NASA Helps Build Strong Cities and Communities

                                            


At NASA, we recognize that new space technologies and innovation are the underpinnings of all of our future missions and they feed directly into America’s economic well-being.  We also understand that for our nation to remain strong, our economy requires an advanced, globally competitive manufacturing community that invents and makes high-value-added products and leading-edge technologies.  This work is critical to NASA’s future missions and our nation’s strength and health.  New and innovative partnerships between NASA and cities and communities around the country can leverage our skills and shared goals to benefit America in space and on Earth.
Today, a NASA-Ohio partnership announced the names of six small and medium size manufacturers who were selected to receive no-cost technical expertise from NASA subject matter experts to solve challenges with one of their new or existing products.  Cleveland and Cuyahoga Counties are making $270,000 in low interest loans available to the six winning companies if needed to cover costs connected to finding solutions to their challenges.

This partnership is part of the Administration’s “Strong Cities, Strong Communities” and “Adopt a City” initiatives, in which NASA has been partnering with the city of Cleveland, Cuyahoga County and the Manufacturing Advocacy & Growth Network (MAGNET) to work with small and mid-sized businesses in Ohio to keep our innovation economy on track.  Addressing these challenges will help increase revenue and create jobs.
This is another example of how NASA is working, regionally and locally, to support innovative partnerships that lift our game in support of American manufacturing.
In his inaugural address, President Obama said “We cannot cede to other nations the technology that will power new jobs and new industries – we must claim its promise…In order to win the future we must out-innovate, out-educate, and out-build the rest of the world”.  One way NASA is helping to win the future is through our commitment to our cities, our communities and the manufactures who will help us out-innovate the world in the 21st century.

A commitment to innovation and technology is crucial to our future plans and evident in everything we do.  Using game-changing technologies advanced by the Administration, NASA is developing a first-ever mission to identify, capture and redirect an asteroid and send astronauts to visit it.  The International Space Station is helping us learn to live and work in space and demonstrate technologies for future missions.  We’re planning more missions to destinations within our solar system and spacecraft to peer beyond it.  We’re in a new era of exploration and partnerships like this are keeping our nation the leader in space.

Source: http://blogs.nasa.gov/bolden/2013/12/06/nasa-helps-build-strong-cities-and-communities/