The New Space Race ?
Star Wars part deux / See Nothing, Hear Nothing, Know Nothing
The Bush administration is overseeing a massive shift in the NASA budget away from science missions and into manned spaceflight programs. In several cases, they are canceling missions that are nearing completion, and require little further funding. (Terrestrial Planet Finder, DAWN, Mission to Europa) Why? As always, the question that one must always ask of this administration is: who does this benefit? At least two groups benefit from this: the military-industrial complex and their old-school conservative backers (Cheney, et. al.), and conservative religious groups.
The motivations of the first group, representing the secular big-business wing of the Republican party, are clear. They desire to maintain US global hegemony and funnel tax money to well-connected corporations. Building up US military power is their preferred method of accomplishing both goals. The military is concerned about China's space program, and has developed an elaborate (and likely expensive) plan to counter it over the next two decades. Science missions tend to be built by universities and small contractors on tight budgets. The new manned space initiative will shift additional billions of dollars to a handful of major aerospace companies (LockheedMartin, Boeing, Northrop, United Technologies). The administration has even begun to publicly acknowledge the reorientation of the space program around defense.
The reader may ask "what does religious extremism have to do with the space program?" The reply in two words is "Cognitive Dissonance". The human ability to simultaneously hold mutually incompatible beliefs is expansive, but not infinite. One of NASA's major science goals has been to look for signs of extraterrestrial life. If fossilized terrestrial organisms are disturbing to the fundamentalist worldview, imagine what the discovery of an environment in which life had evolved differently from anything ever known on our planet would do. Their poor little heads would explode and the red states would be cleaning up (sadly unused) gray matter for weeks. The Bush plan saves a large portion of his constituency from a gooey ending, and as a bonus, lets them send their kids off to fight the "godless communists" (remember them?).
So, what is a rational person to make of this? Chinese military expansionism in space is worrying, but is a new arms race the right response to the threat? As a start, we could apply some of the principles that have been shown to work in economics, and in other political crises, namely transparency and the rule of law. China, like most authoritarian societies, prefers to work in secret, except for well-crafted public relations spectacles. They hate public criticism of their activities. Publicizing their activities would force them at the very least to acknowledge their existence. It could also swing world opinion against them, and this could provide support for a legal framework that would seek to prevent space conflict by extending the rule of law off the Earth's surface. A rudimentary framework exists already: the Outer Space Treaty (OST). The US is one of the original signers, and China signed in 1983. The treaty forbids
The major flaw in the treaty is that it refers only to states. I suspect that in 1967 the possibility of extraterrestrial private property was a remote enough concern to be ignored for the sake of simplicity; it's not so remote any more. Why is private property relevant to this issue? A robust civilian presence in space could completely change the nature of any confrontation. At present, space is resource rich and uninhabited - think Spratly Islands. Conflicts can occur in semi-secrecy, and the only casualties are military. A civilian presence raises the stakes such that even unaccountable authoritarian regimes think twice before taking military action; despite the stated desire to do so, North Korea has not invaded the South, and China has not invaded Taiwan. The current US administration, alas, did not even think once, and history will not be kind to us for our invasion of Iraq. In order for there to be a robust civilian presence in space, the rule of law must be extended to them. There must be mechanisms for resolution of disputes, liability, and property ownership or leasing, for starters. Essentially, we need a local government structure in space. Who is going to provide this? Not the UN. I don't dislike the organization, but we can only rarely enforce its rulings on Earth, so how well can we expect to do on some remote comet.
I think the solution to the problem of local government in space is ... local government in space. The alternatives are state/military control, or corporate "company towns" in space. This will not be an easy transition, and realistically, it will probably go through state and/or corporate control before a transition to local sovereignty. The high ground of deep space is largely illusory in that it cannot be controlled in the long term by a ground-based power. Once a sufficient civilian population is present, and new generations are born out there, they will stop seeing themselves as Americans or Chinese, or Russians, but as Martians or Belters, or dare I say, Lunatics. These citizens of the solar system will show as much respect for the OST and its strictures on non-ownership of celestial bodies as the Founding Fathers did for King George's claims on North American land and resources.
And the fundamentalists? They can stay right where they are and pretend it's flat for all I care. I'll be moving to Mars.
Star Wars part deux / See Nothing, Hear Nothing, Know Nothing
The Bush administration is overseeing a massive shift in the NASA budget away from science missions and into manned spaceflight programs. In several cases, they are canceling missions that are nearing completion, and require little further funding. (Terrestrial Planet Finder, DAWN, Mission to Europa) Why? As always, the question that one must always ask of this administration is: who does this benefit? At least two groups benefit from this: the military-industrial complex and their old-school conservative backers (Cheney, et. al.), and conservative religious groups.
