Memo to Next US President: Keep Space Free of Weapons
Far from the glare of presidential politics, a serious debate is taking place on the future of U.S. space policy.
Speaking recently in Colorado Springs, where the U.S. Air Force Space Command is headquartered, Republican Sen. Wayne Allard and Democratic Rep. Mark Udall agreed that the next president, to quote Allard, “will have to choose which direction to take.”
The options are both stark and clear. Allard is among those who believe the United States needs missile defense weapons in space — weapons that also could be turned against other nations’ satellites. Udall, chairman of the congressional subcommittee that oversees NASA and a candidate to succeed the retiring Allard, opposes space weapons. “My vision would be that all nations of the world share the high ground of space,” he said, not engage in a new arms race “that results in the weaponization of space.”
Decision time
The next president will have to choose.
Decision time is rapidly approaching. In January 2007, China destroyed an aging Chinese weather satellite in an anti-satellite weapons test, roughly replicating a 1985 U.S. test.
Do we want China to dominate space? Of course not, leading some to argue that the United States needs to lay claim to space — and soon.
My view is that we shouldn’t want anybody to dominate space; we should do whatever we can to ensure that space remains free of weapons.
Whoever becomes the next U.S. president should lead that effort by calling on the nations of the world to update the 41-year-old Outer Space Treaty.
The old treaty — inspired by President Dwight D. Eisenhower — took effect in October 1967. Even the Soviet Union’s then ambassador to the United States, Anatoly Dobrynin, hailed the treaty as a landmark achievement, ensuring that space would be used only for “peaceful activities — for the benefit of all mankind.”
To be sure, both the United States and Soviet Union worked on a variety of space weapons and anti-satellite systems during the Cold War, but neither country deployed a comprehensive space weapons system.
Ater the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, the floodgates opened in the United States and many influential “space warriors” began to argue that the time had come for U.S. space dominance. Advocates claimed that if the United States could dominate space in a time of conflict, no “peer competitor” would ever challenge us, ensuring lasting peace.
In October, former New York Gov. George Pataki, acting as a public delegate to the U.N. General Assembly, said the United States remains fully committed to the “peaceful uses of space.” But, he added, “discussions regarding the merits of treaties to prevent the so-called ‘weaponization’ of outer space would be a pointless exercise.”
Pointless to whom?
The United States has more to lose from a space-related arms race than any other country. Of the 800-plus commercial, scientific, and military-related satellites now in orbit, more than half bear the Made-in-America label. That may be what the Chinese were trying to tell us last year when they conducted their anti-satellite test.
Chinese tests
For many years, China has attempted to get the United States to the negotiating table, without success. The Chinese test may have been a wake-up call. Its message: Let’s get on with treaty talks; otherwise, we will challenge you in space.
Military space dominance is a no-win proposition. Rather than considering such ideas, the next president should push for a tough new space treaty, one that is verifiable and has teeth.
It’s time for our country, which seeks to influence the world by example, to be visionary and bold. And what could be bolder and more visionary — for a nation and a new president — than leading the world to a treaty that would ensure that space remains free of weapons and free of conflict?
Mike More, former editor of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, is a research fellow at the Independent Institute of Oakland, and author of “Twilight War: The Folly of U.S. Space Dominance.” He wrote this article for the Mercury News.
Copyright 2008 San Jose Mercury News
Too late. The US has already placed some thirty “black” MIRVs in deep space orbit.
Once people start blowing things up in orbit we are going to find the planet surrounded by a constant storm of whizzing debris, a nonstop hail of bullets that will make it a lot harder to HAVE satellites or space stations or even to cross the reef of projectiles to explore further. We’ll lock ourselves in. No Starfleet uniforms. No grand destiny of interstellar zooming. No frontiers or dreams left for future Humans.
But by all means, if you’re frightened, Senator Allard, push on!
Weapons platforms or missiles is one thing. But do you think they’d ever ban a, say, newfangled air/space fighter from carrying weapons? Nice idea to ban space weapons, but a little moot, eh?
Perhaps the best solution would be to have a civilian air/space monitoring agency that the military has access to, but not control over. They have way too much at their disposal and it’s sucking the life–and brains–out of the country.
On March 29, 1968 a television program aired discussing the dangers of putting nuclear weapons into space.
That show was Star Trek and the program was called Assignment: Earth. It was Season 2, Episode 26. Strange that we continue to follow down that road when we knew it was wrong 40 years ago.
