USA China and the Moon

[iloveatomickitten]

Asides from the blatant attempt to gain votes Bush's plans for the Moon worry me. With China recently sending someone into space could this herald the militarisation of space? All space endeavours should be funded by the international community and allow access to all nations with no concideration given to financial imput (clearly this will slow progress but will prevent the balance of power being further distorted).

I'm curious to how other people see this.

[SonofRage]

The Republican Party has had plans to militarize space for a long time now and it was something Reagan believed in strongly. I don't think it has anything to do with China, they are a good 30+ years behind the US as far as aurospace technology.

[monkeydust]

In all honesty I'd much rather have another Cold War than another World war, in any case I can't see the militarisation of space happening soon, that said if we carry on down the path we are leading now it is perhaps inevitable.

Suppose massive vital resources were found in concentrated areas of Mars, do you think any one power will willingly allow another to share such a gift?

[LSD]

The militarization of space is not going to happen, at least not for a long time.

The money isn't there.

Sure Bush has his moon base idea, but that is a far cry from full fledged control of space, even a moon base would be hard pressed to control anything beyond itself.

As for China, since at this point, they're about 43 years behind the US, I doubt the USG looks at them as a threat in terms of space.



All space endeavours should be funded by the international community and allow access to all nations with no concideration given to financial imput

Yah....they probably should be, but they won't.

Back in '62 Kennedy suggested the same thing, but that was because the USSR was kicking his ass.

Now that the US has a half-century advantage on everyone else there is no way in hell that they will share.

Not to mention the fact that for reasons of "national security" the US will never share technology that is even marginally military related

[DeadMan]

What the fuck is that shit. Honestly, I wouldn't want to be stationed in space. I would lose my mind up there. I can't stand cabin fever. Can't this world ever relax. I hate the times we are in. I want fucking peace for a while. I want the worst thing in the news to be a car crash with no deaths.

We are living in a pre-war area (World Wide). Something big is gonna happen, I don't know what, but I hope I'm dead before it does.

DeadMan.

[LSD]

We are living in a pre-war area (World Wide). Something big is gonna happen, I don't know what, but I hope I'm dead before it does.


Something big is always going to happen. Every postbellum is really an antebellum, with the technology and power in the world today, most people have become quite frugal in starting major wars, but that doesn't mean that someone won't.....

Still, if "something major" does happen, there is still a chance that it won't be the destructive kind, but something better.

Something good has to happen eventually

and I hope I'm not dead for that.

[martingale]

Here's some articles on why China is wary of the US drive to militarily dominate space"

Published on Tuesday, October 28, 2003 by the Boston Globe
Bush's Battle to Dominate in Space
by James Carroll

THE IRAQ war may not be the worst of what President Bush is doing. Last month the United Nations Conference on Disarmament in Geneva adjourned, completely deadlocked. This is the body that since 1959 has hammered out the great arms control and reduction treaties -- the regime of cooperation and "verified trust" that enabled the Cold War to end without nuclear holocaust. The last agreement to come out of Geneva was the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty in 1996, and the incoming Bush administration's attitude toward the whole enterprise was signaled by its explicit approval of the Senate's rejection of that treaty. Now the issue is the grave question of weapons in space, and for several years, while China and other nations have pushed for an agreement aimed at preventing an arms race in outer space, the United States has insisted that no such treaty is necessary. Last August China offered a compromise in its demands, hoping for a US moderation of its refusal, but no progress was made.

As of now, the 1967 Outer Space Treaty governs the military uses of space, but China argues that strategic plans openly discussed in the Pentagon, including the Missile Defense Program, involve deployments that will violate that treaty. In the words of John Steinbruner and Jeffrey Lewis, writing in Daedalus, "The Chinese were particularly alarmed by a 1998 long-range planning document released by the then United States Space Command. That document outlined a concept called global engagement -- a combination of global surveillance, missile defense, and space-based strike capabilities that would enable the United States to undertake effective preemption anywhere in the world and would deny similar capability to any other country."

