THE THIRD INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION

This brief essay perceives the third industrial revolution as primarily a function of ""the exploitation of the Solar System"" or ""the industrial utilization of space."" The idea is to move industrial operations off the earth and into either space modules orbiting our planet or onto other planets and heavenly bodies--particularly the moon. This is not science fiction, Stine writes; it will become feasible over the next 50 to 100 years, protecting earth's ecology and making possible new processes and products. Since those extraterrestrial environments have no or low gravity, wide temperature variation and other special features, new types of alloys, purer medical vaccines, and more efficient electronic components could be made. Single hydrogen atoms (rather than molecules) could be made into non-polluting rocket fuel. Some of the basic experiments have already been carried out on Apollo and Skylab flights. Also new sources of raw materials may be found on asteroids and planets. Unfortunately the book's informational core is padded by much hyped-up prose, simplistic arguments and sloganeering, which vitiates Stine's few effective arguments for the practicality of space programs. Speculative futurology.