0191-9067/81/010109-05$02.00/0 Copyright ' 1981 SUNSAT Energy Council INTERNATIONAL DIMENSIONS OF SOLAR POWER SATELLITES: COLLABORATION OR COMPETITION? JOHN M. LOGSDON Graduate Program in Science, Technology, and Public Policy George Washington University Washington, DC 20052, USA Abstract — This paper identifies the global political trends which are likely to influence a SPS system in the latter stages of its development and the early phase of its operation. It points out that such a system, both because of its technological challenge and financial dimensions and because it deals with the crucially-important area of energy supply, will be a focus of attention among the central political leadership of major countries. The politics of SPS will be marked by both competitive and collaborative forces. In order to create a framework for SPS operation, international forums, particularly the U.N. system, will become engaged in the SPS development process. INTRODUCTION This paper analyzes solar power satellite (SPS) development not as a challenging technical undertaking, but as an issue of potentially high political salience. In order to advance discussion, it accepts the arguments of SPS advocates about the promise of the concept and asks: what are the implications for international political relations of an essentially inexhaustible, technically feasible, economically justifiable, environmentally acceptable source of the basic commodity required for industrial civilization, i.e., energy? It also attempts to identify the kinds of political pressures and conflicts which are likely to influence SPS development, once the program becomes visible to political and economic leaders in the Western world. Thus, this is not a paper about SPS in its current status as a somewhat speculative idea attracting the support of a relatively narrow group of advocates; however essential this stage of “product champions” is, as long as discussion of SPS is limited to technological circles, the politics of SPS will be quite parochial. Analyses of the SPS idea to date have often been narrow in their focus and have dealt only peripherally with the international political aspects of SPS. Many of these analyses, somewhere along the way, have concluded that international “involvement, participation, or sharing,” or some similar euphemistic term, is a necessity, if the SPS concept is to become reality. Having thus acknowledged the international dimensions of SPS, these analyses then usually jump to a specialized academic discussion of some aspect of the SPS issue. What I hope to accomplish in this paper is to fill empty space between the quite reasonable conclusion that some form of international involvement in SPS is inevitable, and the almost metaphysical discussions of specific international legal agreements or institutional forms which have been proliferating. My focus is on interna-
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