If the Chinese were alarmed in 1998 by such "full-spectrum dominance," as US planners call it, imagine how much more threatened they feel now that Pentagon fantasies of preemption and permanent global supremacy have become official Bush policies. For decades, "deterrence" and "balance" were the main notes of Pentagon planning, but now "prevention" and "dominance" define the US posture. Such assertions can be made in Washington with only good intentions, but they fall on foreign ears as expressions of aggression.

When it comes to space, the Chinese have good reason for thinking of themselves as the main object of such planning, which is why they are desperate for a set of rules governing military uses of space. (At the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, a study of such rules is underway codirected by Steinbruner and the academy's Martin Malin).

Two weeks ago China put a man in space, a signal of China's arrival -- and of the arrival of this grave question. Beijing has invested heavily in commercial development of space and will become a significant economic competitor in that sphere. But such peaceful competition presumes a framework of stability, and it is inconceivable that China can pursue a mainly nonmilitary space program while feeling vulnerable to American military dominance. China has constructed a minimal deterrent force with a few dozen nuclear-armed ICBMs, but US "global engagement" based on a missile defense, will quickly undercut the deterrence value of such a force. The Chinese nuclear arsenal will have to be hugely expanded.

Meanwhile, America's "high frontier" weapons capacity will put Chinese commercial space investments at risk. No nation with the ability to alter it would tolerate such imbalance, and over the coming decades there is no doubt that China will have that capacity. Washington's refusal to negotiate rules while seeking permanent dominance and asserting the right of preemption is forcing China into an arms race it does not want. Here, potentially, is the beginning of a next cold war, with a nightmare repeat of open-ended nuclear escalation.

Today, on the surface, US-Chinese relations seem good. Partly in response to Beijing, President Bush, while in Asia, moderated his refusal to offer North Korea assurances that the United States will not be an aggressor. Bush met with China's President Hu Jintao and reiterated US congratulations on China's man in space. This week China's Defense Minister Cao Gangchuan is meeting in Washington with Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. But a dark undercurrent runs between the two nations, and it is fraught with danger. The problem is America's refusal to discuss the problem.

What makes this situation so ominous is that the Pentagon's aggressive strategic planning for space and the Bush administration's rejection of treaty restraints are not only unchallenged in the US political discourse but are largely unnoted. Was the issue even hinted at in the Democrats' debate in Detroit? What Democrat has raised the question of the sabotaged Conference on Disarmament? Who is warning of the Bush-sponsored resumption of the arms race? And where is the defense of the idea, once sacred to Americans, that outer space marks a threshold across which human beings must not drag the ancient perversion of war?

[martingale]

China needs to maintain a minimal but credible deterrent force against the US, and at the same time cooperate with others to isolate the US diplomatically in trying to ban weapons in outer space. I've always believed that the US is hellbent on militarizing outer space and the anti-ballistic missile system it wants to build is really a Trojan Horse to do just that.

Another article from a British perspective:

Published on Thursday, October 16, 2003 by the Guardian/UK
Hans Blix Isn't Needed in Space - Yet
China's Space Mission Could Trigger a Military Build-up by Washington
by Dan Plesch

China yesterday became the third state on the planet - after the former Soviet Union and the US - to launch a manned spacecraft. Such a successful introduction of advanced technology by a developing country might be thought a cause for international celebration - but that is not how the militarists in Washington will see it. There, it is likely that the launch will be used as further evidence of a "China threat", while China's own proposal - for a treaty banning weapons from space - will be rejected.

The danger is that President Bush will repeat the US reaction to the Soviet space program. In the 1950s, when Moscow launched Sputnik, the first satellite, it triggered a massive military build-up by Washington. It is now US national strategy to prevent any power from rivaling the US in the way that the Soviet Union once did. US strategists see China's huge population and growing economy as providing the state with the potential to challenge America.

