NASA

NASA, whose relationship to Fuller's geometry is not historical but ongoing — from publishing its mathematics in 1971 to flying its structural principles as robots.

In 1971 NASA contracted and published Joseph Clinton's researched papers on the mathematics involved with geodesics — the subdivision methods that underlie how a geodesic sphere is actually laid out. That is the agency's most direct contribution to the Fuller line: it paid for and released the formal mathematics.

More recently NASA has developed spherical tensegrity robots for disaster response, a direct engineering application of Fuller's tensegrity principle to landing and locomotion. And for its HI-SEAS long-duration Mars habitat simulation, Pacific Domes supplied a 1,000 sq ft geodesic dome on Mauna Loa, Hawaii.

Role in Fuller's world

NASA is where Fuller's claim that his geometry was nature's own structural strategy gets tested off Earth. The agency treats tensegrity and geodesic subdivision as working engineering rather than as design philosophy — which is the strongest available evidence that the principles hold independently of the man who named them.

See Also

• Joseph Clinton — whose geodesic mathematics NASA published in 1971
• Tensegrity — the principle behind NASA's spherical robots
• Pacific Domes — supplied the HI-SEAS Mars simulation dome

Sources

• Joseph Clinton — the 1971 NASA-contracted and published geodesic mathematics papers
• Modern Fuller applications — NASA spherical tensegrity robots for disaster response
• Geodesic dome history — the HI-SEAS Mauna Loa simulation dome