Jan 9 1985
From The Space Library
NASA announced that Lewis Research Center awarded a $32,346,000 follow-on contract to General Dynamics's Convair Division (GD/C) to erect, test, and launch (with accompanying launch facility modifications) Atlas-Centaur launch vehicles and to perform support testing and launching of Centaur upper stages from the Space Shuttle in 1986; GD/C would work at Kennedy Space Center. The cost-plus-award-fee contract, beginning January 1, 1985 and running through December 1986, was a continuation of work GD/C had performed under earlier contracts. The Centaur should increase the Space Shuttle's capability to carry heavier payloads from low-earth orbit to geosynchronous orbit or interplanetary trajectories. (NASA Release 85-5)
Commercialization NASA Administrator James Beggs, in a January 9 speech in Washington at the Conference on International Business in Space, predicted that early in the 21st century there would be a permanently manned base on the moon to serve a lunar mining industry and as a way-station to other points in the solar system.
He called space the endless frontier and outlined the unique attributes it offers: first, a vantage point for communications and earth observations and, from telescopes beyond the atmosphere, an improved view of the universe; second, a zero gravity environment, which offers unusual manufacturing opportunities; and third, a near-perfect vacuum, which also offers new options for industrial processes.
He noted that the communications-satellite business was one of the fastest growing industries in the world, with an estimated market of more than $3 billion a year in sales potential through the year 2000, but that the other two unique attributes of space were under-used. To remedy this, he reported three major NASA initiatives: new high-technology ventures, new commercial applications of existing technology, and unsubsidized initiatives that would transfer existing space assets on earth to private hands if they could be operated for profit.
Beggs concluded that expanding commerce in space would be difficult, but not impossible, in order ". . . to transform the promise of space into a brighter tomorrow for all mankind." (NASA Release 85-1)
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