Mankind's exploration and utilization of space resources has progressed thus far primarily amidst a climate of international cooperation. World militaries have utilized these resources to greatly improve and enhance their earthbound capabilities. Thankfully, however, there has been no large-scale militarization of outer space. However, this could change in the next century unless Americans and other citizens of this planet remain vigilant. We should all realize that while space-based resources will continue to revolutionize political, economic and military developments in the Twenty First Century, that medium must not become an extension of the combat arena.

Germany's development and use in combat of the V-2 rocket in World War Two was the opening salvo of space warfare in this century. Later, the secret testing of intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) by the U.S. and Soviet Union burst onto the front pages of newspapers around the world with the Soviet's launch of the first orbital satellite-Sputnik-in October 1957. Clearly understated in these press accounts was Americans' fear that now the Soviet Union could drop an H-Bomb on Washington, New York or Topeka, Kansas for that matter.

As the 1960s began, Americans were enthralled by the selection of the Mercury astronauts in a civilian program to send the first human into outer space. In actuality, the astronauts as well as their Soviet counterparts were former military test pilots. The landing of Apollo 11 on the lunar surface in July 1969 was the culmination of nearly a decade of effort (President John Kennedy put the moon landing on the national agenda with his May 25, 1961 speech before both houses of Congress) and came at the cost of about $25 billion. Both America and the Soviet Union had engaged in a hectic race to reach the moon first and that great quest was costly not only in dollars and rubles spent but in resources expended, lives lost and domestic needs set aside.

Meanwhile, in secret, perhaps the most significant U.S. space development of the century occurred. On August 18, 1960, the first photographs from an orbiting satellite - the Top Secret "Corona" - were successfully recovered. In a matter of days, the fears of a "missile gap" were allayed as U.S. experts verified that the Soviet ICBM arsenal numbered in the dozens, not hundreds or thousands.

In the early years of the Cold War it appeared that both superpowers sensed that exploring and militarizing the new medium of outer space could potentially bankrupt each nation's economy. An informal, unstated mutual agreement seems to have been made to restrict the militarization of space. This was seen in the negotiation and eventual agreement and ratification of a number of arms control treaties. The Limited Test Ban Treaty of 1963 prohibited nuclear tests in the atmosphere, underwater, and in outer space. Later, the ABM Treaty (1972) and the 1974 Protocol to the ABM Treaty limited strategic defenses while the SALT I and II Treaties headed off a further runaway race in building offensive ballistic missiles.

Over the period of the next three decades both the Soviet Union and the United States continued their civilian space competition as the two nations raced to first land a man on the moon and later to develop orbiting laboratories. Again, arms control put a damper on plans to militarize the exploratory missions of the Sixties and Seventies. The Outer Space Treaty of 1967 required that the new medium be used for "peaceful purposes and the Moon Treaty of 1979 prohibited the militarization of celestial bodies such as the lunar surface.

In the years that followed Sputnik and President Kennedy's May 1961 declaration committing America to land a man on the moon, the militaries of both superpowers began launching an increasingly sophisticated number of space assets. Military satellites were tasked to perform communications functions, mapping, meteorological support, track enemy missile tests, assist in navigational support for each nation's naval forces, perform a vital strategic early warning function (warn of possible nuclear attack by opposing forces), perform tactical warning and attack assessments as well as spying on each other's militaries, leadership and strategic assets. Some significant military space "firsts" are outlined below:

The largest U.S. military buildup of the Cold War era occurred during the Reagan Presidency. The arena of outer space became part of that buildup on March 23, 1983 when President Reagan gave his "Star Wars" speech which initiated a R&D race to put nuclear pumped X-Ray lasers and other space weapons into orbit. The goal was to build an impenetrable shieldagainst Soviet ballistic missiles.

If one includes all monies spent on ballistic missile defense (including spending "hidden" in the Air Force budget) since President Reagan's Star Wars speech, the actual amount spent by the United States is nearly $90 billion. Much of this money was wasted as today there is no tangible benefit from years of research, development, testing, and evaluation expenditure. The Strategic Defense Initiative was scaled down and eventually became GPALS or Global Protection Against Accidental Launches. In December 1991 the Cold War ended with the breakup of the Soviet Union. America's Cold War adversary and its only close competitor in the exploitation of outer space ceased to exist.

The success of arms control in constraining the costly nuclear arms race between the superpowers not only on Earth but in outer space has been heralded by thoughtful leaders and commentators. And today, arms control's importance in preventing space militarization should not be underestimated.

