CONCERNS OF THE L-5 SOCIETY ABOUT SPS Carolyn Henson - Annita Harlan - James C. Bennett L-5 Society, 1620 North Park, Tucson, Arizona 85719 The L-5 Society is a pro-space citizens' group. It promotes space development in governmental, private and industrial sectors. Over the period of January 1979 through April 1980 it conducted a public outreach program on the Satellite Power System (SPS) for Planning Research Corporation (PRC). As part of this outreach, the L-5 Society sent copies of PRC's and the Department of Energy's 1978 reports on various aspects of the SPS project to a core group of spokespeople for the pro-space constituency both in the U. S. and abroad. We conducted telephone interviews with these people as well as obtaining a number of in-depth written reports. The World Space Center, a project of the non-profit Sabre Foundation, assisted L-5 in this phase of the project. The Society also mailed precis of these PRC and DOE reports to about 3,000 L-5 members around the world along with a form designed to get L-5 members' responses to the issues raised by these precis. The message of the L-5 Society membership to DOE is: • Solar power satellites look like a prime option for future energy needs • Private enterprise will be interested in SPS • The U. S. Government should have a supportive and regulatory hand in the project • International involvement means complications for sure, but possible rewards for Earth as a whole • The new Moon Treaty could severely inhibit use of extraterrestrial materials • The Reference Design needs major revisions • There's going to be Big Trouble if the environmental and social impacts are not calculated into the cost/benefit analysis for SPS development and deployment • Earth resources should not be depleted • SPS is a stepping stone to the stars • If SPS is going to increase centralization of power, it had better provide big rewards such as clean, cheap power • SPS have military implications. That's good, and that's bad. The World Space Center participants' message to DOE is: • The military implications of SPS are serious. A mechanism is needed to assure non-aggressive use • National rivalries and international bureaucratization could become a major hindrance to SPS development • Nations will cooperate in the development of SPS if they expect to share in its use and benefits. But if the benefits are restricted to
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