Inside NASA's ventilator project
Button looks inside the NASA's ventilator project Early in March, David Van Buren, a flight projects engineer at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena CA was growing concerned about projections of global ventilator shortages for severely sick covid-19 patients His idea: Put the lab's engineers to work on designing prototype ventilators that manufacturers could then mass produce quickly for the hospitals that would need them as the number of their coronavirus patients climbed The US Food and Drug Administration approved the design on April 30 for emergency use About 100 manufacturers around the world have now asked to license the design at no charge from Caltech, which operates JPL for NASA As of late May, engineers from the design teams were evaluating and scoring the license applications and meeting virtually with applicants in 30-minute sessions to answer questions