SPACE DEVELOPMENT - SOCIAL AND POLITICAL IMPLICATIONS

Far-reaching social and political issues are implicit in any discussio n of large-scale space development. This Viewpoint argues that the evo lution of appropriate political institutions to deal with these issues is likely to be at least as important as the development of new techn ology. If large-scale space development is to take place, global inter national cooperation will be essential and such cooperation will have to be underpinned by enhanced institutional and legal structures. In t he shorter term, an appropriate institutional response may be the crea tion of a World Space Agency. However, in the longer term, we should p robably view a world space programme as falling within that class of g lobal concerns that would be most appropriately managed by a federal w orld government.