SATELLITE POWER SYSTEM CONCEPT DEVELOPMENT AND EVALUATION PROGRAM THE ASSESSMENT PROCESS by Frederick A. Koomanoff Director, Solar Power System Project Division Department of Energy Our energy future rests with our actions... ...We may learn from history and try to avoid repeating its errors. ...We may guide our thinking and actions based on predictions and forecasts and hopefully prevent today's errors from becoming history. ...Or, we may combine our knowledge from the past with our images of the future and create a present. A present resounding with sensitivity to today's needs but always allowing for modification as those needs change. Such thinking should direct our policies toward new technologies away from either technological timidity (as exemplified by our lack of enthusiastic support for Dr. Goddard's genius in rocket propulsion, or the rejection of the gas turbine aircraft engine by both the British and American Academies of Science in the 1930's) or technological megalomania (depicted by the nuclear aircraft) History, in my judgment has shown the errors of following either of these paths. History, more significantly, has shown convincingly the need and value of energy in reducing toil, increasing food production and bringing the world closer together by transportation and communication systems. Today, predictions of world population for the next twenty years show a growth from about four billion people to six and one-half billion people by the year 2000 (see Fig. 1). India alone will add in excess of 200,000,000 people in the next twenty years, approximately the present population of the United States of America. This growth is largely immutable, being rooted in rate of reporduction of the present world population. It may be controlled by the unfortunate circumstances of war, pestilence or famine. Or, its consequences may be ameliorated at least in part by the availability of energy, preferably based on renewable systems. Systems that may be technically and economically viable, environmentally and socially acceptable; and that will not deplete the earth's resources.
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