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It noted that, in terms of NEAs accessible to spacecraft, 'the most promising targets very likely have not, as yet, been detected.' The workshop report then urged NASA to carry out a series of automated NEA rendezvous missions. In addition, the La Jolla workshop report recommended that Earth-based efforts to discover and perform initial analyses of NEAs should be stepped up dramatically. An automated prospecting spacecraft that would pass over both lunar poles on each orbit - a Lunar Polar Orbiter (LPO) - topped the Workshop's list of 'projects to be started immediately.' The moon would revolve under such a spacecraft so that over the course of about two weeks it would present its entire surface to the LPO's instruments for scrutiny. The La Jolla workshop report thus urged more resource exploration as an early step toward exploitation of near-Earth resources. Meteorites collected on Earth were assumed (correctly) to have originated among the NEAs, but their relationship to specific asteroids remained unclear.

In 1983, only 75 near-Earth asteroids (NEAs) had known orbital paths the rate of discovery in the late 1970s/early 1980s suggested a population of sizable NEAs numbering many thousands, of which perhaps 20% would be readily accessible to prospecting spacecraft (these early gross estimates have been revised downward over the years). The lunar poles, far from the 'Apollo Zone' - the near-equatorial region where orbital mechanics dictated the Apollo Lunar Modules could land - nevertheless remained unexplored.

Scientists had hypothesized since 1961 that permanently shadowed craters at the lunar poles might contain ice deposited by comet impacts. These provided low-resolution data on the composition of perhaps 10% of the lunar surface. In addition, Apollo astronauts had surveyed the moon from lunar orbit using remote sensors. NASA had landed Apollo astronauts at six sites between 19 and scientists had analyzed many of the more than 2400 geologic samples they collected. Five Lunar Orbiter spacecraft had imaged much of the moon at modest resolution and selected portions of it - most corresponding to potential Apollo landing sites - at higher resolution. scientists - 'those who gave us nuclear weapons' - to direct their talents 'to the cause of Mankind and world peace, to give us the means of rendering these nuclear weapons impotent and obsolete.'ДЄt the time of the La Jolla workshop, relatively little was known of near-Earth space resources. Reagan acknowledged that his vision represented 'a formidable technical task, one that may not be accomplished before the end of this century.' He then called on U.S. retaliation to deter a Soviet attack, that we could intercept and destroy strategic ballistic missiles before they reached our own soil or that of our allies?'

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He then summed up his vision in a two-part question replete with the Cold War language of his presidency: 'What if free people could live secure in the knowledge that their security did not rest upon the threat of instant U.S. 'Let me share with you a vision of the future,' Reagan began. military spending and the introduction of new missiles and bombers. Citing aggressive moves on the part of the Soviet Union, he defended proposed increases in U.S. On the evening of 23 March 1983, President Ronald Reagan addressed the people of the United States from the Oval Office.