Page:Introduction to Outer Space (1958 booklet - FAS scan).pdf/16

 ourselves to land a man on the moon and to return him safely to earth.

Meanwhile, back at earth, satellites will be entering into the everyday affairs of men. Not only will aiding the meteorologists, but they could they be surely—and rather quickly—be pressed into service for expanding world-wide communications, including intercontinental television.

At present all trans-oceanic communication is by cable (which is costly to install) or by shortwave radio (which is easily disrupted by solar storms). Television cannot practically be beamed more than a few hundred miles because the wavelengths needed to carry it will not bend around the earth and will not bounce off the region of the atmosphere known as the ionosphere. To solve this knotty problem, satellites may be the thing, for they can serve as high-flying radio relay stations. Several suitably-equipped and properly-spaced satellites would be able to receive TV signals from any point on the globe and to relay them directly—or perhaps via a second satellite—to any other point. Powered with solar batteries, these relay stations in space should be able to keep working for many years.

The development of military rockets has provided the technological base for space exploration. It will probably continue to do so, because of the commanding military importance of the ballistic missile, The subject of ballistic missiles lies outside our present discussion, We ask instead, putting missiles aside, what other military applications of space technology can we see ahead?

There are important, foresceable, military uses for space vehicles. These lie, broadly speaking, in the fields of communication and reconnaissance. To this we could add meteorology, for the possible advances in meteorological science which have already been described would have military implica-