Word: spacing
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Less easily measured are the social and technological costs of allowing the space effort to wither away. The U.S. has invested $36 billion in space since...
...that unless the nation embarks on another Apollo-size program, the U.S. stands to suffer a "tragic loss of a national asset." He fears that NASA's skilled engineers and scientists may be dispersed after the last of the nine remaining Apollo missions is flown in 1972. The space team has already shrunk from 400,000 in 1966 to 140,000 today, and the group might be difficult to rebuild. "To continue to attract the kinds of people that made this program possible," says George Mueller, NASA's manned-spaceflight chief, "we must have challenging and interesting...
...With space contracts dwindling, the aerospace industry is beginning to show signs of atrophy. Although few of the major companies involved are overwhelmingly dependent on the space program, most of them are experiencing a slump. At North American Rockwell, principal contractor for the Apollo capsule, 5,200 research and development staffers have been laid off or shifted to other projects. The Boeing Co., builder of the first-stage Saturn boosters, must soon let go part of its 10,000-man Apollo team. The impact would be most severe in towns like Huntsville, Ala., where Saturn rockets are assembled. Space...
Concern about the future of the space program could well provoke a useful debate over the nation's priorities. The severest critics of space tend to cast the issue in terms of a hard choice between space and social tasks. Jerome Wiesner, John Kennedy's scientific adviser, says typically that "it would be a mistake to commit $100 billion to a manned Mars landing when we have problems getting from Boston to New York City...
ASIDE from its value in terms of national prestige and scientific knowledge, the U.S. space effort has yielded some important-if not always immediately measurable -benefits on earth. The most obvious fallout has been economic. At its peak in 1966, Apollo employed 400,000 people, from Long Island to Seattle. The technological impact has been less conspicuous. But in scarcely more than a decade, research has produced hundreds of what NASA calls "space technology transfers" that apply everywhere from factory to surgical ward...