As the launching date for the Columbia publicity about lue saultle's purpose is focusing on its scientific and commercial potentiai.
The New York Times states that the National Space Administration 'hopes companies wil use shuttle to put factories into orbit The article waxes poetical about the shuttle's potential for building 'gigantic orbiting communications satellites, power stations inat would transmit electricity earth, automated factories where industry space to make things that cannot be made as well. It at all. on eartn But that is not the real purpose of the shuttle. It is a military vehicle designed to orbit and military use would be icing on the cake tant to the Department of Defence former staff U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign and Relations, (NASA) Posed Defence ination and the 'Defence Geopolitics: From the Persian Gulf to Outer Space' Institute for Contemporary Studies, a right-wing think-tank solar- tremelv close ties to the keagan aaministration, in a book entitled, National Security in the 1980s: From Weakness to Strength.
tle will permit the deployment and servicing sophisticated, satellites which the Pentagon's tions, collicicid surveillance Т.H.Кemp, a consul- and member discussed the real purinnovation The article was published by the earlier years.
WILD •eXouter space' He 'In the military sphere, the shutvironment larger, more needs Cal perform a host of tasks including command, control and communicanavigation, reconnaissance, ferreting eavesdropping, and satellite operations.
Kemp adds that 'the impact of space technologies batmanagement ane suralcal (nuclear) warfare, including ballistic missile defence, could have as significant an impact as the in. troduction of the telegraph and the wireless had on naval operations in According to Kemp, 'ultimately, the space shuttle will permit the construction of large battle stations in continues: 'the idea space will Iorever be a nostle ellfor military operations carely examinica There is no inherent reason why the United States should not be able to develop a superior military capability in space And the best thing about the whole programme, that it can 'fire the imagination of a new generation of Americans who were too young to have been influenced by Vietnam but who have been raised in the Star vironment It would give country a national goal ...
'In short,' Kemp maintains, 'the United States needs sense of destiny. jingoistic, so be it ...
Despite Kemp's there is no evidence that the dreaded Vietnam syndrome can be away by his Battlestar fantasy. - rom mercontinental rress wars enthe regain its If this sounds enthusiasm, blasted Gallactica WHO SPEAKS WELSH WHERE