While industrializedcountries would expect somewhat different benefits of space than developing countries, there exist many areas of common interest. For the next 10 years, such interests can be divided into the following three categories : Industrialized Countries Medicine, tourism, new products, electronic postal system, electronics. LDC’s Agriculture, education. Global Communication, energy, transportation, disaster prevention and control, environment, material processing resource survey, new material development. 4. 1’he manufacturing of products in the space environment. 5. I he development of technologies and tcchniqueswhich are difficult to carry out on Earth. 6. The measurement and understanding of the impact of the space environment on man and other life forms. With all these explorations, it is hoped that mankind will benefit in the long run by extending his knowledge and control far beyond the confines of Earth. Ina sense, such knowledge can have the impact of liberation which man could never have conceived within the boundaries of the limited space on Earth. One question we must ask is: does man have the vision and courage to penetrate the universe in order to liberate this potential to benefit everyone? It is estimated that internationally, more than a billion dollars a year is presently spent on space-related activities. The U.S., which has been in the forefront of space technology, has reduced its commitments significantly as of late. Now that it is proven without a doubt that space developments are indispensable for international communications, the potential of this can be fruitfully and effectively applied to most of the developing countries, since many of their problems are rooted in the lack of generation and transmission of information. At the same time, developments in the areas of transportation of energy and large-scale space construction ought to be pursued vigorously during this last decade of the millennium in order to bring the fruits of these developments to other pressing areas such as the transport of materials and people, and the development of the solar power satellite, as propounded by Dr. Peter Glaser and others. As a natural sequence to this, many not so exotic and even necessary developments are possible. Among them two should be mentioned:
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