Benefits of microwave power from space should be determined, proven, and communicated. As suggested above, benefits are often in the eye of the beneficiary, and may not be the same as those perceived by the technical expert. To a significant extent, benefits are the flip-side of needs, and often can be most easily identified once needs are understood. However, the technical community need not wait for a conclusive, all-purpose needs assessment to begin identifying benefits. Because of their intimate knowledge of the underlying technology, technical experts are ideally situated. A sensible place to start is simply to create an omnibus list of every conceivable benefit to every possible constituency. This establishes the universe of benefits that can be refined to reflect a) levels of proof (actual and needed) and b) responsiveness to customer requirements. Value must be established against competing technologies. Particularly in the industrialized world, where mature alternatives exist, value in the sense of cost-efficiency is especially critical WPT is at this point problematic from this perspective, given the infrastructure requirements involved in any large-scale application. Until and unless cost-efficiency can be improved, WPT will free an uphill battle for public acceptance. This suggests that the technical community would do well to focus on questions of efficiency, while at the same time attempting to quantify certain benefits. "Value" is a multidimensional concept, of which cost is a significant component--but not the only one. In assessing WPT for its value, it may be that shortfalls in cost-efficiency can be balanced or outweighed by other quantifiable benefits, such as long-term environmental stewardship. Means must be identified and generated to support commercialization. Technical experts can play a vital role in this process. In fret, it can be argued that the technical community must drive the process - because the phenomenon of spontaneous generation does not apply to start-up funding. Like academic funding, commercial support comes about through a combination of source research, proposal development against institutional requirements, personal and professional contacts, and raw luck. What can be very different is the perspective from which funding requests are evaluated, most notably in terms of financial return on investment. Another key difference is the extent to which discussions of project management and oversight often include explicit treatment of financial controls. Any discussion of means must also address the fret that large-scale infrastructure projects often require the creation of consortia—entities (both commercial and government) with a shared interest in a certain result. Technical experts should actively seek opportunities not just to identify interested parties, but to bring them together. Acknowledgments The author gratefully acknowledges the support of the SUNSAT Energy Council and the research assistance of William Brantley, Jr. in preparing this paper.
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