For anyone who has run fresh out of things to worry about and feels at a loose end, Microbytes Daily has come up with a new one to restore their anxiety rating to a satisfactory level – the United States is rapidly losing ground in the development of pure semiconductors, the kind that can be made only in outer space: that is the claim of National Aeronautics & Space Administrator James Fletcher, who says that most of the interest in microgravity semiconductor research is in Japan and West Germany, and that while the Pentagon and NASA are keen to get the concept off the ground, US manufacturers just aren’t that interested; pure semiconductors, which will undoubtedly be made from Gallium Arsenide, will be the basis of cheaper, faster, more powerful computers, and key to the development of pure GaAs semiconductors is the building of the first US space station… or then again, it could just be a ploy to scare Congress into voting the astromical sums required to get one of his pet projects up and flying.
