desirable) life style. However, the effects on society should be considered carefully in choosing approaches to the development and implementation of the SPS concept and in designing organizational structures for its management. The most significant aspect of the SPS concept is the global implications of continuous power generation available to all nations. Once the overall feasibility of the SPS concept has been established, and the planned evaluations and ground experiments are concluded with positive results, a broad-based international effort could be mounted during the development and demonstration phases of the SPS program, including space experiments to be conducted on future space missions. Already there is significant international awareness of the SPS concept, as indicated by studies of the United Nations Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space, discussions of frequency assignment, and geosynchronous orbit positions at the World Administration Radio Conference, Geneva, August, 1979, and presentations at United Nations Conferences on Science and Technology for Development, Vienna, August 1979, and on New and Renewable Sources of Energy, Nairobi, August 1981. The increasing international interest in the SPS could lead to cooperative efforts among the nations which expect to benefit from the power that would be available to them. International participation in an SPS program would also provide assurance of the peaceful nature of the SPS, the adherence to agreed-upon environmental standards, and the availability of power from space on a global scale. Furthermore, international involvement in the SPS program should assure that the SPS will not be controlled by any one industrial organization, sector of industry, or even one nation. To derive the maximum benefits from a global SPS system, policies will have to be adopted which will be acceptable to other nations and lead to the formation of the most appropriate international organization for SPS development and implementation, one serving the needs of all the participating nations. 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 can bargain collectively about doing together.
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