What was going on when I was born?

An article in Business Day on Nov. 23 incorrectly stated the size of Po- land's debt to the Dresdner Bank in West Germany. It is $180.2 million at current exchange rates.

Last month, as the space shuttle raced through a mission cut short by a fuel cell failure, lawyers, insurers and executives gathered at a Washington hotel to discuss the hurdles to doing business in space. Technical mishaps, however, appeared to be among the least of their worries. The would-be pioneer businessmen in space were more apprehensive about the huge economic stakes, political conflicts and legal problems confronting them. These uncertainties ''make it easy to lose your shirt,'' conceded William Good, the founder of Earth Space Transport System, a fledging cargo-carrying system. The basic treaty governing activity in space, the Outer Space Treaty of 1967, indirectly establishes the right of private business to operate there. Two sections describe the responsibilities of states for the activity of ''nongovernmental'' organizations. The treaty also says that the use of space shall be free for nonmilitary purposes.

Policemen surrounded a firefighters' academy here today as more than 300 cadets defied demands that they end a sit-in strike they began last Wednesday. The action is being watched with concern by the Government because firemen in Poland, as in other European countries, are a militarized force, and the striking cadets - future chiefs of fire companies - wear military uniforms. They are, moreover, under the authority of the Interior Ministry, the command center of internal security.

Treasury Secretary Donald T. Regan said today that he would seek Congressional approval for a new floating interest rate on savings bonds, in an effort to make them attractive and competitive in a time of high interest rates. Under the plan, bondholders would be guaranteed a fixed interest rate but would be paid a higher return if market interest rates rose above that fixed rate. The higher return would be available on the bonds outstanding as well as on all future issues. ''This change will provide needed improvement for the small saver who has been loyally participating in the program, for the nonsaver who needs an incentive to start saving and for the nation itself,'' said Mr. Regan, who announced the proposal in a speech in New York. Details were released here.

The stock prices of 11 middle-size oil and gas companies declined sharply yesterday amid growing investor sentiment that interest in oil company takeovers may be subsiding because of the antitrust problems in Mobil's bid to acquire the Marathon Oil Company. Among oil issues caught in the slide on the New York Stock Exchange were Pennzoil, off 3 7/8, to 48 1/2; Cities Service 3 3/8, to 48 3/4, and Marathon, 5, to 100. Declines of a point or more in heavy trading were registered by Superior, Phillips, Union Oil, Kerr-McGee, Getty, Sun, General American and Murphy. Most have been considered potential takeover targets by major oil companies seeking to increase energy reserves.

The Supreme Court ruled today that the Federal Government was not legally required to make it easier for small oil companies to compete for offshore oil and gas leases. Nearly all such leases are won by the major oil companies, which have the resources to make the initial cash payments required by the bidding systems now used by the Interior Department. The unanimous decision overturned a ruling by the United States Court of Appeals here and upheld the Government's view that a 1978 law, enacted by Congress to increase competition in the leasing process, did not limit the Interior Department's discretion in deciding which bidding systems to use. First Since Joining Court Associate Justice Sandra Day O'Connor wrote the opinion, her first since joining the Court. By Court tradition, a new Justice's first opinion is a unanimous one in a case that the Court has not found particularly troublesome.

Mayor Koch today denounced President Reagan's domestic policy as ''a sham and a shame'' that threatens the wellbeing of American cities. In a broad indictment of what he called ''the destructive tide of new federalism,'' Mr. Koch described the President's economic and social programs with words such as ''folly,'' ''outrage'' and ''ridiculous.'' ''In withdrawing Federal involvement from the needs of the people and the cities, President Reagan protests that he is returning to the states responsibility that is properly a local concern,'' the Mayor said. ''In truth, he is employing the mask of federalism for a systematic campaign of abandonment.''

JEAN MARSH, the actress, recently prepared a lavish meal of veal and pork Melton Mowbray pie, cold root vegetable salad and curried remoulade, with raspberry sandwiches for dessert. She packed it in a wicker picnic hamper along with chilled Champagne and mulled wine, a fine linen cloth and silver cutlery, and she served it in a limousine during the 50-minute intermission in ''The Life and Times of Nicholas Nickleby.'' Her guests were Ian McKellen, until recently the star of ''Amadeus,'' and Roger Rees, the young actor who plays the title role in ''Nicholas Nickleby.'' The hiatus between acts, as it did for many another theatergoer fortunate enough to have tickets to the Dickens classic, had posed a predicament: where to dine after four hours in the theater with more than four more to come. Miss Marsh, who is best known in the United States for her role in ''Upstairs, Downstairs,'' decided to hire a dining room on wheels, and she selected her menu two weeks before in England.

The financial strength of the American automobile industry has been sharply eroded, and it is questionable whether the industry, hit by weak sales and aggressive marketing from Japan, can restore its long-run competitiveness, the Commerce Department told Congress today. The long-awaited report, delivered to a Senate trade subcommittee, said that the working capital of General Motors, Ford, Chrysler and American Motors, the nation's principal auto makers, could be zero by the end of this year and might even fall to a negative $900 million. Working capital represents the money available for investment, and industry analysts have maintained that tens of billions of dollars of investment will be necessary if the domestic industry is to catch up with Japanese automakers. The Commerce Department report is expected to become a basic document for Government officials engaged in policy discussions of how to help the auto industry through its financial plight.

President Reagan paid a courtesy call on the White House Conference on Aging today and was rewarded with a series of votes by its committee on Social Security that reflected the Administration's position and confounded Mr. Reagan's critics. ''Social Security can and will be saved,'' the President said in a speech to several thousand delegates and observers in the ballroom of the Sheraton Excerpts from address, page A24. Washington Hotel. ''Its future is too important to be used as a political football.'' He repeatedly used such phrases as ''our generation'' to emphasize that he was not ''an enemy'' and said that ''political demagoguery and outright falsehood'' had ''needlessly and cruelly frightened'' people living on Social Security.

The New York Transit Authority's ''great white fleet,'' the first of the Flushing-line subway trains to be painted completely white, suffered a minor graffiti attack Monday. But the agency said yesterday that its plans to repaint all 419 of the Flushing cars were unchanged. Jeanne Edelson, speaking for the authority, blamed schoolchildren riding between the cars for the graffiti. ''It was the indoor marker stuff,'' she said, ''not the outdoor heavy stuff. It's being removed.'' Miss Edelson said that Monday's incident was the first since the all-white train started running in September. The repainting began in July when the agency sought a graffiti-free car to test the effectiveness of a new security system at its yard in Corona, Queens, that had been installed at the suggestion of Mayor Koch. A double-width chain-link fence was put up around the yard, with German shepherds running along the space within. The fence was topped in razor-edged metal coils -''very bad barbed wire,'' as Miss Edelson described it.

Does the United States Steel Corporation, the nation's largest steelmaker, have a special duty to concentrate its energies and its full financial resources on making steel? Or is it free to look for profits wherever opportunity beckons, even if this means borrowing several billion dollars to buy an oil company? The $6.3 billion bid by U.S. Steel for the Marathon Oil Company has revived longstanding questions about the fundamental purpose of big corporations on the American scene. To whom is the corporation ultimately answerable: to its shareholders, to its employees or to the communities where it has plants? And does accepting Federal assistance, as the steel industry has done with tax, trade and environmental concessions, somehow make private enterprise less private? Some people say that change is the law of life and that, first and foremost, U.S. Steel must do whatever is necessary to make money for its shareholders, regardless of where that leads. ''Business's first responsibility is to stay in business,'' said Theodore Levitt, the Edward W. Carter Professor of Business Adminstration at the Harvard Business School.