How Trump's 'Space-Force' Could Endanger Research, Exploration, & International Security
“The dinosaurs became extinct because they didn’t have a space program. And if we become extinct because we don’t have a space program, it’ll serve us right.”
—LARRY NIVEN
An ever growing list of research disciplines are banking on the future of public and private space initiatives. Over the next century, many expect to make strides in mining, agriculture, energy production, and other interplanetary endeavors. The possibility of launching an interstellar ‘nanoship’ probe like Breakthrough Starshot, famously hyped by the recently deceased theorist Stephen Hawking has also stirred a lot of excitement. However, in the post-Cold War era, few scientists spend their days hypothesizing orbital warfare. Though if Donald Trump has anything to say about it, that may soon change. The 45th U.S. president has recently been shopping an abstract and seemingly ill-defined conceptual military branch – a so-called “space force” .
Without a proper definition, it is entirely unclear what function such a branch of the military would actually serve. Especially considering there is little perceivable threat of an international conflict in orbit, let alone violence involving astronauts or manned spacecraft. Most potential military functions in space arise in the form of intercontinental ballistic missiles, and satellite network assault prevention. For decades the U.S. military has prepared to solve such threats remotely, without the need of astronautic soldiers.
The Trump Administration isn’t the first government to explore militarizing space. In the 1970s the Soviet Union launched the Salyut 3 space station with a surface-mounted machine gun that was supposed to fend off potential attacks from the United States. Other Russian vehicles like the Soyuz spacecraft have reportedly carried hand-guns inside of emergency kits during various periods.
It is also unclear if Trump’s space force would be utilized to assault Earth-based targets, raising a host of ethical questions, like the infamous kinetic bombardment scheme known informally as “Rods From God”. Using weapons of mass destruction in space has been prohibited by The Outer Space Treaty though only nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons are cited, leaving machine guns, explosives, lasers, and the metal rods of a kinetic bombardment device legally permissible.
“This technology is very far out--in miles and years. A pair of satellites orbiting several hundred miles above the Earth would serve as a weapons system. One functions as the targeting and communications platform while the other carries numerous tungsten rods--up to 20 feet in length and a foot in diameter--that it can drop on targets with less than 15 minutes' notice. When instructed from the ground, the targeting satellite commands its partner to drop one of its darts. The guided rods enter the atmosphere, protected by a thermal coating, traveling at 36,000 feet per second--comparable to the speed of a meteor. The result: complete devastation of the target, even if it's buried deep underground. (The two-platform configuration permits the weapon to be "reloaded" by just launching a new set of rods, rather than replacing the entire system.)”
‘Rods From God’ – Eric Adams Popular Science, 2004
Kinetic bombardment also suffers from the risk of being hacked by terrorist groups and other foreign adversaries. A remotely operated satellite doesn’t inherit the multilayered, human-vetted security that’s indigenous to our offline nuclear missile systems. But it does inherit the delivery of precision lethality to anywhere in the world. Employing any such device would likely only serve to create presently nonexistent international aggression and instabillity in space.
Left to conjecture other aspects of the obscure proposal; a potential positive for the engineering community would be in the form of military spending in space technologies and infrastructure. Though the uncertain financial benefits of an arms race could be countered by potentially hindering the billions of dollars already pouring into the private-sector. Too much military/government activity could create even greater hazards launching private research and commercial projects, which may hinder the investments of venture-capitalists in projects such as mining the lunar surface, which can already be considered high-risk.
Since President Obama ended the shuttle program in 2011, a new era of commercial rocketry has reinvigorated the public’s interest in space exploration, while engineering new technology and drastically cutting the expense per launch. Backed by billionaire investors like Blue Origin founder and Washington Post owner Jeff Bezos, commercial spaceflight services have made advances in reusable rockets and first-stage vertical landing systems NASA was unable to achieve on its own. Though many veterans of the space program were dismayed by the 2011 cuts, we are now clearly better off.
Due to the various successes of these startups, any branch of the military requiring an armada of space launchers would likely favor purchasing from such companies over traditional aerospace industrial giants like Boeing or Lockheed. And if we are indeed serious about becoming a legitimate space-faring civilization, any increased demand in the number of payloads launched per year is exactly what is needed to drive competitive costs per launch between SpaceX and BlueOrigin. However due to President Trump’s apparent disdain toward the latter’s founder, one might consider the consequences of multi-billion dollar contracts repeatedly awarded to one company over the other. All of the advances that have been made in recent years have been due in-part to healthy competition in an emerging private-sector industry, similar to how the arms race between the Soviet Union and the United States drove the space initiatives of the 1960s and 70s. Remove the competition, and we may find ourselves back in the days of a stagnant and costly space program.
The near-term development of space has long been constrained by excessive costs of launching payloads into orbit. Finally after many decades of engineering, we’ve begun to see real advances being made. That is the main economic reason for viewing potential wildcard initiatives cautiously. Because it’s so difficult to predict which way the pendulum will swing.
Many sociological reasons for wishing to maintain the industry's current thrive exist. The above mentioned lunar-mining operation, if successful would affect much needed change in parts of the world where we currently procure the rare-earth metals utilized in our smartphones, laptops, and other electronic devices. These are environments where workers endure extreme poverty and daily abuses of human rights. Additionally such a breakthrough operation on the moon would undoubtedly amount to profit in excess of billions for American corporations.
Another important point to remember is that if an actual war in space between two equipped militaries were to coalesce, the orbital warfare would inevitably result in victim satellites being disintegrated into thousands of pieces. Rendering even more ‘space-junk’ in an already polluted field. You’re probably aware that even small debris traveling at high orbital velocities has the potential to cause severe damage to non-military satellites. The potential of accidents is why it’s good practice to avoid launching payloads containing anything explosive.
It is often difficult to take seriously the real-life consequences of a politician’s rhetoric when their words so redundantly consist of juvenile insults, racism, sexism, and regressive proposals. And needless-to-say, it’s especially difficult to differentiate campaign hyperbole from genuine ambition. Initiatives in space have very real consequences that affect all of us, not only our scientific understanding, but also our economies and foreign relations.
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