The now infamous Project for the New American Century (PNAC) states that for the US the "focus of strategic competition" has shifted from Europe to east Asia. In a discussion of potential strategic competitors to the US, President Bush's national security strategy explains some of the political rational for fearing China: "... a quarter century after beginning the process of shedding the worst features of the Communist legacy, China's leaders have not yet made the next series of fundamental choices about the character of their state. In pursuing advanced military capabilities that can threaten its neighbors in the Asia-Pacific region, China is following an outdated path."

The reality of Chinese power is very different to that put forward by the Washington threat-creation industry. Take the idea of an attack from the mainland on Taiwan. According to the International Institute for Strategic Studies, Beijing has just 60 ships in its navy - only twice the number of tiny Taiwan and a fraction of US strength.

China's real priority is to have enough power to prevent a return to the humiliations of the colonial era. It is too easy to forget that in the mid-19th century Britain used gunboats to force China to import opium, and then took control of China's overseas trade. Other foreign powers joined in and the US kept a fleet operating in China's rivers up until the second world war, when they were forced out by the Japanese invasion.

Today, the US has thousands of nuclear weapons and other missiles able to attack China, while Beijing has little to fire back with. Washington is determined to keep it that way. One of the PNAC members explained that: "The US has never accepted a deterrent relationship with China, the way we did with Russia." To the US military, any space program. it does not control is a challenge to its formal policy of dominating space militarily.

The likely reply from the Pentagon to the Chinese space program. is an intensification of the "son of star wars" project, part of which is being built at Fylingdales in Yorkshire. These missile defenses would be able to neutralize a Chinese deterrent, but are better suited to shooting down satellites (including manned spacecraft) than incoming missiles - because satellites follow a predictable path across the sky. It is vital that the British government is cross-examined over the potential anti-satellite role of the Fylingdales base.

In contrast to the US quest to dominate, the Chinese have been campaigning for a UN treaty banning weapons from space. The Chinese draft treaty should be welcomed. There are few new technical problems in creating a verifiable inspection regime for a ban on weapons in space. Right now, there are no weapons above our heads. It is not necessary to put Hans Blix in a space suit to carry out inspections. There are only a handful of space-launch and missile-defense sites around the world. Satellites and other space vehicles are tiny, so it is easy to check if a ray gun is hidden inside.

US behavior over arms talks gives ample evidence to those dubious of its peaceful intent. Even President Clinton vetoed UN talks on a space weapons ban. In the absence of any sensible policy from Washington, the UK and Europe must engage in direct talks with the Chinese. We cannot afford to sit back and watch the growing confrontation between the US and China. Britain has a prime minister who tells us he is seriously concerned about the problem of weapons of mass destruction. After the Iraq debacle he can restore his credibility in this area by helping prevent an arms race in space. If the US will not cooperate for now, then we should act with the EU and Russia, pressuring the US to abandon its militarist excesses.

· Dan Plesch is senior research fellow at the Royal United Services Institute

[Individual]

Originally posted by [email protected] 14 2004, 11:04 PM
In all honesty I'd much rather have another Cold War than another World war
Do you realize what very well could have happened during the cold war? Sure no big battles, or even statistical numbers of death occured. However can you not realize that the Cold War could have been the end of BioSphere 1 as we know it. The Cold War was a horrible thing that all togethor cost more money than did WW2. The Cold War brought frigid tension between the most powerful countries on this planet. If the Cold War would have reached its peak, all life would be gone. There would be no more Earth...

If there was another Cold War, especially under Bush's administration, it would be almost inevetable that all life would end. Think about this. The launching of some of the most powerful forces on planet Earth by the thousands would not only disintergrate a few masses of land. The whole Earth would wreak its wrath from the contamination of the atmosphere and who knows what would happen the the (only 5-10 miles deep) Earth's crust.. World War 2 killed millions. The Cold War could kill EVERYTHING.

