that can be of mutual benefit. As the denizens of planet Earth begin to explore and utilize the resources "out there," we must begin to give added thought to legal and institutional mechanisms, so that the hazards of misinvestment can be avoided and the risks of mismanagement reduced. Earthbound macro-engineering experience both good and bad will have lessons to teach. The history of macro-engineering is not entirely glorious: there have been “bloopers," and it would be unwise to omit the study of major failures from any curriculum designed to cast light on a difficult and increasingly vital topic. Did not the great Charlemagne fail utterly in his attempt to build a canal linking the Rhine and the Danube? Broadly speaking, mankind has the option to build or to destroy. While macroengineering has often been utilized for military purposes, many great public works have been, in truth, multifaceted in their conception and impact. That this is so stems from the circumstance that efficient infrastructure is a need of all societies; the roads built by and for the Roman army became arteries of commerce and peaceful development. Transport, water and electricity are permanent needs of the growing human population. It is unthinkable that large-scale programs will be avoided, when human needs are so evident and pervasive. But which projects are truly feasible and beneficial? What are the “opportunity costs"? What is the best timing? Where are the experts who can be trusted with an evaluation of all the costs — human and environmental as well as the economic and institutional costs of novel and untried programs? To what extent can international cooperation “spread the risks” and to what extent does such cooperation introduce new factors of complexity and hazard? How are we to nurture cadres of managers who are competent both to achieve results within prescribed budgets and timetables and yet who remain sensitive to those larger perspectives within which success and failure must ultimately be judged? Herein lies a congeries of creative opportunities for the United Nations and for the diplomatic tradition evoked by the historic setting of UNISPACE 1982. Regional and interregional development can be accelerated and sustained by a rational organization of natural resources. The Man and Biosphere Program and other United Nations initiatives have begun to deploy a body of knowledge that can guide our planet toward a more cooperative future. We shall have to expand the investment in joint research so that, for instance, the admirable cooperation for oceanographic subjects is matched by comparable investment in the equally significant question of the mountain ecosystems which interact with oceanic environments. But beyond these scholarly activities we shall have to consider macro-engineering itself as a legitimate and indeed an essential and fertile field for international cooperation. In the search for conflict resolution and for an improvement in the actual conditions of human life, there is a creative role for large-scale engineering and, raison de-plus, for those individuals and institutions with the wit to perceive that this is so. I realize that this is not a moment in world economic affairs when optimism — about projects or prospects whether large or small — is a surplus commodity, It may turn out, however, that the long-wave fluctuations first identified by the Russian economist Kondratieff, can provide both understanding and hope. Professor Jay W. Forrester and others have suggested that we may be at the point where the world is using up the capital plant installed about a half century ago, and that in a few years there will be new and massive opportunities for capital investment. If indeed we are near such a point in a “Kondratieff wave,” it would be wise to undertake thorough preparatory studies so that, when a favorable conjuncture occurs, the cupboard will not be bare! This too could be regarded as a perspective within which to assess and compare such projects as the solar power satellite. It has been a feature of many large-scale projects that they are conceived, dis-
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