facilities;
standardized equipment for satellites and other space vehicles;
fuel supplies; medical services; biological services; and general
supplies.

Moving away from the idea of a commercial space port, must all
future tracking stations, observatories, and data-processing
stations be Government owned? How about experimental stations for
the simulation of space environments? How about laboratories and
stations actually constructed in space? Or will privately owned
facilities one day offer these services on an international basis
to governments, industries, universities, and international
agencies?

Most likely the first businesses suitable for commercial operation,
using space technologies, will be worldwide communication by
satellite, private weather forecasting, and high-speed Earth
transport by rocket.[45]

[Illustration: FIGURE 9.--The electric and electronic needs of
the space program are requiring more and more skilled labor.]

JOBS

There probably is no reliable way to gage the number of Americans who
are employed today because of the national space effort, nor to estimate
accurately the number who are likely to be employed in the years ahead.

This much can be said, though. They already number in the tens of
thousands, probably in the hundreds of thousands.

The Administrator of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration
has reported that his agency presently employs 18,000 persons. And he
adds "in spite of the size of this organization, we estimate that
approximately 75 percent of our budget will be expended through
contracts with industry, educational institutions, and other
nongovernmental groups."

Thus the number of persons privately employed who are working on NASA
projects is, of itself, a high figure. The number employed in, by, or
for the Department of Defense on missiles or space-related projects is
undoubtedly higher.

In addition to these must be added the men and women employed by private
industry in a capacity not directly related to the space program but
whose jobs have been created nonetheless by its stimulus.

The fact is that the military and peaceful needs of the space
program are already employing a significant percentage of the
industrial work force, and will make up an even larger proportion
of total employment and production of the country as the years go
by. The ai