male speaker> The following program is made possible,in part by a grant from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

male speaker> Five, four... We've got main engine start!

[screaming and cheering] Tom Fowler> This was the scene in April as a fiery liftoff carried the space shuttle "Columbia" away from Earth to a near perfect mission.

What possibilities lie ahead?

What problems?

Our topic tonight on "Open Line."

♪ opening music ♪ ♪ Good evening.

After several years of delays and a two-day delay for its launch, the space shuttle worked and captured the imagination of the American public.

Since that, the budget cutbacks have forced NASA officials to trim the number of flights planned over the next several years.

Space advocates hailed the launch as a prelude for a string of initiatives which could lead to space, industry and colonization.

Critics say the shuttle is too expensive and has survived budget cuts solely because of military needs in space and defense needs for a larger booster into orbit.

In any case, the shuttle launch ended nearly six years of American inactivity in space.

All the while, the Soviet Union was continuing its manned orbital activities.

To help us sort out the possibility tonight on this taped edition of "Open Line," We have contributing editor, Dr.

LeConte Cathey, of the Department of Physics and Astronomy at the University of South Carolina.

Good evening.

Welcome back.

What was your personal reaction when you saw that flight go up?

Well, I rashed out in goosebumps all over, even on my feet!

[laughs] That was really magnificent.

You see, that amount of energy in one display is unparalleled on the face of the Earth.

Volcanoes and things like that rival the launch, but, what we have here is a magnificent engineering feat.

The shuttle lifts off, it goes into space and performs perfectly, except for a few tiles and some computer software or computer machinery that was duplicated.

So, what we have is a demonstration of feasibility.

But what I'd like to do is to put people's feet on the ground, as it were, in space, in the sense of what's possible and the cost involved and this kind of thing.

Does that sound feasible with you?

<Sure> Okay.

Well, first off, you'll notice that there was a very large plume on the bottom of that thing, and when it took off, it was burning energy or using energy at a tremendous pace.

If we calculate the cost to place that thing in orbit, it amounted to the order of 28 million.

That's an estimate.

I don't have the exact figures.

You have to go get their budgets to find out what the exact figure.

But, 28 million like that to place this thing in orbit.

And then the experiments are between 4 and 6 million for a for someday, program in space with the shuttle.

Nevertheless, the placement in orbit by this piece of machinery that you show that can come back is absolutely vital at this point.

We have sent space probes to the other planets, the near planets and the moon, and we have information from there.

We've developed the techniques and now all of a sudden we discover we don't know this information about our very own Earth except from the ground side.

We now must go into space with these observational platforms and observe the Earth.

And we are in the throes of this particular renovation, I think, of our concept of information transfer, and that is the only thing at the moment we can afford to put in space by this orbiting machine is information machinery, not people.

Yeah.

Tom Fowler> Communications satellites.

Dr.

LeConte Cathey> Yes.

Perfect example.

Yes.

Just ride around town, particular here outside the studio and see those big antennas and you know right off, my goodness, a Syncom satellite out there-- I have my students calculate that, by the way, what is the synchronous orbital radius?

And this is a good problem for them.

But it winds up, the shuttle has to do quite a lift off to get to that radius of orbit.

Do you realize that?

Most of the orbits they do at the moment don't go that far out, and it takes quite an effort to get the shuttle out there that's 22,000 miles from the surface of the Earth.

And these orbits we've talked about here are very shallow orbits.

Now, if you're going to put a machine into orbit in the daytime, One of those circular orbits that goes around it views the Earth in a day, and then it views it in the night, and it's synchronous with the sun, these are the favorite types of orbits for the military.

They like to run around and see what everybody's doing.

And the surprising thing they can use those machines and they can tell what everybody is doing.

They can spot the Russian silos and their airplanes on the ground, their military forces in fields and this kind of thing.

The resolution of those machines from space, taking photos of the Earth's surface is fantastic.

Tom Fowler> What difference will the shuttles' ability to carry large payloads into orbit, and to have men and women in orbit to work with these devices in orbit?

Now what difference will that make, as opposed to the large boosters on the ground now that can carry large satellites into orbit?

Dr.

LeConte Cathey> Well, it's it's an economic thing.

