Soyuz flights, and our own Skylab program. It is continuing at this moment, because in mid-December the first in a whole series of space processing experiments was launched aboard a small Black Brant VC sounding rocket at White Sands, N. Mex. Three flights a year are planned. And the reason for this is simple. Even though less than 5 minutes of near weightlessness will be available on each of these small rocket flights, the interest in space processing and making things in space is so promising that scientists and engineers do not want to wait another 5 years for the Space Shuttle to become available. The Space Shuttle and its progeny are vital not only to the space solution to our growing energy shortage, but also to the progress of the third industrial revolution, just as the transcontinental railroad of a century ago was vital to the development of the western half of the continental United States. And in spite of the fact that the transcontinental railroad cost us more per capita and consumed a greater percentage of the gross national product than our Space Shuttle of the the 20th century, every penny of Government loans for the transcontinental railroad was paid back with interest. And the same will hold true for the Space Shuttle. I refer you to the remarks of Senator Goldwater, published in the Congressional Record for Wednesday, April 3, 1974. There Senator Goldwater reported on the marketing studies of David Keller of General Electric Co. These studies projected a total value of over $2 billion per year from materials processed in space with the Space Shuttle, our first space factory. So we can and we must build the power satellites. And we can and we must transfer an increasing part of our industrial base into space to reduce pollution and lower energy requirements. In closing, permit me to remark that I have stated in my book that there is no guarantee warranted by history or national will that the users of space, the space industrialists, will be Americans. To do what must be done to increase our available energy resources by means of power satellites and therefore maintain the badly needed and growing international social institutions, to provide the drive to undertake this capital-intensive space utilization program—both of these require a dedication of a people and their leaders to a goal that promises a better way of life for their children and their grandchildren. If we don't do it, other more dynamic people will—they will rise to it, because this promise and this hope is real, and it is there for those who work for it. A better way of life was the promise and the hope of the American Revolution. And I believe the American people still have the frontier spirit that brought us through the American Revolution and two industrial revolutions to date. What better time than the Bicentennial of the American Revolution for America to declare its commitment to the third Industrial Revolution—'the betterment of the entire world by the utilization and exploitation of space? Gentlemen, I really believe we are going to solve our problems, and I think we will probably survive. Thank you for allowing me to preach revolution to you. I will be happy to answer any questions, sir.
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy MTU5NjU0Mg==