"Arms control could prove useful in constraining the fielding and employment of certain capabilities which in the hands of potential adversaries might, on balance, be more harmful to us than like technologies in our hands might benefit us." General John Shalikashvili, Former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, June 1998

Just as military establishments in the previous centuries sought to dominate and control access to the sea lanes, so today do militaries seek a similar function in outer space. The role of space assets in recent conflicts is noted by Air Force Chief of Staff, General Michael E. Ryan at a 1998 Air Force Association symposium: "Our space-based capabilities were instrumental in the execution of the campaign that dismantled Iraq's military capability...[and in] our operations in Bosnia [where] I can tell you that space systems were vital. They afforded us precision targeting, the capability to revisit those targets, to avoid collateral damage and contribute to the peace...."

In the recent war in Kosovo, the role of Global Positioning System satellite receivers was especially critical in guiding bombs and missiles to their targets given the poor weather conditions in the first few weeks of the NATO bombing campaign.

U.S. and Russian dominance of outer space is declining as space activity proliferates among the nations of the world. Thirty or more nations possess significant space industries and eight countries have direct access to the medium through space launch vehicles. The U.S. alone has over 200 commercial, civil, and military satellites in active operation with a combined value of over $100 billion.

Growing economic competition in space as well as traditional concerns about the military control of the exoatmospheric domain have resulted in an increased volume of official U.S. government statements on the matter. President Clinton's latest National Security Strategy For A New Century (October 1998) states, "Our policy is to promote development of the full range of space-based capabilities in a manner that protects our vital interests. We will deter threats to our interests in space and if deterrence fails, defeat hostile efforts against U.S. access to and use of space. We will also maintain the ability to counter space systems and services that could be used for hostile purposes against our ground, air, and naval forces, our command and control system, or other capabilities critical to our national security."

The Joint Chiefs of Staff's latest National Military Strategy (1997) similarly outlines U.S. space policy but with a more assertive orientation, "It is becoming increasingly important to guarantee access to and use of space as part of joint operations and to protect U.S. interests. Space control (emphasis added) capabilities will ensure freedom of action in space and, if directed, deny such freedom of action to adversaries."

The key doctrinal statement, however, for the Air Force, which provides over 90 percent of the military's space budget, is the service's Global Engagement: A Vision for the 21^st Century. This document and other recent Air Force doctrinal manuals emphasize what Air Force Chief of Staff Ryan calls "a transition of enormous importance." Ryan continues, "...our goal is to eventually evolve from an air and space force, which we call ourselves today, into a space and air force (emphasis added)."

Another spokesman for this "transition" is Air Force Historian Richard P. Hallion who recently wrote that, "We must dominate the military space dimension and integrate space forces into our overall warfighting capabilities across the spectrum."

While this sounds benign enough, many observers like Dr. Karl Grossman, Professor of Journalism at the State University of New York, insist that "space control" implies an increasingly dangerous, destabilizing militarization of outer space by U.S. armed forces. This danger is seen in statements highlighted by Dr. Grossman in the Air Force Board Report titled, New World Vistas: Air and Space Power for the 21^st Century (1996): "A first option for force projection from space would capitalize on advances in large lightweight antenna technologies..in antennas many hundreds of meters across, which will enable space-based electro-magnetic weapons...to project very narrow beams with extremely high power density on airborne, surface, or space targets." The report goes on to discuss space-based high energy laser weapons and hypersonic precision-guided projectile weapons both based in outer space.

In the spring of 1999 the Defense Science Board, in a report titled, Joint Operations Superiority in the 21^st Century, identified advanced technologies needed for U.S. military operations in 2010 and beyond. Military capabilities in space were especially noteworthy. These include: two-stage ballistic-missile launched precision weapons for attacking high-value ground targets; GPS satellites used in conjunction with kinetic energy or conventional penetrator projectiles; a constellation of space-based lasers to provide global coverage and defense against hostile missile launches; and a fleet of space orbiting vehicles carrying rods of heavy material in highly elliptical orbits to re-enter and transit the atmosphere striking targets at hypersonic speeds (Mach 10 or 10,000 feet per second).

Perhaps, in part, to address these concerns, General Richard B. Myers, Commander-in-Chief of NORAD and U.S.Space Command has stated, "there is no national policy to weaponize space. So our focus now is looking at the concept (of operations) and some of the basic technologies that would someday, if we're tasked by the national command authority, to go do that." Nonetheless Myers' additional statement that the United States is, "still a decade or two away from having a significant space force application capability" only reinforces fears of Dr. Grossman and others that space militarization is an eventual goal of the U.S. Air Force.

