Privatizing Peace

How Commerce Can Reduce Conflict in Space

Wendy N. Whitman Cobb

• Publisher: Routledge India
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781000095425
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Ciencias físicas
• Subtopic: Ciencia espacial

This book explores the privatization of space and its global impact on the future of commerce, peace and conflict. As space becomes more congested, contested, and competitive in the government and the private arenas, the talk around space research moves past NASA's monopoly on academic and cultural imaginations to discuss how Elon Musk's SpaceX and Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin is making space "cool" again.

This volume addresses the new rhetoric of space race and weaponization, with a focus on how the costs of potential conflict in space would discourage open conflict and enable global cooperation. It highlights the increasing dependence of the global economy on space research, its democratization, plunging costs of access, and growing economic potential of space-based assets.

Thoughtful, nuanced, well-documented, this book is a must read for scholars and researchers of science and technology studies, space studies, political studies, sociology, environmental studies, and political economy. It will also be of much interest to policymakers, bureaucrats, think tanks, as well as the interested general reader looking for fresh perspectives on the future of space.

1
A new space craze

For those of us too young to have lived through the space craze of the late 1950s and early 1960s, recent years have been full of space-related adventures, cultural kitsch, and excitement in space. Movies and television shows are regularly set against a space backdrop—Star Wars and Star Trek have been revitalized for a new generation and films like The Martian and Gravity have stimulated interest in the real-life engineering challenges of space exploration. The logo of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), commonly known as “the meatball,” has been appropriated by the fashion world and used on everything from t-shirts to luxury handbags. LEGOs have put out space-themed sets including the Saturn V, the Apollo lunar module, the International Space Station (ISS), and a set featuring the women of NASA. In 2019, McDonald’s even released a series of Happy Meal toys featuring the comic strip character Snoopy in space.

Some of this nostalgia is no doubt due to the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 landings in 2019, but the excitement is also due to a renewed energy in space exploration. Instead of government organizations like NASA leading the way, however, it is private companies and entrepreneurs like Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos that are making space cool again. While the public has been fed visions of life in space since the mid-twentieth century, these two men, and others, are working to make that dream a reality, reducing the costs of launches and making near-earth space more accessible to actors beyond the government sphere. The reverence once given to rocket launches is now directed at the landings of launch boosters by Musk’s company, SpaceX. In the near future Bezos’ Blue Origin and Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic will offer ordinary citizens the opportunity to take a suborbital launch to space. Where once many people dreamed of being an astronaut, the actual opportunity to be one is finally coming true.

Viscerally, the space excitement seems to be building once more, but there is reason to question both the level of public enthusiasm and the relative safety in which new space activities will be carried out. To the first question, the General Social Survey, a biannual survey of Americans undertaken by NORC at the University of Chicago, has asked respondents about their interest in space since 2008. Though the number is ticking upwards, Figure 1.1 shows that the percentage of individuals who responded “very interested” is the lowest among the three options. In 2018, just over a quarter of respondents expressed that they were very interested. On the other hand, those who reported they were moderately interested actually fell from 52% in 2010 (when the shuttle was still launching) to 43.9% just two years later. More importantly, there is fairly little variation in this data from year to year; although there are hopeful signs, a significant chunk of the American public does not express much interest, if at all, in space.

At the same time, the revolutions that Musk and Bezos are spurring to make space more accessible are also decreasing the cost for governments to operate in space. With militaries and governments around the world becoming more dependent on space, space-based assets are also becoming more vulnerable and a target for potential aggressors. Though the militarized nature of space has been present since before the launch of Sputnik, the hostile rhetoric never proved to be more than bluster, even during the Cold War. Where some people predicted the inevitable breakout of hostilities in space between the US and the Soviet Union, open conflict never did occur. Today, however, the aggressive language regarding space is once again rising and includes new players like China and India. Leaders of countries including the US, China, and Russia have argued that a new space race is breaking out. The US has gone so far as to stand up a new military service, the Space Force, with the mission to deter attacks against US assets and defend against them should they occur. China and Russia are investing heavily in space technology and weaponry that could be deployed at any time.

Figure 1.1Interest in space exploration by percent, 2008–2018

Space is a harsh enough environment—open military conflict in space will make operating there even more difficult for governments and commercial companies alike. Should it occur, it will also put at risk the state of the global economy which is largely dependent on space-based systems for its functioning. This presents a dilemma for space states that are at once dependent on space and see it as a future battleground—there is a need for stability to promote commerce and other missions, but space powers like the US, China, and Russia do not find it in their interest to create a more stable regime that could potentially limit the military uses of space. Some analysts have argued that because of this, states, particularly the United States, should deploy weapons and dominate space before other countries have the chance to.¹ Others believe concerted action can and should be taken to avoid such an outcome.² While both sides of this debate have valid arguments, this book is an attempt to bring the economic and military aspects of space together to argue that the economic and commercial benefits of space should act as a restraint on potential conflict in space. Drawing on the findings of scholars about the pacific benefits of trade and commerce, I show how this argument can be extended and applied to space through the global economy’s dependence on space systems. Before previewing these arguments, however, this chapter details the current space environment and the relationship between space development and its military uses.

