Huh. this stuff has been around for a while.

Editor's note: "Huh" please show me where NASA knows that it has been commercialized in this fashion.

A quick peek around the Web yields:

* a 2001 SPINOFF article about a 1993 SBIR contract via KSC:
http://www.sti.nasa.gov/tto/spinoff2001/ch5.html

* Aerogels for Stardust and other missions -- see
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/stardust/spacecraft/aerogel-index.html

that apparently also involved Ames -- see

http://www.nasa.gov/centers/ames/research/exploringtheuniverse/aerogel.html

-- but JPL got recognized by the Guinness World Records in 2002 -- see

http://stardust.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news93.html

Its been around for a long time.Aspen Aerogel is commercializing Aerogel but that is not a NASA unique item

Many people assume that aerogels are recent products of modern technology. In reality, the first aerogels were prepared in 1931. At that time, Steven. S. Kistler of the College of the Pacific in Stockton, California set out to prove that a "gel" contained a continuous solid network of the same size and shape as the wet gel.

Aerogels had been largely forgotten when, in the late 1970s, the French government approached Stanislaus Teichner at Universite Claud Bernard, Lyon seeking a method for storing oxygen and rocket fuels in porous materials.
After this discovery, new developments in aerogels science and technology occurred rapidly as an increasing number of researchers joined the field.

In the late 1980s, researchers at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) lead by Larry Hrubesh prepared the worlds lowest density silica aerogel (and the lowest density solid material). This aerogel had a density of 0.003 g/cm3, only three times that of air.
Shortly thereafter, Rick Pekala, also of LLNL, extended the techniques used to prepare inorganic aerogels to the preparation of aerogels of organic polymers. These included resorcinol-formaldehyde, melamine-formaldehyde aerogels. Resorcinol-formaldehyde aerogels could be pyrolyzed to give aerogels of pure carbon. This opened an completely new area in aerogel research.

Silica aerogel, prepared at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, has flown on several Space Shuttle missions. On these flights very low density aerogel was used to collect and return samples of high-velocity cosmic dust.

Not to mention in Spinoff 2008

http://www.sti.nasa.gov/tto/Spinoff2008/ch_9.html

This is not a NASA spinoff. NASA did not invent aerogels, nor did it ever partner with this company. The company is using a material often associated with NASA, but the product has no legitimate ties to NASA research.

This is very cool. Out of curiosity though I wonder how much savings you would get from applying the same thickness of styrofoam or some other insulting foam to each stud. If they could apply aerogel mats like that Tyvek stuff you see on new homes then I'd think you'd really see its insulting magic. Probably wouldn't be so great for the price though.

I wonder if you get the same energy saving if you use them on wood studs? This is the kind of product that should be mandatory on all new construction. The energy savings sound fantastic.

How stable is the stuff? Will it last decades as insulation in a house? Some high energy particle physics experiments are using aerogel detectors, but all seem to show degradation in a few years. Does this indicate a 'short'shelf life?

Any one have any data on the lifetime?

Thanx,
Jim Bates
NASA Retired

This company's product is not a NASA spinoff. For an aerogel product that is a NASA spinoff, see Spinoff 2008 (another poster has the link above).

You'll see from the Spinoff story that aerogels are hardly a new technology (some 80 years old), and that NASA did not invent them. The Agency has used them (the Stardust mission) and has worked with Aspen Aerogels to develop a "flexible aerogel concept" and a new manufacturing process.