Gyro wrote: …the best solution would be to have a civilian air/space monitoring agency that the military has access to, but not control over.
It’s called NASA.
China had no problem taking out one of its own satellites that went wrong in space last year. It pissed off the US big time so what do they do is work even harder to put more in space. I agree when the orbit around earth is full of junk then no more dishes on the side or your house and the old attenna is back again. I didn’t mind the 25 free stations I got before I got a dish maybe go back to it again.
Fencing the planet with debris is still a bad idea though. A simpler way to limit your television consumption is to just unhook the antenna. It’s like quitting smoking. After a few months you can taste dialogue and drama again.
Maybe, if the next president was Dennis Kucinich, we’d have a chance.
Of course the “weaponization” of space is thinkable. It belongs to us doesn’t it? It is the God-intended province of homo proprietus, the whole finite or infinite bounded or unbounded expanse of it, our exclusive real estate. It’s ours, and we come with guns. To banish them is like trying to keep guns out of the Louisiana Purchase. Don’t be silly.
We are the protein that owns things. Space is not the only thing that belongs to us. We own the contents of space - the animals and birds and bushes and trees, the minerals, the water, the dirt. It is legally divided between individuals and tribes and nations and corporate bodies, as strictly defined and defended as Comstock mining claims. We also own intervals of time and the activities that fill these intervals, which we buy and sell like store merchandise. We own other proteins, as well as carbohydrates and the chemical recipes for these, even if they don’t exist yet. We own the ideas for inventions made and unmade and the blueprints for houses built and unbuilt. We own the rights to thoughts that have not yet occurred to anybody. We own every conceivable object and container and deed and configuration of real or possible or fictional or mathematical substance, and like Comstock miners we own the guns and rockets and death rays by which we defend our claims to the ownership of our stuff.
Wherever the race of hominids goes, even to the edges of the galaxy, we will take our signature psychosis with us. We would leave our own skins behind before we would venture into space unarmed.
The Lorax wrote: >>On March 29, 1968 a television program aired discussing the dangers of putting nuclear weapons into space.
That show was Star Trek and the program was called Assignment: Earth. It was Season 2, Episode 26. Strange that we continue to follow down that road when we knew it was wrong 40 years ago.<<
In that episode a treaty was signed banning the use of these weapons. I think it was Gene Roddenberry’s way of acknowledging the 1967 Outerspace treaty which banned these weapons until Bush/Cheney decided that we didn’t need to obey any stinkin’ treaty.
Incidentally that is one of my favorite Star Trek episodes.
When we stop pandering to
War Mongers
The War will Stop.
Please put them out of business
Help Stop the Destruction,
Pain and Suffering!
The World could be a
Beautiful, sane place?
Oil goes from $13 Dollars a Barrel
Pre BU__!SH__!
To: $126 Dollars a Barrel!
Go Figure?
Someone is making killing?
Who touts the Shrub?
and still
Sees, Hears and Speaks No Evil about him now?
The FAUX MEDIA!
All of it
What a rouse?
What a SHAM!
What reporting?
I see no information anywhere.
Just a bunch of Dirty Laundry/Undies
Or None at all!
Sort of like The News
Idiotic, Vicious, Robotic Puppets
Parroting
Rovein Propaganda
Shrub Lovers
Can you hear me now?
Do you still love The Chump?
With a nonexistent approval rating.
And only one WAR to go?
!!Mission Admonished!!
Some mandate
A bunch of Prostitutes
Corpirate Lobbyist
Stink Tank
Focus Groups
2008
America s‘t’inks to a new low
The Year of The Chimp.
Spin the Big Wheel to see
If your number is up?
Bush/Chainey
Fauxtian Roulette
The Free ride is over!
Try to Grab the Bucket of water
Before they Hand Cuff you
To the board.
Take the Profit Out!
and
Put the Humanity in!
At the risk of being labelled “out there”, I’m going to throw this out anyway. There are ETs out there and they are watching us. Until we mend our warlike ways, we are quarantined and confined to our own planet. We can send all the robotic probes we like, but we will not be allowed to spread our destruction to the rest of space.
Sometimes I HOPE there are ETs out there. The only way the human race is going to develop the technology to travel to distant worlds is if there is someone there to fuck over.
Although I watch less than one hours of commercial TV per week, I have recently noticed many Air Force commercials warning viewers of the grave danger of space war and reminding viewers of the Air Force’s new slogan: “above all”.
Isn’t this proof that the brainwashing of the US electorate on this issue is rapidly advancing ?