ture should be set up to be responsive to societal issues while the SPS is being developed so as not to require these issues to be spliced in later. The organizational structures should meet the common interests of participating nations, as already is the case with Intelsat, the organization controlling communications satellites and owned by more than 100 nations. As the effects of the SPS technologies will extend past national frontiers, decisions regarding their development should not be left exclusively to national jurisdiction, but be made part of transnational affairs. The benefits of the SPS should be available on a global basis and increase the opportunities for developing nations to take an active part in the utilization of energy available in Space. The SPS concept should advance the complementary national interests of both developed and developing nations. Internationalization of the SPS could reduce the vulnerability of the SPS system to overt military action and have a most beneficial effect on international relations, because all nations could be assured access to unlimited energy resources in Space. Despite diverse and contending interests, a political consensus will need to emerge through widespread realization that humanity is embarked together on a dangerous passage in a world of finite resources, ultimate weapons, and unmet requirements. The SPS may require that new means be developed to manage pluralism from a global perspective. Broad initiatives and declarations of principle will require some sense of participation by all who will be affected by the operation of the SPS. What will be required is to establish a consensus regarding the future course of SPS development. To achieve a consensus, a body such as the United Nations may keep the SPS program under review — not to tell individual nations what to do, but to tell the collectivity of nations what they had better bargain collectively about doing together. CONCLUSION We are approaching a fork in the road in the way we will have to use energy resources in the future, and we need to choose carefully the direction we take. In our efforts to confront the energy dilemma we tend to look for solutions to our immediate problems and we have often failed to see the future except as a continuation of the present. Perhaps we do not care about the distant future because we are not sure we will be there to enjoy it and we are willing to let the next generation deal with the problems we bequeath to them. We have let our imagination be bound by commonly accepted perceptions despite all evidence pointing to an ever increasing acceleration of change. We must begin to accept the possibility of continued change so that we can maintain the values we cherish. Our civilization has successfully unlocked the high frontier — Space — which promises to lead to the extension of human activities beyond the confines of the Earth’s surface, opening up new opportunities which today we perceive only in broad outlines. High technology brings new options within our reach and broadens the limits constraining society. The ultimate limits we face are those imposed by our creativity and imagination. We may not project the future course of technology development accurately, but we need to be aware of the available options. The significant progress that has been made as a result of broadly based technical, economic, environmental, and societal studies on the SPS is resulting in the growing conviction that the SPS is one of the promising power-generation options which could contribute to meeting global energy demands in the 21st Century. Its successful implementation, together with energy conservation measures and solar en-
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