1980 Solar Power Satellite Program Review

the attention should be focused on how the system can actually support and augment current military installations in the area of power, communications and surveillance." Military implications and concurrent applications require further study by DOE, NASA and DOD. "We should work together with political scientists to develop and adequately explain the inclusion OR omission of the military use of the SPS and the meaning to the American society." PROGRAM COSTS "The cost estimates certainly are not correct." "I quite imagine that if these things get to the construction stage the unions will take over rapidly." "The standards and quality of construction will require a degree of quality control that suggest that any statement of costs is apt to be vastly underestimated." A problem of real concern seems to lie in the apparent vested interest on both NASA and DOE's part to support the development of such a huge project. "Advocators of the project up to this point seem to be big science, big business, and the big bureaucracies." PUBLIC ACCEPTANCE "Public acceptability at all stages of the project is a must." This is because the public can band together in small interest groups and have tremendous influence to shut down or delay a project long enough to kill it. For this reason, the requirement of public acceptance should be directed more towards the interest groups than the everday man on the street. "Even with the eventual solution of the technical and societal problems there is, in our opinion, only a marginal chance that the SPS system will receive public acceptance and approval unless the government undertakes a serious program to inform the public." What the government needs to do is to educate the public to the concept. "The public schools should be supplied with all of the information available regarding the SPS project, both pro and con." The information should be supplied in such a form as to make it easily understood by people having no prior knowledge of the SPS system. This program should be nationwide and should answer and explain many of the anticipated questions about the SPS. The program could begin by making available SPS pamphlets, similar to voters pamphlets. These pamphlets could present the basic concept and related information, followed by statements of concerns by various agencies and outside interest groups." We would like to add that the Federal Government needs to stress to the public that the United States, as a whole, is at a point where our monetary values can no longer be placed first. "They must be considered second to the development of new energy sources and face the fact that our supply of cheap energy is gone and that our present supply of energies are indeed exhaustible." STUDENT PARTICIPATION The Department of Energy has analyzed and evaluated seventeen different methods to increase student participation in the SPS project. These methods range from an instructor giving a class on the SPS, such as we are currently doing, to computerized satellite communications from NASA to colleges across the nation. Each method has a limiting factor which might not enhance its feasibility and a cost factor which could limit its application. "Today's high school education doesn't prepare an individual to be knowledgeable on current affairs that could play an important part in their future. Why not put less effort into teaching

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