredibly heavy and bulky. Sending enough to keep humans alive on a years-long mission, say to Mars, is simply unfeasible. What they have to do instead is recycle as close to 100 percent of the water used as possible. And that means - warning, ickiness coming in 3, 2, 1 - filtering urine.

This is easy enough to do on Earth, but a machine assigned this task on the International Space Station quickly broke down. A similar failure on the way to Mars would mean, quite simply, "You're going to die," said Michael Flynn, head of the water technology development lab.

Instead of machinery that will eventually break and require carrying along extra components, they're attempted to mimic our small intestines. In a design perfected by evolution, our bodies can filter water through a membrane that never gets clogged because the cells are continually shedding and replacing themselves, Flynn explained.

A partner of NASA's, Hydration Technology Innovations, developed a simple bag with osmotic filters and a syrup solution that purifies water for hikers, military applications and humanitarian efforts. But eventually these kinds of filters get clogged, which can't be allowed to happen during a prolonged space mission. So NASA is taking the technology a step further by using genetically engineered E. coli to grow lipids that behave more like the cells in our small intestines. That process was commercialized by a Dutch firm known as Aquaporin.

Private support

At a point where NASA lacks its own vehicle for human space travel, it's looking to the private market for help in more fundamental ways as well. Notably, the agency is working with Elon Musk's SpaceX and several other companies in the hope of developing capabilities that could transport astronauts and cargo into space. NASA Ames hosts the world's largest wind tunnel and one of the most powerful supercomputers, both of which can be used by companies with complementary missions like these, to refine aerodynamics and simulate missions through sophisticated computer modeling.

But to clear up another myth about NASA, the recent retirement of the space shuttle program did not represent an end to its mission of sending humans into space. In fact, it's working on the capability to send people deeper into space than ever. On Thursday, we witnessed a simulation of a manned aircraft on its way to Mars, broadcast across a 128-screen "hyperwall."

But, despite what Silicon Valley's libertarians will tell you, the private market can only do so much. As I've argued in this column before, government agencies are uniquely positioned to achieve fundamental breakthroughs in science and technology - like missions to Mars - because public markets and venture capitalists don't have the patience or pocketbooks for the necessary budgets and timelines.

That makes it all the more frightening how this era of government austerity, and specifically the sequestration, is holding up critical research and development at NASA.

Painful cuts

President Obama already shelved NASA's Constellation program. And late last week, a report from the agency's Office of Inspector General raised concerns about cuts that left the Orion mission with a $1 billion flat annual budget. The Orion spacecraft is being designed with the goal of taking humans to asteroids and, one day, Mars.

"Given this budget profile, NASA is using an incremental development approach under which it allocates funding to the most critical systems necessary to achieve the next development milestone rather than developing multiple systems simultaneously as is common in major spacecraft programs," the report stated.

That could lead to increased future costs and delays, and leaves little money for landers and surface systems.

For those who believe we spend too much on basic science and space exploration at NASA, consider that the total expenditures add up to one half of 1 percent of the federal budget. It's a tiny, tiny fraction of what we spend on Social Security and defense. NASA's annual budget is around $16 billion. We were spending as much as $12 billion a month on the war in Iraq.

Inspiration for more

Why should we aim for the Red Planet? George Mallory's famous retort for aiming at the top of Mount Everest is enough for me: Because it's there. But as we've seen, developing technologies to push humans deeper into space inspires us to greater feats, adds to our understanding of the world and improves everyone's quality of life.

But if that doesn't do it for you, here's the bottom line: For every dollar we spend on the space program, the U.S. economy gets $8 back in benefits. It more than pays for itself.

"We have to develop the disruptive technologies that change the balance of trade, the dramatic new products that keep the U.S. economy going," Morse said.