If you put a satellite in orbit that must receive all of its instructions from the ground, do all of its operation remotely, it means you must put up a satellite that has all types of capabilities, which can be obviated if you put up a person with a satellite and then the person can make decisions, do controls and things like this.

Now this is the big difference.

The cost of an unmanned satellite to achieve a specific purpose, say, take a picture of the Russian silos, that's about 2 million dollars per kilogram.

Now, a Kilogram is about 6/10 or so of a pound.

It's a small amount of a pound, $2 million per kilogram of satellite.

However, if you're willing to send a person up in the shuttle and have the person set the thing in orbit and then control it for this data-taking in process, it's only 20,000 dollars a kilogram.

A factor of 100 less, because you have a person with a mind there to make the decision.

You don't have to telemetry all this up and have machinery to do things.

The person does it.

It's great cost reduction.

However, you now have a person up there and you have to support the person alive.

Namely, it isn't quite all that simple 100 to 1, but it's darn close.

Namely, there is the motivation for having people like the Russians have and like we have just had our Skylab fell in, you know, it went into the ocean down near Australia.

Oh, my.

Well, maybe we'll put up another one.

Tom Fowler> In terms of the civilian uses of the shuttle, obviously the military has a big stake in the shuttle because they can put very large surveillance satellites, communication satellites, other things in orbit.

<That's right> But in terms of civilian uses, besides communication satellites and perhaps geological surveillance, what is there?

There has been some some NASA, inquiries to various industries in the country as far as industry and space.

That's a big, <Oh, yes> a big term.

Dr.

LeConte Cathey> Well, let's consider a very specific problem.

This problem involves growing crystals.

Now, right now, most of the people that see us, courtesy of crystal grower someplace that have made those germanium and silicon crystals inside the transistors that are making that television set work, and in fact, the cameras here, I think, use those, too.

Nevertheless, those crystals must be grown someplace.

Vibration during the growing process induces what's called twinning.

The crystal then takes on a strange mode of growth, and you wind up with part of the volume, which is Cost-Effective, being reduced because it has an odd axis of growth.

You can't use the whole crystal uniquely.

This could be reduced if crystals could be grown in space.

Now there are two great advantages to this.

One is, you can use solar reflectors out there to get your heat for growth.

Just focus the sun.

It'll melt the fool out of the crystal.

Second thing is, once you get it molten, you can zone refine the thing with the same thing without the vibration.

That's the beauty.

There is no vibration, unless a stray meteorite would come along and bounce something.

But that's low probability.

Tom Fowler> What you're talking about, a good-size operation.

Dr.

LeConte Cathey> Oh, my.

Yes, but you can make very large crystals and this would be useful in the future.

This same data problem is the data acquisition plate.

Now you're seeing us on vidicons.

This is an electron tube that has a magnetic sweep system that scans the image on the back plate and gives you a signal that goes to you.

Our hope in the future is to replace that vidicon tube in the camera you're seeing us with, with a mosaic plate, and we'll digitized the signal off of this mosaic plate.

But we need a very large single piece of silicon crystal to make the plate.

Tom Fowler> Now those are a lot of words, but in terms of, what does that mean?

Dr.

LeConte Cathey> It means a hard job.

But it's a lot of work.

And to get a crystal single crystal that size so we can put part of the data processing transistor system, a large scale V.L.S.I., the magic letters, Very Large Scale Integrated circuit on the back of this plate.

Tom Fowler> Now, what will that be in terms of like, say, a home television set?

What will we see then if that's, Dr.

LeConte Cathey> Oh, you'll see the same image.

But that camera, instead of weighing 3 or 400 pounds, will now weigh only about 20 pounds because the major tube in it, the sweep system, which are the large magnets around the vidicon have all been obviated.

We now scan the thing back here in the back.

Tom Fowler> Let's get back on track here.

<That's really fun> In terms of a lot of the space advocates, people perhaps in the audience that have read a lot about space, maybe are science fiction fans, the big thing is, eventually putting mankind, men and women in space to colonize, [laughs] orbital.

Dr.

LeConte Cathey> Well, you remember these numbers I gave you here of the cost per kilogram to go into space.

These numbers are not gone get less.

