Manufacturing. Rosen said that a great deal of energy was required to get up into space, which was a new and harsh environment. Why, he asked, should we do it all? He answered that the space program has produced a revolution in radio, TV, solidstate devices, computers, robotics, and a host of other products and services. It should be possible, he said, to bring raw materials from Earth into space to make products, to provide services such as those provided by communications satellites, to generate energy, and later to build space colonies. Perhaps, he felt, we should concentrate on the use of space materials, bootstrapping, and building products and tools to make them. Factories which can replicate themselves, he said, give the possibility of exponential growth. Dr. Rosen summarized the paper by Robert A. Freitas, Jr., which was presented by Dr. William B. Zachary on “A Self-Replicating, Growing Lunar Factory” which could start from a 100 ton “seed” from which, with mining, paving, chemical processing, parts fabrication and assembly entirely run by robots, a very large facility could be built. Human technicians and teleoperators would be needed to begin with but later full automation might be possible. He reported on Criswell and Goldberg's paper on the economics of bootstrapping space industries using Moon materials and concluded that there are no doubts about the value of bootstrapping and use of extraterrestrial materials. Professor Arnold asked what is the simplest robot that can build a more complex machine than itself. Dr. Rosen replied that you do not need to make a complex robot to make a complex machine. You can design a modular growing robot system. Henry H. Kolm summarized the session on Electromagnetic Accelerators. He said the work is continuing at a low level, that Professor O'Neill had completed a stripped down, minimum, first generation mass driver operating on a push-pull system and was currently working on a small scale lunar launcher for early lunar material utilization with William R. Snow, R. Scott Dunbar, and Joel A. Kubby. Kerry M. Joels reported on the Social Sciences session. He reported that John Logsdon of George Washington University had provided an insightful evaluation of space policy in the U.S., that there is no firm commitment to space and that the Shuttle is the end, not the beginning of a forward looking program. Space is a discretionary expenditure and there is no government commitment at present. Dr. Logsdon felt that man would not personally explore the solar system in this century, that there are no marketable products currently available from space, and that political support for the military in space may be glitched by U.S.-U.S.S.R. treaties. Dr. Joels said that Charles Chafer had pointed out that space has no “establishment” and that supply side economics overwhelms the program. Chafer felt the movement to the Sun Belt, however, was encouraging because there were so many aerospace organizations in that area. Interest group politics may be waning just when space is beginning to develop interest groups. Consequently, a coalition of interest groups for space is needed at the present time. Robert (Mickey) McWilliams had been taking the temperature of the public interest in space and found it second to the military and way ahead of “giveaways” such as welfare. However, large sections of the public believe the cost of the space operations is as high as that of welfare and that NASA is part of the military, indicating the great need for public education on space. The largest change in a positive direction toward a space program has been on the part of the working class. Positive interest in space has grown overall in the past several years. Dr. Joels reported how Ben Finney defined man as an exploring species and raised the question of how space will transform our society. Dr. Finney had said that water
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