SPS will strongly depend upon the successful completion of several space projects, including a range of activities to be performed in the space station. The space station opens a door for industry. This will be crucial to the future of businesses because the successful development of commercial products and services is essential to exploiting “the enormous potential of space commerce.” Space commerce will be as significant in determining political and commercial relationships in the twenty-first century as developments in aviation, electronics and computers in the twentieth century are in determining economic growth, industrial expansion and international influence. The space station will pay off because it is not just a technological challenge. It will be worthwhile because it makes many other projects in space science, telecommunications, manufacturing and exploration possible. It clears the way to tap the inexhaustible energy and materials resources of the solar system. It is the next step we are ready to take. The space station will have an important role in support of a broad range of scientific and commercial activities, which may be performed either in the space station or in a free-flying satellite tended by the space station. The station will permit extensive facilities in orbit to be built up gradually and equipment to be maintained and repaired leading to major improvements in capabilities to perform scientific investigations, to manufacture products and to reduce project costs. It could be a support base for transportation of payloads to higher Earth orbits and eventually provide routine access to the moon and to the planets. The building of a lunar base, where materials could be processed for use in the construction of more extensive space projects in Earth orbits and in support of scientific explorations, would provide a major mission for the space station. This base would give an open-ended aspect to the development and growth of an industrial infrastructure that could support an increasing variety of commercial activities designed to make the most effective use of the inexhaustible energy and materials resources of the solar system. The space station is “The Right Stuff,” to ensure that industry will be in a position to exploit the opportunities for commercial activities in space. CONCLUSION Future economic payoffs from the commercialization of space can only be projected in broad outline. Assumptions about the development of commercial activities have led to projections of substantial markets and potential revenues; however, even if annual revenues fail to increase as rapidly as projected, the market potential is so large that space industries could be among the fastest growing industrial activities in the next century. It is time to take a positive view of the achievable economic returns from space endeavors. We must recognize the constructive and catalytic role that space commerce can play in sustaining the technological and economic competitiveness of those sectors of industry that form part of the emerging global economy. Strategic planning by the public and private sectors should begin now, to ensure that space will play an increasingly important role in humanity's continuing evolution. As J.D. Bernal observed in his essay, The World, the Flesh and the Devil, “We are on the point of being able to see the effects of our actions and their probable consequences in the future; we hold the future still timidly but perceive it for the first time as a function of our own action” (7).
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