They gone become more dear as the cost of energy goes up.

Therefore, to place a human being at, say, 200 kilograms into space, you can do the numbers yourself.

It's 200 times 20,000 at the cheapest here, and that winds up to be a prohibitive cost.

Not many people have that many bucks laying around just to take a trip through space.

If they go into space at that cost, you have to have a place to live in space.

All the stuff that they would use for living environment, their enclosure, their living environment, namely the atmosphere, the water, all of the furniture, the food and everything else would have to be hauled up there at 20,000 dollars a kilogram.

Now who can afford that, let alone the cost of the energy that it would take out of the society?

I'm sure the society would never countenance that much expenditure of energy for such a very narrow project.

However, I have here a magazine, a whole series of magazines that advocate this very thing.

This is what you call the pseudo scientific borderline, where we're trying to say that the science is there.

Yes, the science is there, but the motivation, I think, is headed for something other than what you'd call, a rational viewpoint.

This is, "I wish" type stuff.

I wish, such as the chemistry of stars.

That's great.

We need to study that.

"Chemistry of Space."

All these, and it's just page after page of this stuff.

"Aliens in Our Oceans," and he's talking about dolphins.

So you see, people do entirely wish to go into space.

It's an urge for a whole segment of our society.

However, we have in our society also, a group of engineers.

And, you'll notice, "Remote Sensing."

It's a whole section of the I triple E Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers is devoted to the technology of how do you sense these things remotely, like weather, resources in the ground.

You can actually look at the ground from space and guess at the chemical composition by the infrared reflectivity of the ground.

Also, can we look at those two pictures that we have back here in some sense?

Tom Fowler> I'll take a look at those pictures.

Dr.

LeConte Cathey> Okay.

If we could look at those two pictures a little bit, I'm not sure how long it takes us to get those two pictures.

Just a few seconds.

Tom Fowler> What are these pictures?

Dr.

LeConte Cathey> This picture you're looking at here now is a picture from space of the Gulf Coast of Texas.

And that picture in the original is in color.

Are the people going to see it being color?

Well, in color then, you'll notice the different colors and that yellow color in the center is a cool spot in the ocean, which is associated with a cumulation of spawning grounds for various shrimps and other things in that part of the ocean.

Namely, by looking from a satellite, we can see the water temperature, and with the water temperature, we can then guess at the approximate crop of shrimp and other ocean food stuffs that we're going to be able to glean from that particular stream.

By monitoring the temperature climbs in the ocean, we can know our resource that's gone be available.

Now if you look at the other, Tom Fowler> We'll look at in just a second.

I'll have to change shots.

But this piece of information will be very useful to quite a few South Carolinians who are involved in seafood industry - shrimping.

Dr.

LeConte Cathey> Our coast is absolutely, well, vital to that whole segment of the coastal population there.

And this type of technique will give them the, predictive capability, like we're using for weather, which would be in this next one.

Now, this picture is of an ice cap and Iceland.

By monitoring the total ice flow over the various continents, we can sweep each continent from space, We can monitor the amount of ice, our worry at the moment is the ice fields are accumulating, rather than running through a normal cyclical system where they rise and fall with the seasons.

There is a cumulative growth.

The cumulative growth, we believe, is associated with the onset of the next ice age, which means that all of our cousins up north of about Baltimore are gonna have to move down here, 'cause it's not going to have any weather up there.

It's going to be ice forever.

Maybe in 2 or 300 years.

[laughs] So this is the kind of thing that you can monitor, also.

Another thing you can monitor is the motion of the continents.

Do you realize that we can use, Telestat satellite?

We can beam it with a laser, time the laser beams, and we can actually monitor the motion of the continental plates.

And this is being studied with great interest, now.

Question is, how long is it before we going to run into Europe again?

Tom Fowler> Basically, I think if I can paraphrase, you're saying let's not look too far out in space, let's look close to home.

There are a lot of things we can do with it.

But in terms of exploration, unmanned exploration, say, the planets or beyond the solar system, or that elusive search for intelligent life outside our own.

<That's their theme> <Yes> Realistically, what can the space shuttle, how far can that carry us?

Well, a space shuttle can put us in a very good position of launching what we call the sensitive probes.

