In his hasty attempt to deprecate the success of Russia's man-carrying spaceship, President Kennedy got lost in an old scientific daydream. Cheap fresh water extracted from salt water, he said, would benefit humanity enough to dwarf any other scientific accomplishment. This hope, that desalted sea water may make the deserts bloom as the rose, has long been popular. It has stirred speculative flurries on the stock exchanges; it can almost always get money out of Congress. Five big pilot desalting plants backed with federal money are now scheduled or already under construction. But the experts who came to the National Watershed...
To continue reading:
or
Log-In