The motivations of the first group, representing the secular big-business wing of the Republican party, are clear. They desire to maintain US global hegemony and funnel tax money to well-connected corporations. Building up US military power is their preferred method of accomplishing both goals. The military is concerned about China's space program, and has developed an elaborate (and likely expensive) plan to counter it over the next two decades. Science missions tend to be built by universities and small contractors on tight budgets. The new manned space initiative will shift additional billions of dollars to a handful of major aerospace companies (LockheedMartin, Boeing, Northrop, United Technologies). The administration has even begun to publicly acknowledge the reorientation of the space program around defense.
The reader may ask "what does religious extremism have to do with the space program?" The reply in two words is "Cognitive Dissonance". The human ability to simultaneously hold mutually incompatible beliefs is expansive, but not infinite. One of NASA's major science goals has been to look for signs of extraterrestrial life. If fossilized terrestrial organisms are disturbing to the fundamentalist worldview, imagine what the discovery of an environment in which life had evolved differently from anything ever known on our planet would do. Their poor little heads would explode and the red states would be cleaning up (sadly unused) gray matter for weeks. The Bush plan saves a large portion of his constituency from a gooey ending, and as a bonus, lets them send their kids off to fight the "godless communists" (remember them?).
So, what is a rational person to make of this? Chinese military expansionism in space is worrying, but is a new arms race the right response to the threat? As a start, we could apply some of the principles that have been shown to work in economics, and in other political crises, namely transparency and the rule of law. China, like most authoritarian societies, prefers to work in secret, except for well-crafted public relations spectacles. They hate public criticism of their activities. Publicizing their activities would force them at the very least to acknowledge their existence. It could also swing world opinion against them, and this could provide support for a legal framework that would seek to prevent space conflict by extending the rule of law off the Earth's surface. A rudimentary framework exists already: the Outer Space Treaty (OST). The US is one of the original signers, and China signed in 1983. The treaty forbids
"any objects carrying nuclear weapons or any other kinds of weapons of mass destruction, install[ing] such weapons on celestial bodies, or station[ing] such weapons in outer space in any other manner...the establishment of military bases, installations and fortifications, the testing of any type of weapons and the conduct of military maneuvers on celestial bodies".As a sidebar, it seems that ASAT and other pop-up weapons lie in a gray area of the treaty. This treaty is well-intentioned, but flawed. Demanding that China and the US (since Bush & Co. are wont to ignore inconvenient treaties) adhere to their treaty obligations may deflate the ballooning risk of a space arms race in the short term.
The major flaw in the treaty is that it refers only to states. I suspect that in 1967 the possibility of extraterrestrial private property was a remote enough concern to be ignored for the sake of simplicity; it's not so remote any more. Why is private property relevant to this issue? A robust civilian presence in space could completely change the nature of any confrontation. At present, space is resource rich and uninhabited - think Spratly Islands. Conflicts can occur in semi-secrecy, and the only casualties are military. A civilian presence raises the stakes such that even unaccountable authoritarian regimes think twice before taking military action; despite the stated desire to do so, North Korea has not invaded the South, and China has not invaded Taiwan. The current US administration, alas, did not even think once, and history will not be kind to us for our invasion of Iraq. In order for there to be a robust civilian presence in space, the rule of law must be extended to them. There must be mechanisms for resolution of disputes, liability, and property ownership or leasing, for starters. Essentially, we need a local government structure in space. Who is going to provide this? Not the UN. I don't dislike the organization, but we can only rarely enforce its rulings on Earth, so how well can we expect to do on some remote comet.
I think the solution to the problem of local government in space is ... local government in space. The alternatives are state/military control, or corporate "company towns" in space. This will not be an easy transition, and realistically, it will probably go through state and/or corporate control before a transition to local sovereignty. The high ground of deep space is largely illusory in that it cannot be controlled in the long term by a ground-based power. Once a sufficient civilian population is present, and new generations are born out there, they will stop seeing themselves as Americans or Chinese, or Russians, but as Martians or Belters, or dare I say, Lunatics. These citizens of the solar system will show as much respect for the OST and its strictures on non-ownership of celestial bodies as the Founding Fathers did for King George's claims on North American land and resources.
And the fundamentalists? They can stay right where they are and pretend it's flat for all I care. I'll be moving to Mars.
posted by Stochastic Eclectica at
7:29 AM
|
0 comments
