potential for uncontrolled program growth in response to lobbying by advocacy groups. This structure would permit the curtailment of the SPS R&D program, if necessary, without suffering the significant negative consequences associated with the cancellation of a monolithic project. The public or private investors in other space projects do not have to commit themselves to the SPS. Each space project must be justified on its own merits. It will be the responsibility of the SPS R&D group to interface with the space projects, make suggestions, and obtain data on technologies of significance to the SPS R&D and planning program. If the decision is made to abandon further consideration of the SPS, these space projects will not be adversely affected because their success is independent of the decision concerning the SPS. Public support will be sought for specific space projects as well as for the SPS. Economic, environmental, and societal issues of the SPS can be assessed at the R&D stage to provide more time to develop a consensus on these issues, while creating a factual information base. The “terracing” approach is particularly applicable to the SPS because many of the technologies required for the successful implementation of the SPS are also part of national and/or international space programs. The timetable for developing the SPS will strongly depend upon the successful completion of several space projects, including a range of activities to be performed in space stations. This interdependency will place a burden on the SPS R&D group and the effectiveness of the group’s interactions with the participants in other space projects. The SPS R&D group’s role must be clearly defined and its activities supported by other space project management so that effective interactions between the SPS R&D group and the space project staff can take place. The commitment of the SPS R&D group to program efforts extending over an extended time frame will be encouraged by signs that the SPS program goals are receiving increasing support from the public and private investors. CONCLUSION Humanity’s progress, with increasing technical sophistication, raises hopes that the challenges of the future will be met without adverse effects and with widespread and growing benefits to society. This progress has been hard earned because it has occurred in response to unanticipated crises. 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 consensus 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 energy applications on Earth, could lead to the elimination of energy-related concerns. The SPS could provide not only the impetus for peaceful cooperation among nations, but help this civilization to achieve the inevitable transition to renewable sources of energy. Pursuit of the SPS goals represents an approach to the development of space technology for peaceful purposes, one of which is to tap the inexhaustible energy resources of space. This is in consonance with C.P. Snow’s admonition: “It is only by the rational use of technology — to control and guide what technology is doing — that we can keep any hopes of a social life more desirable than our own: or in fact of a social life which is not too appalling to imagine” (8).
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