Now, please don't get me wrong.

We do indeed need to have things like these probes that go down through the galaxy, in other words, the Apollo things and stuff like that.

These are very necessary because if you look at the chemistry on the earth and what we believe is the evolutionary sequence of the Earth, almost certainly there are other people around.

Immediately there will be a counter.

If they're around, why have they not contacted us?

Well, we'll have the counter to that counter is what we call the Australian Syndrome.

Notice the people arrive from Europe completely convinced they have the most proper method, and so they come in and wipe out a whole culture.

Well, I hope these other folks, if they're around, have more sanity than to come and completely blast our culture out of existence by overwhelming it.

I believe they do.

Therefore, if they are others, they are more cautious than our rather pragmatic approach to the problem would be more subtle in their approach, I hope.

Therefore, if they're there, probably they've already contacted us.

In fact, several people take this position.

So you have your option on the contact with the others, in quote, which gives everybody a big thrill.

But, these people are already around in operation and in some fashion helping control what we're doing.

That's kind of a paranoid view, don't you think?

[laughs] It sure does help the science fiction folks keep their business together.

Tom Fowler> In terms of, more practical exploration of the solar system, what does the space shuttle do that we can't do now?

Dr.

LeConte Cathey> Space shuttle gives us the opportunity to put these very delicate satellites up in a permanent basis with these large solar panels, so that this thing can stay up for very long times.

And then we could power this device to go and go into orbit like we have the ones around Mars and the ones that are orbiting Venus at the moment.

And this would then give us a long term, very close up view of these planets.

Now, the question is, should we expect in the future to mine these planets for mineral resources, this kind of thing?

The answer is yes.

If the economy demands it as far as energy is concerned.

We've full-circled back to this energy problem.

The place to find the resources nickel, cobalt, things like that, seems to be best in the asteroid belt, where we wouldn't have to fight a large gravitational potential to get them off the planet into space, and then drop them in on the earth against that.

They'd come down like a shooting star, this kind of thing.

But they are large enough, they'd hit the ground, which hopefully, would this be the ocean someplace, soak up the heat, dissipate all that energy in a big flume of steam and something like it and then we could go pick it up, melt it.

So the objective there would be to place sufficient instrumentation in space to search out this kind of material.

And then if it's there, we could then send probes out or mining ships out to bring it back, because transmitting this stuff across space requires very little energy.

We just changing the orbital parameters around the sun.

Actually, if we go out there and slow it down just a little bit in this angular momentum, it'll fall inward because of the gravitational potential of the sun.

And so, we'd wind up having it brought to us essentially by the sun.

We'd just have to maneuver this stuff a little bit.

Tom Fowler> Shifting just a little bit.

It's been nearly 12 years since, the first lunar landing, Apollo 11.

What would it take to put people on Mars?

Dr.

LeConte Cathey> Oh, that would be fantastic.

You have to remember now, we have only been to the moon.

That is, of the order of a quarter of a million miles.

Okay.

Now, to put a person on Mars, that's the order of 35 million miles.

Now, if you multiply 35 by 4, that's about the magnitude of the trip that it would be versus us going to the moon.

Namely, it is a fantastically difficult thing to contain people and transport them for this great distance.

Nevertheless, I suspect where near in the future before 2000, we'll probably have some expedition to Mars.

We mapped it.

It's a beautiful place according to the pictures.

Very, uh, sere.

There's not much water now, but they believe there's ice under the ground.

In fact, they have some evidence for ice underground.

They think they're microorganisms.

Maybe.

There's not definite yet on the surface.

Venus is an entirely different thing.

It's quite hot.

It's closer to the sun.

And its surface temperature, we believe, is a little too high for large organisms like people.

They might be microorganisms there in the atmosphere, but not things as large as people.

Mars is a different question.

It's possible there has been water.

You can see the flows.

The old creek bottoms and lake bottoms and things like that.

But, as the man says, I don't see any footprints.

[chuckling] That's pretty wild.

But, Mars has the capability of being inhabited.

It does have an atmosphere.

The atmosphere is similar to ours, not the same.

So it would have to be pressurized.

It's very tenuous.

