July 28, 1983

Fourteen years after the first moon landing, space age textiles are starting to show up in earthbound apparel. Thin thermal fabrics are replacing bulky fleece and down in skiwear. Dancers and athletes are beginning to wear clothing that feels soft and dry even when wet. ''In the future,'' said Lawrence Kuznetz, a bioengineer for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration who recently turned to designing sportswear, ''clothing may not only protect you from the environment, but regulate the micro-environment next to the skin.''

The Federal Communications Commission approved a plan yesterday that would add $2 a month to the cost of a residential telephone line, and $6 a month to the cost of business lines, starting in January. The commission's decision, which could be overridden by Congress, is designed to end the nearly 50-year-old practice of using the revenues from long-distance service to subsidize local telephone service, so that its rates could be kept low enough to be affordable by nearly everyone. Growing competition in providing long-distance telephone service, and the coming breakup of the American Telephone and Telegraph Company, has made the subsidy an obstacle to lower rates for the competing long-distance carriers. The F.C.C. ruling yesterday orders that the subsidies be phased out after the first of the year. The new line charges, in effect, would convert the subsidies into higher local rates.

Repeal of tax withholding from interest and dividend income became all but certain today after House and Senate conferees approved a compromise bill. The agreement, ending a weeklong deadlock, would repeal a 1982 tax provision requiring corporations, banks and other financial institutions to withhold 10 percent of most interest and dividend payments. Now that the conferees have reached agreement, the bill is expected to win swift approval in both houses of Congress and to be signed by President Reagan. The withholding provision was a key element in the President's tax program enacted last summer and was to have become effective on July 1. But this date was pushed back, first to Aug. 1 and then to Aug. 5, as repeal legislation worked its way through Congress.

The Ford Motor Company reported today that its earnings more than doubled in the second quarter, to $542.2 million, from the period a year earlier. Added to the strong performances of the General Motors Corporation and the Chrysler Corporation, Ford's results brought the combined earnings by the Big Three auto makers to a record $1.89 billion in the quarter, exceeding the previous record of $1.73 billion set in the second quarter of 1977, a boom year for auto sales. For all of 1983, analysts are estimating that the three companies will earn close to $5 billion. Analysts noted that in inflation-adjusted dollars, the $1.89 billion might not exceed the 1977 earnings. But they said that the jump in profits after so long a slump in the auto industry reflected the cost cutting that took place for nearly two years, until auto sales began to turn up last November. Wage and benefit concessions, the first won by the nation's auto industry, were a major factor in the cost cutting.

An article in Business Day last Monday about computer disk drives included an incorrect statement from the Kaypro Corporation on its pricing plan for the Kaypro II personal computer. The company now says the price will not be reduced below the present $1,595.