Aerospace & Defense Technology
Sep 16, 2026 · 27 min · 9 segments
Over five decades, *Tech Briefs* has helped tell countless stories of NASA technology transfer, highlighting how discoveries made for space exploration find new life in products and applications here…
Sean WhalenGuest
Tom AllenGuest
Chitra SethiHost
Woodrow Bellamy IIIHost
Sean, what problem was NASA trying to solve when this technology was first developed?
Well, you know, interestingly enough, it was actually my father, Dr. Robert Whalen, who came up with this idea for microgravity using air pressure.
And at the time, NASA was looking at ways to mitigate the musculoskeletal and cardiovascular atrophy that happens for astronauts when they're floating around in space.
So the idea was actually to reduce air pressure inside of a bubble and create a vacuum to suck somebody down onto a surface like a treadmill.
And this would give astronauts a way to exercise and load their muscle and bone to prevent this atrophy from happening in a natural way that was comfortable and easy to do.
And how did the research being conducted at NASA Ames led to the concept of this body weight supported treadmill training?
So, you know, when my dad came up with this, there were systems for doing treadmill exercise in space.
And they were around using bungee cords and harness systems and things that were applying external loads to different points on the body.
You know, the research that that he came up with and fostered there while he was a bone scientist at NASA was how can we use other methods of applying force to the body? And that's that's really where he came up with this differential air pressure concept that we have then taken with boost and applied to applications here on Earth.
If you were to dig a little deeper, what aspects of microgravity or reduced gravity environments inspired this technology design?
Well, I think it was really around how to create load and alter the force on the human's body in a way that was comfortable and, and, you know, tolerable for people, because when we're talking about the amount of force, like one that one G creates on your body, it's actually quite a lot.
And imagine, for example, you know, if you weigh 180 pounds, um, wearing 180 pounds of weight, um, on your back.
And so the, the whole concept here that, you know, he really pushed and developed was how do we do this and load the body with significant amounts of waiting or unweighting, uh, in a way that, that they could, um, that they could tolerate and, uh, exercise with comfortably.
Tom, for listeners who have never seen one of these treadmills, how does the technology actually work?
Sean, what problem was NASA trying to solve when this technology was first developed?
Well, you know, interestingly enough, it was actually my father, Dr. Robert Whalen, who came up with this idea for microgravity using air pressure.
And at the time, NASA was looking at ways to mitigate the musculoskeletal and cardiovascular atrophy that happens for astronauts when they're floating around in space.
So the idea was actually to reduce air pressure inside of a bubble and create a vacuum to suck somebody down onto a surface like a treadmill.
And this would give astronauts a way to exercise and load their muscle and bone to prevent this atrophy from happening in a natural way that was comfortable and easy to do.
And how did the research being conducted at NASA Ames led to the concept of this body weight supported treadmill training?
So, you know, when my dad came up with this, there were systems for doing treadmill exercise in space.
And they were around using bungee cords and harness systems and things that were applying external loads to different points on the body.
You know, the research that that he came up with and fostered there while he was a bone scientist at NASA was how can we use other methods of applying force to the body? And that's that's really where he came up with this differential air pressure concept that we have then taken with boost and applied to applications here on Earth.
If you were to dig a little deeper, what aspects of microgravity or reduced gravity environments inspired this technology design?
Well, I think it was really around how to create load and alter the force on the human's body in a way that was comfortable and, and, you know, tolerable for people, because when we're talking about the amount of force, like one that one G creates on your body, it's actually quite a lot.
And imagine, for example, you know, if you weigh 180 pounds, um, wearing 180 pounds of weight, um, on your back.
And so the, the whole concept here that, you know, he really pushed and developed was how do we do this and load the body with significant amounts of waiting or unweighting, uh, in a way that, that they could, um, that they could tolerate and, uh, exercise with comfortably.
Tom, for listeners who have never seen one of these treadmills, how does the technology actually work?
The rest of this transcript — segmented and speaker-labeled, so you land on the exact moment something was said
Search every transcript — by keyword, by phrase, or by meaning, across every show Radar indexes
Trends — what is surging across podcasts, measured against its own baseline
Alerts — when a name you follow appears in a newly indexed episode
No account is needed to search Radar.
