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Link – Exploration Causes Weaponization
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Link – Exploration Causes Weaponization[____] [____] Advances in civilian space technology also further attempts at weaponization. Trevor Brown, MSc, S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, Nanyang Technological University, Spring 2009, “Soft Power and Space Weaponization,” Air and Space Power Journal, http://www.airpower.au.af.mil/airchronicles/apj/apj09/spr09/brown.html But the United States does not necessarily have to choose between civilian and military space programs since much of the technology developed for space is dual use. The space industry provides a tremendous opportunity for militaries that desire more affordable access and space assets that can significantly augment terrestrial forces. As Alfred Thayer Mahan pointed out, “Building up a great merchant shipping lays the broad base for the military shipping.” The US military can maximize its resources, not only financially but also politically, by packaging as much military space activity as possible into commercial space activity. One example involves satellite communications. The arrangement the Pentagon has with Iridium Satellite LLC gives the military unlimited access to its network and allows users to place both secure and nonsecure calls or send and receive text messages almost anywhere in the world. Another example involves space imagery. Even though the government must maintain sophisticated imaging capabilities for special situations, it could easily meet the vast majority of its routine requirements at lower cost by obtaining commercially available imagery. The Air Force could also use space transportation, another emerging industry, to maximize its resources. Private ventures now under way are reducing the costs of space access considerably. It is possible that one enterprise could become an alternative to Russian Soyuz spacecraft for NASA’s missions to the International Space Station. Such enterprises could prove attractive, cost-effective options for delivering the Air Force’s less-sensitive payloads to Earth orbit. Space tourism, a growing industry, could enable the Air Force to procure affordable capabilities to routinely operate 60 to 90 miles above Earth. Advances that entrepreneurs are making in suborbital space flight could eventually evolve to a point where the Air Force would find it far easier, politically as well as financially, to acquire platforms capable of delivering munitions from space. Specific Link – Colonization[____] [____] Space colonization leads to competition over the resources in space, which results in weaponization. Bruce Gagnon, Coordinator of the Global Network Against Weapons & Nuclear Power in Space, 1/30/2010 “Statement of Concern,” http://www.space4peace.org/statement/concern.htm, Accessed January 2, 2010 This same space law also declares that all interplanetary bodies belong to the common good. As NASA lands on the moon and Mars and explores other planets they are finding gold, cobalt, magnesium, helium 3 and other rich resources. Plans are now underway to place mining colonies on these bodies. The U.S. is now exploring ways to circumvent international space law in order to "exploit" these planetary bodies so that corporate interests may secure the enormous financial benefits expected from this Mining the Sky as is described by NASA scientist John Lewis in his book by the same title. The Columbus mythology is often invoked to describe our "manifest destiny" as it relates to space exploration and colonization. The noble explorer theme is used to cover the more practical notion of profits to be made in regards to space. There is big money to be made building and launching rockets. There is money to be made building and launching satellites. There is money and power to be derived by "controlling" space. And there is money to be made mining the sky. Another obstacle exists though. If the U.S. can "control" space, so might another nation. Thus we have the early stages of an arms race in space. How will France, Russia, China or any other nation respond as the U.S. consolidates its "control" of space? In order to ensure that the Pentagon maintains its current space military superiority the U.S. Space Command is now developing new war fighting technologies like the Ballistic Missile Defense (BMD) and Anti-satellite weapons (ASATS) as well as space based laser weapons. Star Wars is alive and well. Recent efforts to move toward early deployment of the BMD system, which could easily be used for offensive purposes, is expected to break the 1972 ABM Treaty as well as the Outer Space Treaty. Specific Link – Constellation[____] [____] Attempts to maintain space hegemony are seen as threatening by China and Russia. William C. Martel and Toshi Yoshihara , professor of national security affairs at the Naval War College in Rhode Island, Toshi, doctoral candidate at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts University, 2003 “Averting a Sino-U.S. Space Race,” http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/washington_quarterly/v026/26.4martel.html#authbio1 Some Chinese observers point to U.S. efforts to militarize space as evidence of the U.S. ambition to establish unilateral hegemony. For example, in 2001, Ye Zhenzhen, a correspondent for a major daily newspaper of the Chinese Communist Party, stated that, "[a]fter the Cold War, even though the United States already possessed the sole strategic advantage over the entire planet, and held most advanced space technology and the most satellites, they still want to bring outer space totally under their own armed control to facilitate their smooth ascension as the world hegemon of the 21st century." 11 Diplomatically, China has urged the use of multilateral and bilateral legal instruments to regulate space activities, and Beijing and Moscow jointly oppose the development of space weapons or the militarization of space. 12 The Chinese leadership's opposition to weaponizing space provides evidence of China's growing concern that the United States will dominate space. The United States' avowed intention to ensure unrivaled superiority in space, as exemplified by the Rumsfeld Commission report, increasingly defines China's interests in space. Chinese anxieties about U.S. space power began with the 1991 Gulf War, when the PRC leadership watched with awe [End Page 22] and dismay as the United States defeated Iraq with astonishing speed. Beijing recognized that the lopsided U.S. victory was based on superior command and control, intelligence, and communications systems, which relied heavily on satellite networks. Demonstrations of the United States' undisputed conventional military power in Bosnia; Kosovo; Afghanistan; and, most recently, Iraq further highlighted for Chinese officials the value of information superiority and space dominance in modern warfare. [____] Heavy launch vehicles can easily disguise space-based nuclear weapons. Kendall K. Brown, liquid rocket engine system engineer for NASA and researcher at College of Aerospace Doctrine, Research, and Education, Summer 2006, Air and Space Power Journal “Is Operationally Responsive Space the Future of Access to Space for the US Air Force,” http://www.airpower.maxwell.af.mil/airchronicles/apj/apj06/sum06/brown.html Inclusion of a global strike capability might have a destabilizing effect on world affairs in times of heightened geopolitical tensions. Given an HLV that can deliver either a satellite payload to orbit or a common aero vehicle with a strike weapon to a terrestrial target, a third-party nation might detect the launch and fear a nuclear attack by the United States. Regardless of whether such fears have any foundation, the Cold War forged a paradigm that ICBMs deliver nuclear weapons, and a US adversary or a nation not friendly to the United States could have difficulty distinguishing the launch of an HLV from that of an ICBM with strategic weapons, despite the fact that the trajectories might differ. The world community would have to accept the uncertainty that a reentry vehicle could deliver a conventional precision-guided munition-in essence, we would be asking the world to trust us in a time of hostilities. 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