Space Magic in the Marketplace

From drugs to golf carts, house paint to brassieres, the space age is beginning to produce some down-to-earth byproducts for U.S. business. Just as the necessities of World War II led to such lasting innovations as the jet plane and the aerosol spray, the $5 billion-a-year exploration of space has started a beneficent fallout of commercial products and processes that promises profound effects on the economy and on U.S. life.

Whale of a Plane. Enough space-inspired products have already reached the marketplace to prove that every tax dollar invested in space will multiply many times in the economy. From the lightweight plastics that were first developed for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration for use in missiles, North American Car Corp. now makes railway tank cars that weigh only one-half as much as steel cars. New metals developed by space researchers and subcontractors, notably the titanium alloys, are coming into use in oil refineries, where corrosive chemicals destroy ordinary steel valves. Space research has taught General Electric better means of coloring aluminum, hardening its surface and fusing it with out welding.

Research has led, too, to the development of special transportation equipment to move rockets and other hard ware over long distances. To transport stages of the huge Saturn rocket, California's Aero Spacelines designed a whale-shaped turboprop plane called "the Super Guppy"; its 22 1/2-ton capacity can accommodate huge computers, oil-well rigs and helicopters. Another major growth area is space-age sealants: G.E. is selling sealants, developed for the seams of spacecraft, for use in caulking bathroom tiles; General Motors is sealing windshields and rear windows with a product made by Thiokol from solid rocket fuel.

Perhaps the most important single product of space research is mundane: paint. Researchers at Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland concocted an alkali silicate paint that toughly resists weather, solvents and radiation--and NASA has licensed three U.S. paint companies to guide its commercial use.

On from Edison. The space technicians have also found countless new uses for old products. Thomas Edison in 1883 developed the world's most heat-resistant material--pyrolytic graphite--but it languished until researchers began to coat nose cones with it to resist high re-entry heat. Next month California's Super Temp Corp. and Tar Card Co will begin marketing $8.95 tobacco pipes lined with pyrolytic graphite. The fuel cell, which generates power by converting hydrogen and oxygen into electricity and water, was a laboratory curiosity until General Electric put it in Gemini. Now General Dynamics is using the fuel cell to produce electricity aboard a one-man submarine, and Allis-Chalmers is using it to power experimental spot welders, golf carts, tractors and forklift trucks.

As important as the new products are the improved methods of production and quality control that have been opened by space. The Lovable Co. has recently adapted a laminating technique, used in making space suits, to meld the linings and outer material of see-through bras. Devices that track orbiting spacecraft are now being used to candle eggs. From the horizon sensors that it made for satellites, Connecticut's Barnes Engineering developed an infrared micrometer that is now used in steel mills to control the diameter of rods. The rigorous specifications of the space contractors have significantly upgraded quality controls and management techniques. More than 100 companies make some 100,000 carts for the Gemini vehicle--and each one must perform to near perfection.

Food from Waste. Many developing products are still five or ten years away from the market. Among them: rugged electronic equipment that will be able to withstand impacts equal to 10,000 times the force of gravity, ceramic materials that can resist heats up to 3,000DEG F., magnesium-alloy panels for airplane frames that will be 20% lighter than ordinary aluminum panels. While searching for a means to manufacture food in spacecraft, North American Aviation harvested high-protein algae from sewage waste water; the company raised a flock of chickens on the algae mixed with ordinary feed, believes that it has found a cheap, easily obtainable source of food for hungry nations.

Like the space age itself, the profitable business of space byproducts is just in its infancy, but it is bound to grow geometrically. Says George Low. deputy director of NASA'S Houston Manned Spacecraft Center: "Every aae of technological development has had its catalyst, and it usually was war. The space program is today's catalyst. Any prediction of what will happen in the next five years will be ultraconservative."

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