what the extent of any SPS defense system should be. It could start small and expand to fit the need as requirements are developed. At present, space law contains nothing to prevent the United States from stationing parts of its strategic deterrent system (and forces) at the SPS space site, as long as these parts do not include nuclear weapons or weapons of mass destruction.—Growth of a defended SPS may tend to be limited by the fact that as the military capability increases, the value of the already high-valued target becomes even higher. 2.2.2 Agreements/Disputes World communications have progressed to the point that populations in all parts of the world are becoming aware of resources, (such as solar flux, electromagnetic spectrum, and geostationary orbit) and want to share in their exploitation. The elctromagnetic spectrum and the geostationary earth orbit are limited resources. The breadth of the useful electromagnetic spectrum, limited by equipment performance, has increased significantly with the widespread development of ultraviolet, visible, and infrared systems. However, in many regions of the spectrum, particularly the microwave region, bandwidth is a carefully controlled, highly coveted commodity. In the allotment of bandwidth, extreme care is exercised to ensure that the assignment is in the public interest and will not be used in a manner that interferes with equipments on the same band or operating in other bands. For this reason, the use of any frequency/bandwidth used by the SPS will likely need to be cleared through an international organization. The geostationary orbit, because of its special characteristics, is a limited resource (there is only one around the earth). The number of slots available in this orbit for communication satellites, if collisions are to be prevented and occultations and radio interference avoided, has been bounded by the range of 180 3/ to 1800.- The number of satellites now using geosynchronous orbit is large (approximately 100) and growing. This growth in operating systems and the difficulty anticipated in reserving bandwidth for systems that are not scheduled should combine to expedite both the planning of SPS development and deployment schedules and an early determination of bandwidth requirements. The solar flux in space is not a limited resource but a flow of radiation that is continuous. However, the solar flux that can be intercepted in the geostationary orbit may have a practical limit. Figure 2.2 is a projection of the surface of the earth that shows some of the countries which a piece of the GEO path passing through their "extended air space"; the United States is not one of these countries. Satellites to serve the United States need to be placed over South America (where GEO passes over Ecuador, Peru, Colombia, and Brazil) and to the west as shown.
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