May 18 1978
From The Space Library
NASA had officially changed the date of the first Space Shuttle orbital flight from Mar. to June of 1979 because of engine problems, the NY Times reported. NASA said the June date would be tentative until additional tests confirmed that the Shuttle's three main engines were free of problems. There had been signs the engine situation was improving. Launch date had been important because of NASA's plan to use the Shuttle to rescue Skylab from an uncontrolled fall to earth next year, possibly by early summer. (NYT, May 18/78, B-10)
The NYT reported a leading Soviet astrophysicist's forecast that the next 250yr would see construction of a vast "artificial biosphere" in outer space capable of supporting 10 billion people, more than twice the world's present population. Iosif Shklovsky had visualized a system of space colonies with total surface area hundreds of thousands of times greater than earth's, that could capture and use huge amounts of solar energy. Looking further into the future, Shklovsky had also predicted that 2540yr from now mankind would have fully colonized the solar system.
His article in the journal Social Sciences emphasized U.S. plans to use large satellites to beam solar energy to earth as microwaves. Prof. Gerald K. O'Neill of Princeton Univ., head of a group of physicists and engineers designing solar satellites, had estimated that a space colony accommodating 100 000 or more people could be built by the year 2025. Skhlovsky had agreed that expansion into space would be inevitable because of mounting pressures of population and environment on earth's resources. Only the colonizing of space could offer a long-term solution, Shklovsky contended, claiming mathematical proof that adopting a global-balance strategy of limited growth could delay, but not avert, a world crisis. Shklovsky added that construction of large-scale colonies would require raw materials from the moon, asteroids, and other planets.
Although other Soviet scientists had stressed the importance of the search for extraterrestrial life, Shklovsky said that chances of finding other intelligent life were extremely remote. The distance to the nearest extraterrestrial civilization (one whose signals could be reaching the earth now) had been calculated at 3300 to 9800 light yr, or 19 800 trillion to 58 800 trillion mi; however, the absence of life, at least intelligent life, in earth's region of the universe should. not discourage, but rather encourage, the conquest of space, he said. (NYT, May 18/78, B-10)
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