| Abstract: | This article uses the context of the Earth Observing System (EOS) to address two sets of economic and policy issues that have been fundamental to the rancorous debate over EOS, and which promise to figure prominently in future discussion of other US space activities. The first set of issues concerns whether the purported cost savings from larger-scale spacecraft and multiple-sensor coordination are substantial enough to justify large-scale approaches, and the differences in the risk associated with the large-scale projects compared to smaller-scale alternatives. The second set of issues concerns the institutional organization of projects, namely whether a project's technology should be an almost exclusively governmentally funded, owned and operated activity as is now the case, or whether there could be a larger role than now envisaged for the commercial space sector. |