The new space era

The 2011 US National Security Space Strategy (NSSS) describes the new space environment as congested, contested, and competitive.³ Its description of the space environment remains just as applicable, though this policy document has now been replaced by the Trump administration. First, space is congested in the sense that there are far more objects in orbit than ever before. Although the potential of space seems unlimited, humans are mostly concerned with the resources available in the space immediately surrounding the earth including low earth orbit and geostationary orbit (discussed further in the following chapter). As of September 2019, there were 2,218 satellites in orbit with 1,468 in low earth orbit and 562 in geostationary orbit.⁴ These numbers have already grown and will continue to do so as SpaceX intends to launch a constellation of satellites to provide global internet access. While the number in geostationary orbit is rather low, a significant amount of physical distance is required between each satellite so that radio interference is minimized.

In addition to the congestion created by more users and satellites, space debris is an increasing challenge. Because objects in space are traveling at thousands of miles an hour, collisions between items in space can have disastrous effects—spacecraft hit with a piece of debris just a few centimeters in size can have their missions ended if they are not destroyed first. Though debris has been deposited since the first space launches, more aggressive actions in space also create a hazard. For example, in 2007, China conducted its first anti-satellite (ASAT) test. ASATs can be launched in various ways including from under the wing of an aircraft or from the ground like a missile. In either case, their mission is to intercept a satellite in orbit with the intent to destroy it. In geopolitical terms, ASAT tests are important in demonstrating to other actors that a state has the capability to deny others access to space by targeting a satellite. However, the effects of China’s ASAT test were larger than making a military statement:

The explosion produced 900 trackable objects over 10cm immediately, a 10% increase in total orbital debris, but with the prediction that the total number may come to several tens of thousands between 200 and 3800 km [in altitude]. The altitude of the interception was so high that the debris would take thousands of years to fall back to earth.⁵

These figures are striking, but any piece of debris, whether from the Chinese ASAT test (or others previously conducted by the US and Russia and now India), used launch vehicles, or malfunctioning satellites, can create debris which is not easily removed and can significantly threaten the space environment.

That the physical space around earth has become so congested naturally leads to the idea that it is also more contested than ever before. Since the space frontier opened in the 1950s, access to space has been dominated by two main states: the United States and the former Soviet Union. During the Cold War, in addition to the US and the Soviet Union, France, Japan, China, the United Kingdom, India, and Israel developed independent launch systems, though not all were used consistently. More frequently, states used launch systems built by either the United States (or companies in the United States) and Russia to launch national satellite systems.

Because access to space has historically been quite expensive, only states with the resources to devote to it and states with the willingness to divert money to it could participate. This cost has significantly limited the number of states willing to undertake such programs on their own. While some states have taken advantage of the launch services provided by others, others have created cooperative relationships to share the costs of expensive space programs as in the case of the European Space Agency (ESA). This eliminates the need to develop homegrown launch systems which have proven the most expensive element to develop, build, and operate. Focusing solely on states that have independent access to space, however, minimizes the actual number of countries that operate there. In reality, more than 80 states have launched satellites and even more utilize the systems that reside in orbit like the Global Positioning System (GPS).

Space is also more competitive as barriers to entry have been lowered. This competition is apparent not just in access to technology, specific orbits, or ability to launch but in competition for power in space and on earth. This type of competition harkens back to the Cold War space race when the US and Soviet Union sought to prove which country was not only more technologically more capable but more dominant. With relations between Moscow and Washington on the decline in recent years, some analysts have speculated about the prospects of a second Cold War with others arguing that the Cold War never really ended.⁶ The degradation of relations has led to an increased focus on military capabilities in both countries, with each developing new weapons systems.

Though tensions between the US and Russia are high, China also represents a rising influence. In terms of its relation to the US, China poses not only a military threat but an economic one. In space, China has quickly established themselves as a growing space power despite their late start. China’s official space program dates to the 1950s but has a long and tumultuous history; political instability like the Cultural Revolution stymied, not just the resources available for space development, but the willingness to commit to it.⁷ What China did accomplish, they did so mostly on their own; following a fall out with Moscow in the late 1950s, Chinese scientists had limited contact with the outside world. Even so, by 1970, they...