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Notwithstanding the alarming economic troubles faced by the United States, many federal organizations, especially the Defense Department and NASA, the space agency, need cutting-edge technology to carry out their missions. Most of this technology is developed and pitched to government institutions by civilian contractors like Lockheed Martin, which just recently brought some of its latest products to the Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas, for an event called NexTech.

A robot, dubbed Sprockit, wandered around the exhibit hall, providing entertainment to visitors and supplying directions to a variety of the more serious presentations. Paul Monday is an engineer at Lockheed Martin who helps develop such systems. "When you turn your head, the view updates, too," said Martin. "So it is a smooth view and it feels like you are looking at that world in Afghanistan."

Monday suggests the military could use this in medical testing: to discover physical risks before a soldier is deployed to the much more severe, real terrain.

For 26-year-old Chris Spence, who grew up with video games, such products are delightful. "Of course, there is work involved, but a platform like this makes it a lot of fun," he said.

The Lockheed Martin system demonstrator suggests that such as program is adaptable to a variety of training situations.

Still, these types of virtual reality programs go beyond training, Pacale Rondot of Lockheed Martin's Human Immersive Lab explained. "You see behind me this model who is driving an avatar in the virtual world," said Rondot. "It is performing a task to validate maintenance of the aircraft."

She says this system also helps engineers check for faulty designs prior to building an aircraft. "We are reducing the overall cost of our product by making sure we are doing things right, right at the beginning, before we start cutting any metal," she said.

Not everything on display was digital. An exoskeleton, called HULC, allows a person to carry supplies heavier than 100 kilograms without straining.

Rick Hieb, a former astronaut who is now a Lockheed Martin vice president, explains how the device operates.

"It is an exoskeleton, powered," said Hieb. "It has a battery system in the back, motors and hydraulics, and it actually senses his motions and then tries to predict and help."

NASA's hopeful aims for the coming decades include the use of big rockets to transport people to an asteroid, something NexTech attendees could simulate in the cockpit of a simulated spacecraft.