While such predictions may be overly optimistic, they can scarcely be dismissed as irresponsible in the light of what has already happened.
Figure 6.—Booster engines of tomorrow, such as this mockup of the 1,500,000 pound thrust single engine, will place broad requirements on men and materials.
CREATION OF NEW INDUSTRIES
Whether or not we think of the missile-space business as being a self-contained industry, the requirements and exigencies of space exploration can be expected to result in the creation of new or greatly strengthened industrial branches, for example:
Research
This phase of the American economy is having a phenomenal growth. Not only have many established industries now placed research high on their organizational charts, but hundreds, perhaps thousands, of new businesses are springing up which are entirely devoted to research and development. R. & D., as it is called, is their stock in trade, their only product. And space exploration appears to have given them their greatest boost.
One recent study on the subject regards research as the fourth major industrial revolution to take place in American history, following the advents of steam mechanization, steel, electricity-and-internal combustion engines.
The fourth industrial revolution, ours, is unique in the number of people working on it, its complexity, and its power to push the economy at a rate previously impossible.
Today between 5,000 and 50,000 technical entrepreneurs (top R. & D. engineers, leading scientists, and highly effective technical managers) are directly analogous to an estimated 50 to 500 men in all of the first three periods. Thus about 100 times the effort in terms of qualitative (effective, creative, patent-producing) manpower is being spent on the fourth revolution as on the other three combined.