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 aircraft industry, for example, is broadening its scope to include missile and space technologies. Much of the electronics industry is devoted to missile and space needs. The communications, chemical, and metallurgical industries are increasingly involved. These industries are already among the largest employers in the United States, and they are the major employers of the Nation's technical manpower. Hence we are not speaking of a minor element in the national economy, but of its leading growth industries.[46]
This phase of the space program's value should not be eyed merely from the standpoint of scientists and the labor market. It has major significance for the professions—for doctors, lawyers, architects, teachers, and engineers. All of these will be vitally concerned with space exploration in the future. The doctor with space medicine and its results; the lawyer with business relations and a vastly increased need for knowledge in international law; the architect with the construction of spaceports and data and tracking facilities; the teacher with the booming demand for new types of space-engendered curricula.
As for the engineer—
In this pyramid of scientific and engineering effort there will be found requirements for the services of almost every type of scientist and engineer to a greater or less degree. In the forefront, of course, are the aerospace and astronautical engineers but the development of the Saturn launching vehicle has also enlisted the cooperation of civil, mechanical, electrical, metallurgical, chemical, automotive, structural, radio, and electronics engineers. Much of their work relates to ground handling equipment, special automotive and barge equipment, checkout equipment, and all the other devices needed to support the design, construction, testing, launching, and data gathering.[47]
AUTOMATION AND DISARMAMENT
Finally, an economic value of extreme importance could be the ultimate role of the space program in modifying the threat to labor which is inherent in automation and disarmament. Space exploration, opening up new and profitable vistas, could take up much of the slack thus imposed and do it at a higher and more intellectual job level.
Automation, as we know, is already in the process. In agriculture alone it has bitten deeply into the laboring force and yet produces greater crops than ever.[48] It is gathering strength in many other fields.
Disarmament is a long way from being a reality. But all nations of the world are striving for it, or at least giving lipservice to its principles, so it may one day emerge as a reality. If this happens, space exploration again may be a most important element in taking up the slack which a prominent reduction in defense activity could not help but bring about.