THE SYNTHETIC FUTURE

As man hurtles through the universe he extends the frontiers of the artificial world.

"Our conquest of outer space rests on an artificial base," jokes a scientist.

What he means is that the first astronauts sent out in space capsules sit on couches heavily padded with a special kind of plastic foam called "urethane." The space pilots must be protected from the tremendous unearthly forces to which their earthly bodies will be subjected. The shock of landing, for example, is more than a man could stand without the aid of engineering. Scientists have figured that the flier must face forces that can be equal to 240 times the pull of gravity. The impact of landing can be reduced with devices attached to the space ship. These are not enough. The space man must also be able to count on cushioning within the space ship and in his clothing.

Fashions for astronauts keep changing. Styles are dependent on new developments in fibers and synthetics, rather than on fashion announcements by Paris designers. A current model weighs twenty pounds. It is a one-piece suit, fashioned out of nylon treated with aluminum and rubber. A vinyl sponge absorbs the water vapor from perspiration and breathing. Every so often the sponge is squeezed automatically, and the water is siphoned off into a storage tank. On his head the astronaut wears a plastic helmet, lined with an inch and a half of urethane foam.

Our knowledge of conditions beyond the earth's atmosphere is learned from instruments, as well as from observant astronauts. Some of the capsules are sent into the far reaches of the universe without a pilot on board. How can cameras and delicate electronic devices take the speed, vibrations and impact of landing? Like the space men, they are cushioned against shock with plastic foam. In one preflight test an electronic tube was placed in a box padded in this way. It was dropped out of a window on the eighteenth floor of a skyscraper, and landed on the concrete sidewalk far below with a deafening crash. When the tube was taken out of its container it still worked perfectly. In the same way, fragile equipment returns unhurt from voyages through space.

New synthetics are being designed to meet each advance of the space age - fuels to get the rockets off the ground, materials for space ships, nose cones for missiles, fabrics that can endure fantastic heat and unbelievable cold, substances suitable for building houses on other planets.

Right here on earth life is fast growing more artificial than ever. You have read that many of the things you wear, use and eat are synthetic. In the future men may become partly synthetic, too.

We are at the beginning of a plastics age in medicine. Synthetics have been developed that can be put inside the human body. They do no harm, nor are they harmed by the living tissue around them. There are already people walking around with plastic arteries and veins. The injured or blocked portions of their blood vessels have been removed and replaced with synthetic tubes. Others go about their business with partly artificial hip joints. Certain types of plastic, called "acrylic" and "silicone," substitute for a piece of the damaged bone.

Synthetics are coming into use to rebuild faces or parts of the body in plastic surgery. Even a portion of the membrane covering the brain has been replaced with a silicone-coated fabric. Plastic tubes and rods can drain off fluid from the brains of patients suffering from water on the brain. By using plastics to repair damaged parts of the eye, sight has been restored to people apparently doomed to blindness. Experiments are being done in the creation of an artificial cornea, which is the transparent portion of the coat of the eyeball.

The most dramatic possibility for the artificial future is that the day may come when a man will be able to live without a heart. There are already a number of people who are functioning with heart valves made of plastic. Others have survived drastic surgery, thanks to special machines placed in their chests. These provided an electrical impulse that kept the heart going. Other machines can substitute for the heart altogether for short periods during certain types of operations.

"These are just first steps," says a doctor.

Medical researchers are now working on an artificial heart that could replace the heart altogether for the rest of the patient's life. A small motor-driven pump, covered with plastic, and with synthetic valves and arteries, could be placed inside the body. Even the aorta, which is the largest and most important artery leading out of the heart, would be artificial.

Models of such a heart have been used experimentally on dogs for periods of as long as five hours. Such extreme measures would, of course, be attempted only on a human patient in desperate condition.

Men without hearts: this is an indication of just how far synthetics can take us. In the world of the future any damaged organ may be replaced by an artificial duplicate as a matter of course.

Medicines, too, have left the kingdom of the natural and entered the kingdom of the synthetic. When sick, we do not send an aged aunt out to scour the woods in search of healing herbs and leaves. Medicine men are not called in to cure us with magic potions. Doctors give us shots or prescribe pills instead. Inside the vials and pills are many medicines that are simply chemical reproductions of natural products. Vitamins and tranquilizers are just two of hundreds that have been duplicated successfully. Researchers are burning the laboratory lamps until late at night in search of more.

"Even some of the wonder drugs can now be made chemically," reports a doctor. "Chloromycetin originally came from a microorganism found in the soil in Venezuela. A few years later scientists figured out how to make this very antibiotic synthetically. The same thing has been done more recently with tetracycline, another of the wonder drugs, which was also first found in nature. The advantage of making these medicines in the laboratory is that we can then cause slight changes in the molecule and make each antibiotic cure more diseases more effectively."

Drugs to conquer the illnesses that still plague mankind are yet to come out of the flasks resting on top of today's Bunsen burners.

The world outside you, as well as inside you, becomes more synthetic as the years go by. Few objects are secure from the inroads of plastics. Even gun barrels can be made out of a solid form of nylon. Plumbing pipes and sewer connections are going artificial.

Do you wonder what lies ahead? Synthetics will make life more comfortable than you ever imagined it could be. A paint that can heat or cool your house sounds like the kind of scheme you would read about in a comic book. Nonetheless, scientists are working away at this project and appear quite sure of success. Others prefer the idea of warming a room by means of the wallpaper. If cold feet trouble you in the winter, just wait a few years. Carpets that can be heated may provide the solution to that problem.

Everybody likes a clean house, but nobody likes to do the dusting. Very little of that time-consuming chore will be needed when dust-repellent finishes are built into fabrics, upholstery, carpets and pillows.

Another possibility which scientists and clothing manufacturers discuss when they get together is a type of garment that you could wear all year around.. ^-It^. would keep you warm in winter and cool in summer. The trick is in the lining. In the winter you zip in a lining that is colored with special dyes and treated with finishes that absorb light rays and change them into heat. When the thermometer rises you do not need to hang your dress or suit away in a closet until the fall. You simply switch the lining for one that is treated with finishes to repel light rays.

Perhaps you think that wearing the same clothes winter and summer would get boring. Chemists have a solution in mind that would please people who want constant change. How would you like to buy a skirt or a jacket, wear it a couple of times, and throw it away? It seems like the sort of extravagance possible for billionaires only. But the day may come when you will be doing just that. Special plastic finishes are being developed to make paper so strong that it could be used in clothes. The scientist, hard at work creating an easy life for his descendants, does not plan to stop there.

"Why not paper bed linen, upholstery, sails for boats, parachutes and blankets?" he asks. "It will be possible to wash or clean these paper fabrics, but they will be so cheap that many users will just toss them aside without a second thought."

Chemists are continuing their all-out attack on natural products. Out of the tiny world within the test tube, scientists are creating a new world around us.

(From The artificial world around us, by Lucy Kavaler)