![]() Many people have noted the possibility of producing perfectly round ball bearings by allowing molten metal droplets to form spheres under their surface tension, then to solidify. You can purify molten materials by a technique known as “zone refining,” which works best without gravity. For instance, very large crystals can be grown of the type needed by the electronics industry. Zero g will also provide the opportunity for a lot of work in the general area of materials and chemical processes, some of which may lead to new industrial ventures which will return a tidy profit. Then their keepers will write papers for Science with titles like “Sexual Response in Guinea Pigs: Effects of Zero G.” There small animals will be used for experiments while scientists earnestly study their blood counts and bone calcium levels, or allow them to breed entire generations that will never feel gravity. For instance, there will be the zero-g biology lab. Much of this work will be quite specialized, of interest mainly to the scientists who are doing it, and to their close associates. But when they first arrive, like junior researchers everywhere, they will find themselves sharing cluttered offices and labs. Some of these people will so distinguish themselves that they will be invited to stay, to join the growing faculty permanently. These will be eagerly sought by Earth’s best graduate students and young researchers. The real work of the University will be in the hands of the junior faculty or the researchers there on temporary fellowships. Instead, they will be attending meetings with senior colony administrators or going to Earth to testify before Congressional committees or meeting with wealthy donors to seek funds. However, if they are like senior scientists in the Earth’s research centers, they will spend little time in the laboratories or at the telescopes. The permanent positions will belong to those scientists who will have been involved from the start in establishing the university. How will this university be organized? As in the great Earthside research centers, there will be permanent and senior faculty as well as a number of people on temporary appointments. It will be a place to do good science, to produce the excellent papers whose authors will give for their affiliation “The University of Space.” ![]() The colony will be more than a place to build powersats, more than a settlement. People living in their apartments will have for neighbors mostly construction workers or agricultural workers but here and there will be an infrared astronomer or an expert in communication with extraterrestrials-or an anthropologist, living as unobtrusively as he can while studying the natives. ![]() Tucked away in the spokes of the colony, along with the cattle feedlots and the air-conditioning systems, will be the colony’s principal center for scientific research.
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