You can argue that the Cold War did not reach its peak.. However think of modern politics and the egotistic imperial leaders we have running this planet. I do not know if we could make it through another Cold War

[monkeydust]

Originally posted by AlwaysQuestion+Jan 16 2004, 03:18 AM--></span><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td>QUOTE (AlwaysQuestion @ Jan 16 2004, 03:18 AM)
[email protected] 14 2004, 11:04 PM
In all honesty I&#39;d much rather have another Cold War than another World war
Do you realize what very well could have happened during the cold war? Sure no big battles, or even statistical numbers of death occured. However can you not realize that the Cold War could have been the end of BioSphere 1 as we know it. The Cold War was a horrible thing that all togethor cost more money than did WW2. The Cold War brought frigid tension between the most powerful countries on this planet. If the Cold War would have reached its peak, all life would be gone. There would be no more Earth...

If there was another Cold War, especially under Bush&#39;s administration, it would be almost inevetable that all life would end. Think about this. The launching of some of the most powerful forces on planet Earth by the thousands would not only disintergrate a few masses of land. The whole Earth would wreak its wrath from the contamination of the atmosphere and who knows what would happen the the (only 5-10 miles deep) Earth&#39;s crust.. World War 2 killed millions. The Cold War could kill EVERYTHING.

You can argue that the Cold War did not reach its peak.. However think of modern politics and the egotistic imperial leaders we have running this planet. I do not know if we could make it through another Cold War [/b]
I understand the common view here that you demonstrate always quewtion, however i disagree.

I&#39;m not saying that I would like to see a cold war, however I would argue that depite rampant threats, no side was ever likely to nuke the other, and other forms of conflict were not going to happen because of the belief that one side would nuke the other.

Clearly Nato and the Warsaw Pact powers had vastly different views, however I would argue they still followed basic rationality, at least to the extent that they&#39;d realise using nukes would be worse for all.

[praxis1966]

It doesn&#39;t appear to me that the motivation for Bush creating a moon colony is an attempt at military domination of outer space. One has to take into consideration that the second part of his plan is using the moon as a jumping off point for the manned exploration of Mars.

I&#39;ve been listening to discussions on NPR over the last couple of days, and all the experts I&#39;ve heard seem to think that even this is a highly difficult proposition. For one thing, a Moon colony really doesn&#39;t serve any purpose. On the military side, it is less viable than low orbit satellites (something which the U&#036; already has) as a means of manipulating weaponry. For another, it would actually be less efficient than simply sending a manned mission to Mars directly from the Earth. Not only would simple cost be a factor, but procurement of raw materials and energy sources, along with some means of producing water are all extremely difficult propositions on the Moon. I find it hard to believe that a project that is so codependant on heretofore unknown technology will be anything other than a dismal failure.

In the final analysis, I believe that this is an attempt by Bush to leave behind a legacy other than his failures economically and resentment over Iraq. That, and he&#39;s not very creative. His father tried to do the same thing back in 1990, and Congress had one big collective gut laugh at the &#036;400 billion price tag. This time around things are alot cheaper as the proposal calls for &#036;11 to &#036;12 billion in new NASA funding through 2005, with projected budget increases of roughly 4 to 6% until 2014. My question is, how decadadent can one culture be to think it acceptable to spend this kind of cash on basically an ars gratia artis venture when there are so many starving people in the world?

[Individual]

Left,
I can also see where you are coming from, and the keyword is no "exterminate" missiles were ever fired, however you can not say that we were never close to coming to the point of no end. How exactly could you say this when you do not know. My point in being that millions died and WW2 and obviously far less died in the Cold War. However your phrase was I would much rather have another Cold War than a WW. This is where my last point tried to point out that another Cold War would most likely mean the end of the world. I can not speak for the future but taking into consideration what the world is today and will be as apposed to what the world was. Obviously no side of the Cold War was going to launch anything under rationality. However all of the covert operations and the tension between the two sides. The ice was very then and could very easily have cracked leaving the world to a devastion. I guess I just feel that extreme possiblity ot the destruction of the world in another Cold War outweighs the deaths brought by a WW. Yes a World War would be a horrible thing, but how is that compared to the destrucion of the world?

[monkeydust]

Point taken. I agree.