Space Solar Power Review Vol 2 Number 4 1981

expansion over the oceans began only a few thousand years ago, requiring craft with life support and settlement prospects, in many ways like expansion into space, and that the Polynesians had sailed against the trade winds as space pioneers must rise against the gravity well. The Polynesians viewed the world as an ocean with points (islands) in it as we view the solar system as an ocean of space with planets and asteroids in it. Both the Polynesians and the space explorers will experience isolation. As a warning against the dangers of bureaucracy, Dr. Finney had said that the Chinese treasure fleets in the 14th and 15th centuries had been closed down by the Mandarins which left a power vacuum in the Pacific for Europeans. Dr. Joels reported on Arthur Harkins' talk on ethnotronic and ethnobiological systems, which minimized people and emphasized electronics, saying that owing to the risk of mission ruination, astronauts were frequently reduced to robots. Joels' own speech on expansion of satellite communications had dealt with technical aspects of which the limits are frequency dependent, with 1000 video channels probably the limit. There are now 30. Other limits might be programming saturation and viewer saturation. David Criswell reported on Session VI, Materials Resources and Processing. Dr. Criswell reviewed Professor James Arnold's optimistic view of the NASA situation. He summarized David Kuck's analysis of the availability of precious metals from the Moon and asteroids, following up with William Agosto's talk on grain separation and the use of drum magnets to reduce lunar soil and Jeremy Dunning's descriptions of electrophoretic separation of lunar soils. He concluded with a summary of John Oldson's description of a plant on the Moon to extract ilmenite and reduce approximately 1000 tons of it per year. Dr. Criswell reiterated the statement made in his paper given on Wednesday that there were 40 to 45 basic manufacturing categories that could be adapted to space and that these should be characterized by small amounts of equipment able to produce large masses of products. Professor B. J. Bluth of Colorado State University reported on Space Stations and Habitats. She reported that Joe Sharp had said that the U.S. had no long duration flight program and had described some of the problems of humans in space, viz., the body adapts to space too fast. The problem is bringing people back, that in a 185 day mission calcium is lost all along the way, that rigid exercise regimes of 1-2 h a day are necessary as well as uncomfortable suits such as “penguin or bunchy” suits and vacuum pants which should be worn 16 h a day and are very uncomfortable. The U.S.S.R. has been spending a lot on keeping cosmonauts happy in space. The U.S. development of life support systems in space is lagging. In his summary talk, Professor O'Neill thanked the AIAA for its help, and the other sponsors: NSI, OMNI, Princeton University Conference., SSI, and particularly Barbara Evans, Bill O'Brien, and Dr. Jerry Grey. He said that opening the space frontier was possible on a less than government scale at, for instance, a level of $20-30 billion, with perhaps 23 or 30 Shuttle flights a year and that machinery capable of partial self replication could carry out economic needs. He stressed the importance of nongovernmental entities, of efforts which were independent of politics and of longer endurance, such as Gary Hudson's proposal to use simple and inexpensive V-2 level of technology rockets. He said that much private research is leading to active programs, viz., SSI, that SSI's growth is a phenomenon which shows that idealism is still a force in our country. He said that many technical challenges of two years ago now look easier, such as

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