ty, a NASA official specializing in advanced technological planning, and a State Department official familiar with international space policy issues. The course coordinator familiarized the professionals about the course beforehand, and the resulting lectures were well synchronized with the material presented by the Georgetown faculty.
The lecture schedule and discussion topics included the following elements.
(A) Technological potential and limitations
A Georgetown physicist, a Princeton physics instructor, and the NASA expert discussed:
(1) the current state of space technologies and projected development schedules.
(2) space industrial facilities, including precise descriptions of manufacturing, energy production, and service activities.
(B) Economic constraints and business opportunities
Members of the departments of economics, philosophy, and theology and of the School of Business Administration presented lectures, including analyses of issues such as:
(1) probable costs of the proposed industrial system and possible economic benefits.
(2) implications of the proposed system for national energy policy and general economic policy.
(3) the role of public and private institutions and corporations in the development of the proposed system.
(4) ethical norms relevant to investment decisions and public policy questions, including: What should be done? How should the industrial system be structured to avoid demeaning important societal values? Who should make the policy? Who should implement policy? Who should benefit?
(C) Literary, historical, and religious analogies and insights. A physicist with expertise in science fiction and members of the departments of history, political science, philosophy, andtheology analyzed:
(1) the image of the frontier and the relation of the proposed technological system to American history and culture.
(2) the role of science fiction in stimulating the collective imagination and molding attitudes toward technology.
(3) the effects of the proposed system on human self-awareness, especially with regard to the problems of human autonomy, creativity, and manipulation.
(4) the moral limits to technology and their likely effectiveness.
(5) the images of technological humans in contemporary society in literature, sociology, and philosophy.
(D) Diplomatic and political constraints Lectures were delivered by a history department member specializing in the impact of technology on international relations and the State Department expert in space affairs. The speakers addressed the relationship of the proposed system to:
(1) East-West problems, such as: possible military uses, destabilizing effects, and impacts on Soviet-American cooperation.
(2) North-South problems, such as: use of scarce resources and participation by newly developed countries.
(E) Social organization and experimentation Faculty from the departments of psychology, history, and political science discussed:
(1) Human behavior in closed environments.
(2) The proposed system's long-term relationship to experimental societies, including: comparisons of utopian models in colonial experience with communities envisioned in contemporary science fiction; and the impact on social processes in a colonial society, including dependence on and autonomy from a parent society and freedom and authority within a colonial society.
(3) Colonial societies as a mirror of and metaphor for a parent society and as learning tools to understand contemporary social organization and policy.
The principal course requirement for students was preparation of a term paper, developed in consultation with the lecturer having the greatest expertise in relevant subject matters. The course coordinator reviewed all papers to maintain consistency in grading standards. Following completion of the course, a University administrator met privately with students to obtain their frank assessments of the course. Students were uniformly favorable in their appraisals, noting the importance of ensuring that each speaker was fully aware of the preceding lectures to avoid redundancy or