When NASA scientists set out to design a spacecraft seat that was both comfortable and life-saving, little did they know that decades later, millions of Americans would plop down each and every night on that same material for a good night’s sleep. But sure enough, the introduction of memory foam to the mattress market has revolutionized how — and on what — we sleep.
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What do a mattress and a seat in a NASA aircraft have in common? Turns out, a lot.
If you’ve ever wondered how your Tempur-Pedic mattress can make you feel so weightless, you have NASA to thank for it.
Tempur material was the first iteration of memory foam, developed by NASA to absorb the pressure of takeoff and landing for astronauts. The polyurethane foam was named Tempur for its temperature-regulating properties. After NASA released the formula for the foam into the public domain, one Swedish company acquired the the product, tweaked the formula, and began selling the first generation of memory foam mattresses in the early 1990s. Eventually, the company Tempur-Pedic was incorporated and began to distribute in the U.S., and a Kentucky businessman, Robert Trussell Jr., saw the promise in the Tempur mattress after sleeping one night on one. Three short years after the first Tempur-Pedic mattress hit the U.S. market, the company was generating more than $6 million in sales.
Today, Tempur-Pedic employs its own scientists, from New Mexico to Denmark, to iterate on the Tempur material on a molecular level. The result? More pressure-relieving power, more effective movement isolation, and more cool-to-the-touch fabrics, for a mattress that’s truly out of this world.