With the successful Earth flyby of the $3.4 billion unmanned Cassini spacecraft in August 1999 on a five year voyage to the planet Saturn, NASA seems committed, as is the U.S. military, to using nuclear materials to power space platforms. Launched in October 1997 by an Air Force Titan IV rocket, the Cassini spacecraft is powered by three Lockheed-Martin built radioisotope thermal electric generators (RTGs). Although not full-fledged "nuclear reactors," these generators use the heat of radioactive decay to provide power for unmanned spacecraft journeying to the outer solar system. An accidental launch explosion or inadvertent re-entry of the probe into Earth's atmosphere during the flyby maneuver risked dispersing some 72.3 pounds of deadly plutonium into the environment, posing a significant health threat to global populations. Dr. Helen Caldicott, President Emeritus of Physicians for Social Responsibility, is an often quoted expert on the health effects of plutonium. Caldicott notes that, "Named after Pluto, god of the underworld, it (plutonium) is so toxic that less than one-millionth of a gram, an invisible particle, is a carcinogenic dose. One pound, if uniformly distributed could hypothetically induce lung cancer in every person on Earth."

While NASA downplayed these contamination risks claiming in a 1995 environmental impact statement that only 2,300 people over a 50-year period would suffer "health effects from such an accident," outside observers doubt NASA's expertise in these matters. For example, Dr. Ernest Sternglass, professor emeritus of radiological physics at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine claimed, "they underestimated the cancer alone by about 2,000 to 4,000 times."

And safety is a critical concern. In fact, the exploration of space has already seen its share of nuclear accidents and the military-industrial complex has played a significant role in these disasters. Both the United States and Russia have launched spacecraft powered by nuclear energy. Three of 26 U.S. missions have resulted in accidents, while six of the 41 known Soviet and now Russian space missions have failed - a combined failure rate of about 13 percent! Some prominent examples of U.S. and Russian nuclear space accidents that have dispersed radioactive products in the atmosphere are listed below:

Unlike the Cold War, nuclear space accidents did not enter the realm of historic anachronisms in 1991. Another legacy of the Cold War, reliance on unsafe nuclear technology will continue to plague humankind for hundreds of years. Some of these nuclear "timebombs" remain in orbit around the Earth. At least four American and four Russian nuclear powered spacecraft, launched in the 1960s and 1970s, are orbiting from between 500 and 1,000 miles above our planet. The radioactive products in these failed spacecraft will one day rain down on the Earth showering our world with the deadly toxic byproducts of the nuclear race into space.

Despite these risks, NASA claims it has addressed reentry dangers by developing "advanced radioisotope power systems" which reportedly use greatly reduced amounts of plutonium to power deep space missions. These new generators will be used on at least three missions scheduled for the next decade: the Pluto-Kuiper Express, the Europa (a satellite of the planet Jupiter) Orbiter to be launched in 2003-2004, and the Solar Probe, to study the sun's outer atmosphere, which will be launched in 2007.

As bad as things are, they could be worse. Itemized below are three U.S. military nuclear programs that never reached orbit:

In addition to safety concerns, the past use of nuclear power systems in outer space can be interpreted, strictly speaking, as a violation of international law, particularly the 1967 Outer Space Treaty which banned the stationing of weapons of mass destruction in space. While RTGs are not nuclear weapons, the great risk of dispersal, even if inadvertent, of deadly radioactive material in Earth's atmosphere can be interpreted as a violation, at least in spirit, of this law.

With the advent of the new century, there is hope for a future free of orbiting battle stations and an unending offensive buildup of space and ground-based weapons. There is increasing evidence that the bad blood between Russia and the U.S. over NATO's recent military action in Kosovo may heal. One example of this "healing" is the recent announcement that U.S. and Russian negotiators will being working toward START III, a new round of reductions in strategic nuclear weapons arsenals. And although in July 1999 President Clinton signed the National Missile Defense Act committing the United States to make a decision on deploying ballistic missile defenses in June 2000, the President also made it clear that the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty is the "cornerstone" of strategic relations with Russia. The President firmly indicated an unwillingness to resuscitate the Cold War by pushing hard for an accelerated rebirth of Star Wars, "reaffirming my administration's position," the President stated, "that our missile defense policy must take into account our arms control and nuclear nonproliferation objectives."

America's future economic health will rely more and more on developments in the civil satellite market. In the next decade it is projected that about 300 military satellites valued at over $35 billion will be launched worldwide. In the same period, however, more than a thousand commercial satellites valued at over $50 billion will also be launched! While U.S. industry continues to lead the world in commercial satellite building, it's lead in space launch services is declining thanks to renewed competition from Russian and European aerospace companies. A recent string of six U.S. launch failures (from August 1998 to May 1999) creates additional concern that the United States is putting too many eggs in one basket - the International Space Station - while neglecting critical government support of commercial launch systems.

