technologies can solve or even address every one of these problems, but rather to encourage serious consideration of the ways in which space programs could be integrated into plans for development in virtually every developing country on Earth. IV. SPACE ACTIVITIES AIDING DEVELOPMENT The role of communications satellites in development is multiple: their use in providing education for all ages in remote villages and in providing medical consultation with major medical facilities in the same country or in a developed country has already been demonstrated. These capabilities will soon become sufficiently inexpensive to become widely available during the next 5 to 10 years. Communications satellites are particularly well-suited for basic communications services within countries of very large area, difficult terrain, or multiple islands where adequate land- based communications infrastructures have not yet been installed or where these would be prohibitively expensive. Rapid access to global trading information will play an important role as developing countries strive to become more integrated in world trade. Navigation satellites planned for deployment in the 1980's will be useful for developing countries as well, providing accurate navigational information for shipping in coastal waterways and between islands and by-passing much of the expense of installing air navigation beacons in remote areas. Such satellites will also make extensive surveying projects for road and railroad construction and other major civil engineering programs less expensive and time-consuming. Remote sensing satellites (such as the LANDSAT and SEASAT series) can provide a wealth of information on physical and biological conditions in any country. Some examples of proven techniques or soon-to-be-available techniques include cartographic surveying of remote areas; periodic surveys of urban areas to analyze changes in land use; inventory analyses of surface and ground waters; observations of forest population distributions, health, and cutting rates; monitoring of waters for turbidity, septic runoff, or industrial pollution; changes in coastlines and lagoons; and constant updating of information on agricultural conditions and crop yields. Some of these applications of remote sensing satellites have been used in Bangladesh (coastline changes), Canada (monitoring of log debris on Williston Lake in British Columbia), Jamaica (mineral resource surveys), Brazil (lagoon variations), and Japan (marine pollution in Tokyo Bay). Of great importance is the investment being made by the United States and other technologically active nations to develop and prove the operational value of the data received from such remote sensing satellites. Increasingly, data on any given condition of the Earth's surface can be interpreted in a reliable manner with less and less examination of conditions on site. If a method of surveying forest cutting rates has been confirmed (after considerable developmental expense) to apply to a given type of tree distribution and land type in one country, for example, that method can then be transferred for use in a less developed country at considerably less expense, requiring far less commitment of resources including money, trained personnel, or equipment. Thus it is possible for highly complex space systems, data receiving technologies, and data interpretation methods to bear immediate returns in developing countries. On a longer term basis, it is clear that the ground systems necessary to use observations and services available from space hardware are rapidly becoming less expensive and less difficult to use as the space systems grow in size, power, and
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