You'd have to have glass domes and wear a helmet if you went outside.

Perhaps human beings could accommodate my growing larger lung, cavities and this kind of thing.

Very large upper structure.

Over years, they'd accommodate.

Tom Fowler> In terms of, the next couple of years with the space program, What should we look forward to or watch out for?

Dr.

LeConte Cathey> A very great increase in communications, us with the world and us with ourselves, and us with all kinds of various facets.

This is, I brought in here, some of the proposals here.

One here, is to have a large satellite system to control the power grid in the country, to be able to shift power from one part of the country to another on demand, using satellite microwave control.

Another one here is this one measuring land motions and land coverage with satellites.

This is important because this is where they use the concept of measuring the amount of snow water to know how much water is going to be available in our rivers, namely the rate at which the river is going to run off and we'll know whether Sacramento needs aide or not shipping water in over the mountain and all that.

Here's one now that's a proposed system.

This is this month's "Engineering" magazine, May '81, And this thing here proposes to the military what's called the universal satellite.

They put this thing up and it becomes their combat control center.

They work through this satellite to control everything, the front line troops, their tanks, their aircraft, the artillery fire, Everything is done through what's called the Navstar All-Purpose Satellite.

So, here are some uses for satellites, military and very applied civilian things.

So, this is going to be an explosion in space as far as information processing.

Tom Fowler> Will the budget cutbacks that have been put in place by NASA for the next two years, make that much difference in terms of what they can do with the space shuttle?

Dr.

LeConte Cathey> No.

You see, it's not a NASA budget.

It's the budget that NASA will be fed from private industry in the military.

Private industry would be these things.

The military, in particularly the Europeans are quite interested.

Here's an article by the Europeans.

They want to get on our space trip.

And the thing is, they need this same kind of information, too.

Our people have been supplying them the information.

Well, they'd like to have their own satellites to gather the same information.

And so, the space program is cut back as far as government contributions are concerned, but contributions from the private sector are supposed to be able to pick this up and carry it forward so that space shuttle will not lose any of its momentum as far as going into space, number of trips and all of that stuff.

Does that makes sense?

Tom Fowler> And what one of NASA's big points throughout the history of the journey to the moon and beyond is, that all of the space development has byproducts for industry and they point to all these things.

<Oh yes> But in terms of the space shuttle as being a new transportation system to space, what might develop out of this that we really can't see now?

What you pointed to are very practical spinoffs of how we think it will be, communication satellites monitoring the oceans for fishing water, this sort of thing.

What spinoffs might there be that, we just really haven't thought of?

Dr.

LeConte Cathey> Well, that's the problem.

A large number of people have been very active in this.

Now, what I want to show you is a magazine.

I'll just show you the magazine here.

This is October '72, and this is a pre-planning thing for what we have just witnessed on your tape.

What's here is the information where they were planning to put the thing together <space shuttle> yes, to carry these types of satellites up there and they give the specs.

One of the movie, one of the picture printing things for these pictures taken in very high resolution of ground cover and ground disposition of various, I will say, ice, rivers, water, things like that.

One of those pictures like that has that much information.

They are geared up to print 100,000 pictures a day in black and white, and 15,000 in color from this kind of data.

So here's a spin off where you can get your very own space picture of your farm if you request it, namely any individual who can, a factory can see the smoke plume from his factory, who can actually see the smoke plume, not just the visible smoke, but all of the hot gases and everything else.

Because if you remember that picture, it can take pictures of gas at different temperature.

So they take a photograph from space using this infrared technique, and they see his heat plume.

Tom Fowler> We have about 30 seconds <Right> When the space shuttle will make space, an industrial and military venture, will the glamour be gone?

Dr.

LeConte Cathey> No.

It'll never be gone.

How could you look at a launch like that and think the glamour, I had goosebumps on the bottom of my feet, man, you never get over that!

Gee!

That much energy at one time.

That's dramatic.

No matter how you do it.

It'll never go away.

Tom Fowler> Thanks.

Our thanks to Dr.

LeConte Cathey, from the University of South Carolina.

Thanks to you for watching.

Have a good evening.

♪ closing music ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ The preceding program was made possible, in part, by a grant from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

♪ ♪