DIVIDENDS FROM SPACE

An overly sunny, extravagantly exaggerated recital of current and prospective space program benefits meant to convince people of the urgent need for increased NASA funding. ""NASA is paying a heavy penalty for its overpublicity of manned flight,"" moan the authors, all associated with the Alabama space establishment, as they launch their mission propaganda. By 1980, for example, you will have accurate 14-day weather forecasts, thanks to NASA research (that reliable one-day forecasts are still a rarity fazes the Ordway team not); soon, too, an experimental Apollo shock absorber will be applied to cars, saving you 20% on insurance premiums (honk, honk); a better color TV tube is in the offing, not to mention Aerojet-General Corporation's Sero-Matic System for detecting syphilis (?); already there's an improved iceberg spotter, better computer hardware and software, and nifty ""fire entry garments"" (which presumably include underwear), all spinoffs from your space dollar, a mere $40 billion in the '60's. The most outre claim is that ""refinement and optimization of the systems approach are clearly a product of aerospace management"" which leads the authors to attribute every conceivable application of this problem-solving method to space research, e.g., in the future your police chief will be able to ""predict the place that crime is most likely to occur. . . and the time of crime as well."" All of this in paralytic prose with a glowing introduction by rocketeer Wernher Von Braun whose old country buddies at Huntsville are getting laid off faster than the speed of sound. Moonstruck.