Exploring the Unknown - NASA's History Office

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SPACE AS AN INVESTMENT IN ECONOMIC GROWTH
The entrance of free enterprise into space for commercial activities conforms with
national traditions. Private initiative has been the foundation of our nation’s development
and progress from its beginning. Even during the earliest explorations of the North
American continent, explorers and pioneers were followed by traders and craftsmen who
came to serve new settlements. Now, industrial entrepreneurs are following our astronauts
into the new realms.
Commercial expertise will perhaps do for space what the earliest American settlers did
for our continent. They turned forbidding regions into prosperous and hospitable inhabited
areas.
Commercialization will also perhaps do for space what Charles Lindbergh did for aviation.
It will show that space is a vital arena for commercial and industrial activities. Outer
space is perhaps the 21st-century equivalent of a new continent waiting to share its wealth.
The partnership required for these undertakings by the Government, industry, academia
and other sectors in our society can only strengthen our nation. Space commercialization
is perhaps as much our nation’s manifest destiny as was the taming of lands earlier in our
history. . . .
Document III-20
Document title: “Feasibility Study of Commercial Space Manufacturing, Phase II Final
Report,” Volume I: Executive Summary, MDC E1625, McDonnell Douglas Astronautics
Company, East St. Louis, Missouri, January 15, 1977, pp. 1–2, 8–20.
Source: NASA Historical Reference Collection, NASA History Office, NASA
Headquarters, Washington, D.C.
This is one of a series of studies that were done for the Marshall Space Flight Center in the late 1970s.
Initial NASA funding of industry to look at manufacturing goods in space led to further R&D by
companies and to experiments on the Space Shuttle.
Feasibility Study of
Commercial Space Manufacturing
Phase II
Final Report
Volume I
Executive Summary
[1] SPACE MANUFACTURING
1.0 INTRODUCTION
15 January 1977
[originally set in two newspaper-style columns] Space processing experiments conducted
during the Skylab and ASTP [Apollo-Soyuz Test Project] missions have shown that
the space environment has some unique effects on materials processing. It is potentially
possible to translate these effects into tangible benefits such as commercial products produced
in space. To fully develop this potential, however, requires industry participation to