NASA Helps Professionals Keep Their CoolNASA Helps Professionals Keep Their Cool

Commuting by subway or on foot in big cities during the summer months can be a sticky situation for professionals, who often find themselves perspiring in their collared dress shirts before they even arrive to work. Ministry of Supply, a startup formed by MIT graduates, has found a way to solve that problem by designing a new line of business dress shirts called Apollo that uses a combination of textiles -- including a material designed for NASA spacesuits -- to keep people cool even when it's hot outside.

Manufacturers have been making sweat-resistant athletic clothing for years using a material called wicking that helps keep sweat away from a person's body as they perspire. Using this in combination with an antimicrobial coating and phase-change material developed by NASA to control the temperature inside space suits, Ministry of Supply -- co-founded by Gihan Amarasiriwardena, Kit Hickey, Aman Adbani, and Kevin Rustagi -- has designed a shirt that customer Brian Cass called "the most amazing shirt I've ever owned."