The International Space Station (ISS), which is being built over the next five years by the U.S., Japan, Canada, the European Space Agency, and Russia, will cost the United States almost $96 billion according to a May 1998 report by the U.S. General Accounting Office. This figure represents the total program cost to develop, assemble and operate the station through the year 2014 including $53.4 billion for Space Shuttle launch support. Critics argue too much money is being spent on the ISS, and not enough (about $3 billion annually) is being spent on subsidizing U.S. government support of the commercial launch industry

But the Clinton Administration insists it is doing enough. An October 1998 White House Fact Sheet announced that government and industry will form a partnership to develop and fly two families of Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicles (EELVs) that through an investment of $3 billion in government money and $2 billion in private funding promises to "reduce launch costs by 25-50 percent over the next twenty years" And Administration supporters note that both the U.S. military and NASA are working on long-term projects to develop reusable launch platforms as a follow-on to the Space Shuttle. One example is the experimental Boeing X-37, one of several planned NASA Future-X Pathfinder orbital space vehicles.

Some critics are concerned about other space spending priorities. They point to the proposed ten percent reduction in NASA's space budget by House appropriators in August 1999 as not only a "knock" against pure science (the reductions severely impact NASA's ambitious "faster, better, cheaper" unmanned rover missions to the planet Mars) but possibly the portend of a future budgetary trend to overfund space defense at the expense of civilian space research and development. So far, there's no indication that military space funding will suffer a similar reduction. In fact, in the four years from 1995 to 1998, the annual percent of military space spending has increased from 44.7 to 48.6 percent of the total space budget (military + civilian + "other" space spending) while NASA's funding has decreased from 52.7 to 48.6 percent!

U.S. Space Funding, Constant Dollars (in Millions, as of September 30, 1998)
Year NASA Dept. of Defense Other Total
1960	$2,198	$2,669	$205	$5,072
1962	8,350	6,032	929	15,311
1965	23,016	7,051	1,093	31,161
1969	15,373	8,097	568	24,038
1971	11,348	5,553	465	17,346
1975	8,650	5,614	315	14,579
1980	9,416	7,742	469	17,626
1983	9,941	14,168	511	24,620
1986	10,052	19,818	664	30,533
1989	12,937	22,943	718	36,598
1990	14,088	19,197	629	33,914
1991	15,399	16,738	823	32,960
1992	14,938	17,002	870	32,810
1993	14,405	15,554	770	30,728
1994	14,020	14,175	647	28,841
1995	13,187	11,190	661	25,038
1996	12,960	11,872	773	25,605
1997	12,607	11,868	737	25,211
1998	12,321	12,359	768	25,449

In the 21^st Century the U.S. military may become committed to refighting the Cold War - this time in outer space building up a space-based military strike force while other nations begin exploiting the riches of the solar system: building giant orbital solar power stations; mining the moon and asteroid belt; pioneering new space propulsion and environmental protection technologies; and winning international prestige by sending humans on manned, multinational missions to Mars and other celestial bodies. Meanwhile, the United States may be heading for a future like that of 15^th and 16^th Century Portugal. This maritime nation pioneered great sea voyages of discovery to Africa and India but did not follow up on these early successes and became a second rate economic power while Spain, France, and England went on to become the economic superpowers of the era.

The model for the future use of outer space should be the superb example set by multinational cooperation in the nonmilitarization of the Antarctic continent as expressed in international law by the Antarctic Treaty of 1959. The forty years of peaceful scientific cooperation in the exploration of this "final frontier" on Earth should be a model for future agreements on the exploration and utilization of the space frontier.

An example of a future multilateral cooperative space project would be an international effort to address the space debris threat. In the forty plus years of the space age, thousands of

satellites have been sent into space and the benefits to Earth inhabitants of improved communications, weather forecasting, navigation, and earth resource planning are taken for granted. Unfortunately the cost of these successes is little known. Amidst the several hundred active satellites currently in orbit around our planet, there are also thousands of pieces of space garbage. From spent rocket stages that never reentered the atmosphere to particles of propellant and corrosive byproducts of satellites, low Earth orbit has become a space "garbage heap." Most of the objects orbit from 120 to 1,200 miles above the Earth. There are currently over 10,000 orbital objects larger than 4 inches (10 centimeters) in diameter that can be tracked by radar and optical telescopes. Of these over 8,500 are catalogued by U.S. Space Command. Only five percent are operational spacecraft. The rest is space debris. In addition, there are also tens or even hundreds of thousands of objects from 1 to 10 centimeters in size (half an inch to four inches in size) which are very difficult, if not impossible to keep track of. The problem is that these objects travel at tens of thousands of miles per hour and represent a threat to active satellites and manned spacecraft. The Space Shuttle has had to change course several times in recent years to avoid collisions with this space garbage and the International Space Station is being equipped with special shielding to lessen the dangers of impacts from these orbital objects.

A stepped-up international effort to improve detection and plot trajectories of this space debris with the aim to mitigate the dangers and one day eliminate the threat would represent an excellent multinational cooperative space project.

Center for Defense Information