Furthermore, there is some hope for identifying the major directions which this “industrialization of space" will take. Beyond the year 2030, however, one’s ability to project even general trends diminishes greatly. A fifty-year period is sufficient for major new and totally unforeseen technologies to develop and become commercialized. Without specific knowledge of these technologies (and that knowledge cannot be had today), projections of post-2030 space activities are entirely speculative. It is with the above qualifications that the following projections of future space activities are made. The first steps in making a long-range projection of space activities is to determine where the impetus for such activities will arise. At the present time funding for space activities derives almost entirely from national governments; principally the U.S. and U.S.S.R. U.S. Federal Government expenditures on space, * spanning both DOD and NASA, encompass about $6 billion for FY 1980. Looking at free world activities and taking this $6 billion to be a measure of free world government sponsorship of space activities and assuming, furthermore, that at the very most this government sponsorship is unlikely to accelerate at a real rate of growth greater than 3 percent per year, one sees a potential level of government- sponsored activitiy in space by the year 2060 of only some ten times larger, or $60 billion per year (1980 $), than the present amount. A space program sponsored only by NASA and DOD (assuming that they exist in the year 2060) at the level of $60 billion per year could possibly support some salvage activities on SPS satellites, but they would be severely limited. It is highly unlikely, however, that one would be faced with the problem of salvaging SPS satellites in a space program that is principally funded by NASA and DOD, and to a lesser extent by other governments. The simple fact is that one The Budget of the United States Government, Fiscal Year 1980.
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