U.S. Eyes Space as Possible Battleground By Jim Wolf
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Bush's plan to expand the exploration of space parallels U.S. efforts to control the heavens for military, economic and strategic gain.
<snip>
Among companies that could cash in on Bush's space plans are Lockheed Martin Corp., Boeing Co. and Northrop Grumman Corp., which do big business with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration as well as with the Pentagon.
The moon, scientists have said, is a source of potentially unlimited energy in the form of the helium 3 isotope -- a near perfect fuel source: potent, nonpolluting and causing virtuallyno radioactive byproduct in a fusion reactor.
"And if we could get a monopoly on that, we wouldn't have to worry about the Saudis and we could basically tell everybody what the price of energy was going to be," said Pike.
<snip>
=========================================================
The Bush admin's space plans are a strange mixture of three major components:
1.) The vainglorious (and hubris rich) notion that the United States can and should dominate space and deny access to other nations if necessary.
2.) Capital transfer from the US treasury to aerospace contractors.
3.) Dreams of endless energy supplies, boundless vistas and other rehashes of essentially 18th and 19th century expansionary fantasies.
Although the military projects are a real threat to people everywhere and should not be laughed off as science-fiction, it's the blank check character of space-based militarism which most fascinates me at the moment.
Consider for example, a terrestrial aeronautics project such as the F-35 *joint strike fighter* plane produced by Lockheed Martin
http://www.jsf.mil/IEFrames.htm
The official rationale for this very expensive aircraft's creation and manufacture is the US' supposed need to maintain *dominance* in military aeronautics. Now, since no other nation or group of nations on Earth matches the US's military budget this explanation's flaws are visible to anyone who doesn't have a direct financial or emotional interest in the weapon system.
You can even imagine a time (during a budget crunch for example) when Congress might say that since no one's building any competing machines, there's no need for the F-35.
This is the greatest problem facing big defense contractors of exotic kill-tech in the post cold war era.
Enter the militarization of space.
The challenges of these space projects come from nature in its most unforgiving manifestation. This provides contractors with ready-made explanations for problems, immense research budgets (to *tackle* the big-sized problems) and few results. The anti missile programs are a perfect example of the endless nature of these initiatives.
In a way, these projects are the perfect revenue stream for sci-tech defense contractors such as Lockheed.
They have no certain date of completion and pose scientific and engineering problems of sufficient complexity and depth to keep conventional critics at bay for quite some time.
DRM