ceivably be of importance, rather than to do original research-in-depth upon particular issues. In-depth assessment of the more important issues will be considered as follow-on studies after their priorities have been determined by simple but physically appropriate assessments of the present study. As is implicitly noted in the SPS-Skylab comparison above, a number of uncertain factors necessarily underlie the assessment of magnetospheric effects; the primary reason being that the mass scale and the altitude range of construction and operation activities of the SPS are unprecedented. In this study, theoretical knowledge is applied to bridge this gap in scaling. Including those with available observations, there is a spectrum of theoretical opinion on what the proper interpretation should be. This state of affairs is prevalent in magnetospheric physics since it is a relatively young science in which present space experiments are still attempting to amass the data needed to test theoretical interpretations. The diversity of present theoretical interpretation of magnetospheric phenomena complicates our effort because we must choose, for our assessment, what we regard to be the "present knowledge" from a spectrum of opinions. Thus, our treatment here is subjective to a degree, but it must be noted at the outset that our choice of "present knowledge" is based on consultation with what we regard as foremost experts on the particular issue. For this reason, our treatment of issues may be regarded by some as following the "scientific establishment" in the magnetospheric field; however, a program of assessment in-depth cannot be initiated unless some hypothesis and definitive concepts are established (recognizing the mutability of these concepts, of course). Indeed, we may view our efforts here as exploration and selection of issues so that a coherent program of priorities can be constructed for experimental verification of SPS magnetospheric effects assessment. 2
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