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No less intriguing but so far less precise are the shuttle's commercial possibilities. It is a working truck with a 65,000-lb. payload, but who is going to buy space in it? Communications companies, for one, are already lined up to use the shuttle for satellite launches. One advantage is price: $35 million for a shuttle launch vs. $48 million for a boost into space from a conventional Atlas-Centaur rocket. Another is that the shuttle can carry several satellites at a time. What is more, says A T & T 's Robert Latter, "you can test the satellite all the way up. Maybe you could even fix it in flight." After the astronauts perfect their skills at retrieving satellites with the shuttle's big mechanical arm, ailing "birds" may also be recovered and repaired either in orbit or on the ground.
An early operational flight of the shuttle, in 1983, is scheduled to carry a tracking and data relay satellite aloft for the Space Communications Co. AT&T is planning to use a 1984 flight to put one of its new Telstar 3 satellites into orbit. Foreign nations have rented a total of 18 payloads, among them: an Arab consortium, Australia, Canada, China, Colombia, Great Britain, Japan and Luxembourg. Other potential users of shuttle space have been slower to come forward, in part because the idea of working in orbit is still a bit too risky and futuristic for most corporate chiefs to contemplate. But there is little doubt that microgravity and the "hard" vacuum of space offer unique opportunities for research and development. One idea that will be tested jointly in space by McDonnell Douglas and Ortho Pharmaceutical is a procedure for separating biological materials through electrophoresis, a process whereby substances move under the influence of electric fields. The object: to isolate hormones, enzymes, proteins and certain cells in higher and purer concentrations than can be achieved under the influence of gravity.
Still other companies are considering the use of space to grow crystals for the manufacture of electronic "chips," the tiny semiconductor wafers that are at the heart of modern electronics. Space-made crystals, say the experts, could be larger and more uniform than those made on earth. Other possible orbital products: high-purity glass, new alloys, higher-yield vaccines. Says Jerry Grey: "These aren't future technologies. They can be used today." Adds Merrill Lynch Analyst Ed Greenslet: "The important thing is that the shuttle is now there. Things that are there often start people thinking and evaluating what could and should be done with them."