sufficiently stabilized to participate in ensuring
peaceful coexistence and passage along space-ways
and at moorings throughout the Outer Region, and
separately and collectively agree to participate in
and support the Slingshot Program."

INOR, as a Federation, interpreted the formation of
the UIPS Military Space Force and the President's
proclamation on its role as contemptuous of their
social and political maturity. The outcome was
predictable.

Local INOR Defense Forces were hastily organized
and equipped. Dozens of ships of war were built and
many space transports were converted into armed
vessels. Each INOR government, using self-defense
as justification, established controlled corridors
extending hundreds of thousands of kilometers
into its contiguous space, often far beyond their
legitimate jurisdictions. Passengers and crews of
foreign space transports, passenger liners, and
utility and pleasure craft, whatever their points
of foreign origin or destination, required visas,
local pilots, and armed escorts upon arrivals and
departures. Suspicions festered on all sides.

It was an era of international and interregional
political tensions and harassment, and military,
technological and industrial sabotage and
espionage. The history of Earth's ancients had
returned to haunt the solar community.

The rate of depletion in the Solar Community's
reserves of vital but nonrenewable substances
rose rapidly.

Appendix

Principles of Governance Among Nations in Space

An article by the Associate General Counsel for the
Smithsonian Institution reported in THE FUTURIST,
page 60, May-June 1990 (Common Era) that the
Smithsonian Institution's National Air and Space
Museum had speculated on a Declaration of First
Principles for the Governance of Outer Space
Societies. The project's participants represented
a broad array of disciplines and interests,
including engineering, biomedicine, law, economics,
psychology, bioethics, and philosophy. Rather than
attempting to frame an actual constitution for
space societies, which normally would be reserved
for sovereign governments. The document would
be a reference for interested government entities
responsible for space policy, and to define the
fundamental rights and freedoms of those who
might some day migrate to space.

I wrote to the article's author, told him I was
working on this story and included a draft of
'core principles' I had drafted. I asked