How NASA invented a ventilator for COVID-19 ... in 37 days | Dan Goods

TED Talks Daily

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4.1 • 11.9K Ratings

🗓️ 20 May 2021

⏱️ 8 minutes

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Summary

Get the behind-the-scenes story from visual strategist Dan Goods about how a single question launched NASA's Jet Propulsion Lab into action at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, propelling an unprecedented pivot from space-exploring robots to live-saving ventilators. It'll inspire you to wonder: "Is what I'm doing right now the most important thing I can be doing?"

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Transcript

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0:00.0	It's TED Talks Daily. I'm Elise Hu.
0:05.9	Today's talk is about a triumph of human ingenuity and a seize the day kind of spirit.
0:11.4	From TEDx St. Louis in 2020, NASA visual strategist Dan Goods tells the story of how to critical need at the start of the pandemic led two guys who ran into each other in a cafeteria
0:22.0	to make a life-saving pivot.
0:26.5	Hey, everybody. Coming to you live from NASA's Jet Propulsion Lab in Pasadena, California. On February 18th,
0:33.5	we're going to attempt to land NASA's next rover to Mars. It's going to be the most sophisticated rover ever sent to the red planet.
0:40.9	It's even going to have a helicopter on it.
0:43.6	So JPL is an amazing place where people are creating robotic missions to explore the universe.
0:48.9	They also create satellites that orbit the Earth and help us understand this plant that we live on.
0:53.9	But today I'm going to talk about something a little bit closer to home.
0:57.5	It's going to be about a team of space engineers than vented a COVID-19 ventilator in just
1:03.5	37 days.
1:05.1	And it all started when two people bumped into each other at the JPL cafeteria.
1:09.8	It was right before the very first shutdown when the pandemic started.
1:14.0	They started to talk about work, but then they started to talk about what COVID might do in the United States
1:18.8	and that there might be a shortage of ventilators.
1:21.1	And they started to ask the question, a really powerful, important question, is what I'm doing right this moment, the most important
1:29.2	thing that I could be doing.
1:31.5	Well, they went home, everything got shut down, but Dave couldn't get that question out of his
1:36.9	head.
1:37.5	In fact, that weekend, he assembled the team, he found some funding, and on Monday afternoon,
1:43.5	they ended up having a doctor come to JPL
	...

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