Word: orbital
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Manned spaceflight for its own sake is typical of NASA's thinking, argue critics of the agency. The function of the space program, says Astronomer Sagan, is "to put people up in tin cans in earth orbit and then bring them down again. People are going up in order to ... go up. It is a capability without a mission." Concludes Sagan: "We do not have a space program, if one assumes that a program has goals and purposes...
...were six stainless-steel chemical reactors, each about the size of a football. In them, Minnesota Mining & Manufacturing was conducting an experiment that was not as spectacular as the main mission of retrieving crippled satellites, but potentially no less important. The company was studying how organic crystals grow in orbit. By combining chemicals in containers in the weightlessness of space, 3M's scientists were hoping to make crystals purer than any on earth...
...Deere & Co., the Illinois tractor maker, is investigating the impact of zero gravity on the molecular structure of iron. That could provide clues to making it stronger on earth. The next generation of supercomputers that make billions of calculations per second may use chips that will be born in orbit. Reason: space appears to be the place to produce ultra-pure crystals, free of defects caused by gravity, that can replace conventional silicon chips...
Alongside 3M in business ventures in orbit is McDonnell Douglas, the St. Louis aerospace company. The firm has long made propulsion systems and other hardware for the U.S. space program and the shuttle. On five nights earlier this year, McDonnell Douglas and Johnson & Johnson, the New Jersey medical-supply company, ran electrophoresis experiments, which allowed precise separation under weightless conditions of biological materials. Although one batch was contaminated, the others permitted the removal of impurities too small to be extracted on earth. One possible outgrowth: production of insulin-producing cells to control diabetes. Says Isaac Gillam, the NASA official...
...made-in-space product, tiny latex balls only a bit larger than a red blood cell, will soon go on sale. Formed in the near weightlessness of orbit in April 1983 on the Challenger shuttle flight, each of the 1,000 or so samples is exactly ten microns in diameter. Their precise uniformity makes them suitable for calibrating medical and scientific equipment or possibly destroying cancer cells. Price of the microscopic spheres: $350 to $400 each...