What this basically means is that we are no longer in the Cold War Era and that we can not run a 21st Century Space program on outmoded 20th Century methodolgies. The Cold War Space Race and all of the historical grandiose is just that, one for the history books. While we were riding off into the sunset on our white horse, several new sheriffs showed up to town. We just simply can no longer have a John Wayne big bad American Cowboy approach to it anymore. Where did these other nations get their ideas and technology, The USA. So do not tell me that our technology is passe. Its time to put Ronald Reagan to bed and formulate another strategy and get everyone involved. Too many egg heads running NASAand in the background, China has showed up and it seems that they are bringing their A game.
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Space Wars
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A near-space rivalry is fraught with potential dangers. The cold war remained cold in part because clear concepts of deterrence were developed, says Thomas Behling, until last year deputy under secretary for intelligence in the Pentagon. "But we do not know how to apply these in space. And we don't pay enough attention to this issue." The advisory committee giving expert help to author MacDonald in the compiling of his report was a roll call of defense-community heavyweights, chaired by a former commander of U.S. forces in the Pacific, Adm. Dennis Blair, all of whom reportedly shared Behling's concerns.
China's anti-satellite technology raises a collateral, but arguably more pressing, issue: space junk. China's test missile destroyed its target by smashing into it, generating thousands of fragments that are still circling in earth orbit and will be for years to come because the shards are so distant it will take decades for gravity to draw them down to earth. Low-earth orbit is crowded with commercial satellites, representing an industry with revenues of more than $100 billion, each hurtling round at 18,000 miles per hour. Perhaps 900 or so of the weather-satellite fragments are big enough to damage any satellite that hits them. Did China realize that? Did China not care? It may be time to try to negotiate international rules of the-road to prevent a repeat of this sort of test. "It is essential that the world's governments provide leadership on space management issues today in order to protect the space activities of tomorrow," said David McGlade, CEO of the giant Intelsat, in a U.S. congressional hearing last year.
Negotiating any sort of international understanding on ASAT activities would be fiendishly difficult. A draft treaty "on the prevention of the weaponization of outer space" proposed years ago by Russia and China has gotten nowhere because, even its sponsors admit, nobody can figure out how to define basic terms like "space weapons" or even "outer space." For similar reasons, a straightforward ban on ASAT weapons and activities is an impossible goal: nobody has ever been able to work out how it could be verified. But some rules could plausibly be negotiated, along with a ban on ASAT test shots like China's of last year. "The question for U.S. policy is what kind of feasible and stable space regime best serves U.S. long-term security interests," says the Council on Foreign Relations report. "This question should be addressed early in the new administration's tenure, if not earlier." The United States, which has at once the dominant commercial space industry and the military most dependent upon space assets, has every incentive to act.
© 2008
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