It could lift over 700 tons of accumulated Shuttle payloads to lunar orbit, using powdered external tanks from the Shuttle to provide the push. Unless we use them, those tanks will otherwise be allowed to burn up in the atmosphere over the Indian Ocean, an unpardonable waste. Less than 2 years' worth of Shuttle payloads, lifted to lunar orbit by the mass-driver, would give us all the equipment needed for a lunar base, and all the propellant to soft-land it on the lunar surface [slide 6].

In this drawing of the lunar base the solar-cell-powered mass-driver is in place.

About 1 more year of operation of the Shuttle and mass-driver after the emplacement of the first mass-driver on the lunar surface would be enough to put in space the chemical processing equipment that would be needed to process the first payloads coming off the moon [slide 7].

The first year of operation is calculated by our research group to bring out 30,000 tons of materials. That is in the first year alone, and is 15 times as much as the maximum payload capacity of the Shuttle at 60 flights per year.

One additional year of operation after that would be enough to lift the necessary equipment for processing those materials in space.

Studies show that comfortable quarters can be built within the Shuttle external tanks [slide 8].

SLIDE 8

These would be for the work force in space and on the lunar surface. The living conditions would be far better than those at the Alaska pipeline, but we wouldn't be trying to build luxury hotels.

In a traffic model of 60 Shuttle flights per year, it appears that within 7 years from first lift-off we could bootstrap our way to a productivity in space of more than 200,000 tons per year of finished products from about 3 times that quantity of raw materials [slide 91.

If those products were the components of solar power stations, to be sold to all those countries that need energy, their value would be over $20 billion per year in hard currency earnings. That should mean a lot to our country, that had a deficit just this past November of over $3 billion in balance of payments.

Because of the Shuttle and our headstart in space technology, the United States is now in a better position than any other nation to seize this opportunity and profit by it, while still benefiting other nations. But no opportunity waits forever, and the chance we now have can be lost within a few years. The Russians did not seriously compete with Apollo, but quietly they've now gone far ahead of us in studying the maintenance of a work force in space for long periods of time. They've completed tests lasting over a year, in which groups