Form 15 (3/31/86) NSF PROJECT IST-850 5411 EXPERIMENTS ON THE COGNITIVE ASPECTS OF INFORMATION SEEKING AND INFORMATION RETRIEVING USER QUESTIONS FOR ONLINE SEARCHES QUESTION NUMBER: 022 A1. BRIEF TITLE: Space commercialization market forecast to year 2000 A2. QUESTION STATEMENT: The economic colonization of space, spurred by the prospect of developing new and high purity semiconductors and pharmaceuticals in a gravity free environment, could produce $50 billion in commercial revenues by the year 2000. The space marketplace is divided into six major segments: materials processing, space communications, remote sensing, on-orbit services, ground support sevices, and commercial launch services. In addition space markets face several constraints and incentives including space law, Congressional and federal laws, NASA policy, Strategic Defense Initiative, foreign space competition, and financial climate factors. The space shuttle has helped pave the way. Experiments have successfully run on the European-built spacelab. The U.S. space station, to be launched in the 1990's, will incorporate a modified Skylab for long-term use. This permanent orbiting presence will mark the crossover point away from R&D dominated by a few individual companies to large-scale industrial participation in space commercialization. Beyond the turn of the century, space industrialization will turn to large- scale space structures to further the economic beachhead established in low- earth orbit. The projects will include L-5 orbit space habitats, geostationary orbiting solar power satellites, lunar-based space manufacturing facilities, mass driver or electromagnetic accelerator space transport systems, and space fabrication from non-terrestrial materials. TYPE OF SEARCH REQUESTED B. A precise or a broad search: Broad C. Research application: Space conference program agenda D. Retrieve articles in English only or any language: English E. Years to be searched: no limits ŠF. DIALOG databases suggested: