Space Solar Power Review Vol 2 Num 3 1981

reactions to SPS since the long-term interest of virtually every nation favors lessened demand for fossil fuels. At the same time, emphasis on the potential for SPS to decrease the cost of fossil fuels is not likely to be as well received; domestic petroleum and coal producers in the developed nations, and OPEC members internationally, have a specific interest in maintaining relatively high fossil fuel prices. Most importantly, regardless of whether SPS is developed and commercialized on a national or multinational basis, the projection of international political reaction to solar power satellite system research and development depends on a thorough understanding of how SPS will potentially affect the perceived national interests of those states most directly concerned with satellite technology and advanced energy technology. This means that existing research on international legal aspects of SPS must be supplemented by additional studies of the perceived national interests of such countries as the USSR, France, China, India, Japan, and politically influential members of the Group of 77, relative to solar power satellites. In 1975, Secretary of State Henry Kissinger observed that “Technology has driven us into vast new areas of human activity and opened up prospects of either

RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy MTU5NjU0Mg==