THE SPACE SHUTTLE

There were many reasons why the flight of the space shuttle was exhilarating, and one of them was the realization that a decade of antiscientific propaganda ("Truth is relative"¾"Technology is war") had only dimmed the minds of the programable, not America's enthusiasm for progress, technology, and leadership. Tens of millions in the US, and hundreds of millions abroad, tuned in, and almost a quarter of a million drove into the California desert to welcome the shuttle home.

The shuttle will build satellites for electronic and visual surveillance, for tracking Soviet killer satellites, for early warning systems and for worldwide communications. Much of its payload will be military, and the air force is hoping to launch its own shuttles within a few years. Space is the new strategic high ground¾a reincarnation of the medieval high castle rock.

But space is not merely a potential battleground. There are unsuspected possibilities for industry, industrial processes¾and energy.

No, not star-trek fairy stories, nor dreams about permanent space colonies, which are still far away. But there are lucrative commercial applications for industry¾new methods of metal casting, vaporization, distillation, and other manufacturing processes. A single example: It takes much time, energy, effort, patience, and money to get a good vacuum on earth¾and a millionth or ten-millionth of atmospheric pressure is considered "good." But that still leaves about a billion molecules per cubic inch, and you can do a thousand times better (in pressure) by going some 500 km above the earth's surface, and a billion times better out there in real space where one bumps only into an occasional particle (relatively speaking). Take a bottle there, fill it full of nothing, seal it and bring it back¾with a vacuum like nothing on earth.

And there is much more¾read about it in G. Harry Stine's The Third Industrial Revolution (Ace Books, paperback was $2.75 in 1979; try $3.50 from Book Mailing Service, Box 690, Rockville, NY 11571).