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Space Leadership Advantage
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Space Leadership AdvantageThe end of American hegemony would cause conflict and war. Niall Ferguson, Professor of History at the School of Business at New York University and Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, September-October, 2004 (A World Without Power. Foreign Policy. Lexis | So what is left? Waning empires. Religious revivals. Incipient anarchy. A coming retreat into fortified cities. These are the Dark Age experiences that a world without a hyperpower might quickly find itself reliving. The trouble is, of course, that this Dark Age would be an altogether more dangerous one than the Dark Age of the ninth century. For the world is much more populous--roughly 20 times more--so friction between the world's disparate "tribes" is bound to be more frequent. Technology has transformed production; now human societies depend not merely on freshwater and the harvest but also on supplies of fossil fuels that are known to be finite. Technology has upgraded destruction, too, so it is now possible not just to sack a city but to obliterate it. For more than two decades, globalization--the integration of world markets for commodities, labor, and capital--has raised living standards throughout the world, except where countries have shut themselves off from the process through tyranny or civil war. The reversal of globalization--which a new Dark Age would produce--would certainly lead to economic stagnation and even depression. As the United States sought to protect itself after a second September 11 devastates, say, Houston or Chicago, it would inevitably become a less open society, less hospitable for foreigners seeking to work, visit, or do business. Meanwhile, as Europe's Muslim enclaves grew, Islamist extremists' infiltration of the EU would become irreversible, increasing trans-Atlantic tensions over the Middle East to the breaking point. An economic meltdown in China would plunge the Communist system into crisis, unleashing the centrifugal forces that undermined previous Chinese empires. Western investors would lose out and conclude that lower returns at home are preferable to the risks of default abroad. The worst effects of the new Dark Age would be felt on the edges of the waning great powers. The wealthiest ports of the global economy--from New York to Rotterdam to Shanghai--would become the targets of plunderers and pirates. With ease, terrorists could disrupt the freedom of the seas, targeting oil tankers, aircraft carriers, and cruise liners, while Western nations frantically concentrated on making their airports secure. Meanwhile, limited nuclear wars could devastate numerous regions, beginning in the Korean peninsula and Kashmir, perhaps ending catastrophically in the Middle East. In Latin America, wretchedly poor citizens would seek solace in Evangelical Christianity imported by U.S. religious orders. In Africa, the great plagues of AIDS and malaria would continue their deadly work. The few remaining solvent airlines would simply suspend services to many cities in these continents; who would wish to leave their privately guarded safe havens to go there? For all these reasons, the prospect of an apolar world should frighten us today a great deal more than it frightened the heirs of Charlemagne. If the United States retreats from global hegemony--its fragile self-image dented by minor setbacks on the imperial frontier--its critics at home and abroad must not pretend that they are ushering in a new era of multipolar harmony, or even a return to the good old balance of power. Be careful what you wish for. The alternative to unipolarity would not be multipolarity at all. It would be apolarity--a global vacuum of power. And far more dangerous forces than rival great powers would benefit from such a not-so-new world disorder. Inherency Extensions[____] [____] Constellation Program was officially canceled after being defunded. Dan Leone, Space News International Staff Writer, 6/11/2011, “Memo Marks Formal End of Constellation Program,” http://www.spacenews.com/civil/110614-memo-marks-end-constellation.html WASHINGTON — A senior NASA official has signed the formal death warrant for the Constellation deep space exploration program even as work proceeds on one of Constellation’s legacy development efforts and agency officials continue to ponder the fate of another. “I have signed the letter to close out the Constellation Program,” Douglas Cooke, associate administrator for NASA’s Exploration Systems Mission Directorate, wrote in a June 10 memo. With Constellation’s demise now official, the Constellation project office, which “has already scaled back in size significantly,” will be charged “with transitioning contracts, etc. to the new [Space Launch System] and [Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle] programs,” Cooke wrote in the memo. [____] The Constellation program has been cancelled and the US has no means to send astronauts into space. Jacqui Goddard, writer for the Telegraph Newspaper, 7/02/2011, “Final Lift-off,” http://m.gulfnews.com/news/world/usa/the-last-flight-of-the-atlantis-shuttle-1.831365 For every crew that has trained for a shuttle mission since the fleet was launched in 1981, there has been another on its tail ready to fly the next. But this one, Mission STS-135, is the end of the line. Three decades of space flight history are about to end. Nearly 15,000 jobs will be lost at the Kennedy and Florida space centres. Nasa would prefer the final flight to be a celebration of the shuttle's considerable accomplishments — among them the construction of the $100 billion (Dh367.3 billion) International Space Station, completed last month, and the launch of the Hubble Space Telescope. But some space flight veterans cannot help thinking of it as more of a wake. George Mueller, a former Nasa manager considered the ‘Father of the Space Shuttle' for his role in championing the policies that led to its development, still travels at 92 years old, but cannot bring himself to attend Atlantis' farewell launch. "I'm never enthusiastic about going to funerals," he said. The shuttle has been scheduled for retirement since president George W. Bush set out his Vision for Space Exploration in 2004. After the shuttle would come a new spacecraft, Bush decreed, that would make its first manned mission by 2014, ferrying astronauts initially to the space station and later to "other worlds" including the Moon by 2020, to build a manned base, and Mars by 2030. The programme, which would build Ares rockets and a crew capsule called Orion, was known as Constellation. Seven years and $9 billion later, behind schedule and over budget, President Barack Obama cancelled it. Now, the private sector has instead been tasked with developing vehicles to ferry astronauts to the space station while NASA designs a rocket to haul crew and cargo further afield. But a decision on the design of the rocket will not come before 2015 at the earliest, with construction and a manned launch unlikely before 2020. 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