SPACE
Military space:
the space–nuclear link
Until now the major organizational axes of space investment have never been called into question. For a start, military activity, while not the most spectacular element of the space effort, has nevertheless constituted one of the most enduring, if not one of the most important, since the beginning. This was particularly the case in the USA, where the birth of space activity bears a direct relation to the rise of the nuclear arsenals. It was because the USA and the USSR were able, in less than 10 years between 1945 and 1955, to arm themselves with ballistic arsenals fitted with nuclear warheads that their governments realized the importance of being able to exploit space.
The relationship between `space' and `nuclear' did not rest solely on the line of descent which exists between the technologies necessary for the development of ballistic missiles and those which lead to space launchers. It also arose from the need (swiftly felt and officially acknowledged from 1955 in the wake of reports published from 1946 onwards) to possess a permanent and impregnable means of detecting and, ultimately, targeting enemy missiles. Whereas aerial methods rapidly reached their limits in this field,1 acquiring space-based methods of reconnaissance, early warning and targeting became a priority, given the development of offensive weapons. The doctrine of mutually assured destruction (MAD) would give these methods the air of a life assurance policy for the countries concerned and would contribute to making space a true, mutually recognized sanctuary.2
It was in this military field that the criterion of `utility' was most clearly applied. Thanks to the unique nature of the applications it permits, space experienced an effort in this area which, over the course of the years, has never been downgraded. For this has not been the case with military space applications as a whole, which have been party to numerous projects from the 1950s until today but have not enjoyed the same support. For example, manned military programmes have not been supported, despite intense lobbying throughout the 1950s and 1960s. In the same way, making space a `fourth battle field', as a well known general had heartily desired, was not considered favourably at all by the government: why militarize space when the use of intercontinental missiles offered every guarantee of efficacy? Without any true utility, such projects obtained no real support. A balance sheet of military space activity drawn up in 2000 thus confirmed the continuity of the effort undertaken since the 1950s, to the point where military space activity today defines a club effectively composed of the countries which have information gathering satellites, in particular in the remote sensing field.
However, new thinking on the military role of space is taking place today, just at the time when the major powers are questioning the policing role of nuclear armaments in the face of `new threats'. Thanks to the burgeoning possible forms a threat might take, space programmes might take a quite different place among an expanded set of security tools and see their role exceed the narrow applications with which they have been identified up to now.
Civil programmes:
the manned flight–space science duality
As the second historical wing of the development of space activity, it was the major civil space programmes, which initially reflected the competition for political and social pre-eminence between the two blocs at the end of the 1950s. The most spectacular aspect of this competition took the form of `man in space', and became the familiar space race. The Apollo programme, undertaken by the USA as a direct response to the flight of Yuri Gagarin on 12 April 1961, directly mobilized 180,000 people with a budget of $94 billion (in 1990 dollars) and achieved the first Moon landing in 1969,3 reaching a peak in 1965 when it represented 0.8% of US GNP. But competition also extended to space science, especially to planetary exploration with unmanned probes, a less well known area of space activity, but one where competitive pressures were expressed just as intensely.
This characteristic, again the legacy of strong government interest, was expressed by an almost binary civil activity, with all the consequences that entails.
If we consider the American case, which is responsible for over 70% of global public space expenditure, the picture is particularly illuminating. In 2000 the NASA budget ($13.8 billion) was built around two principal pillars: the manned programme (with the two major pillars of the ISS and the Space Shuttle) and the science programme in its broadest sense, including the major scientific Earth observation programmes, but otherwise largely composed of a recently relaunched Mars exploration programme. This duality is expressed not only in budgetary terms but also in the internal balance of NASA, where these major programmes must receive privileged representation, especially when it comes to the managing teams, which have to guarantee the correct representation of the research centres concerned. And then the space industry itself is broadly structured around the demands of NASA, especially in the field of manned flight, with an industry presence in each of the federal states for each of the agency's main programmes being a requirement.
These rules have broadly influenced first US, and subsequently global, space expenditure, only because of the link created among spacefaring countries or groups of countries by the space station programme. For example, for Europe, which is one of the station partners, the ISS remains a long-term structural element, both in terms of its activity and its budget.4 However, two profound identity crises 20 years apart have destabilized these general equilibria since the heights attained by space activity in the 1960s.
De um Trabalho de:
Xavier Pasco, Fondation pour la Recherche Stratégique
the space–nuclear link
Until now the major organizational axes of space investment have never been called into question. For a start, military activity, while not the most spectacular element of the space effort, has nevertheless constituted one of the most enduring, if not one of the most important, since the beginning. This was particularly the case in the USA, where the birth of space activity bears a direct relation to the rise of the nuclear arsenals. It was because the USA and the USSR were able, in less than 10 years between 1945 and 1955, to arm themselves with ballistic arsenals fitted with nuclear warheads that their governments realized the importance of being able to exploit space.
The relationship between `space' and `nuclear' did not rest solely on the line of descent which exists between the technologies necessary for the development of ballistic missiles and those which lead to space launchers. It also arose from the need (swiftly felt and officially acknowledged from 1955 in the wake of reports published from 1946 onwards) to possess a permanent and impregnable means of detecting and, ultimately, targeting enemy missiles. Whereas aerial methods rapidly reached their limits in this field,1 acquiring space-based methods of reconnaissance, early warning and targeting became a priority, given the development of offensive weapons. The doctrine of mutually assured destruction (MAD) would give these methods the air of a life assurance policy for the countries concerned and would contribute to making space a true, mutually recognized sanctuary.2
It was in this military field that the criterion of `utility' was most clearly applied. Thanks to the unique nature of the applications it permits, space experienced an effort in this area which, over the course of the years, has never been downgraded. For this has not been the case with military space applications as a whole, which have been party to numerous projects from the 1950s until today but have not enjoyed the same support. For example, manned military programmes have not been supported, despite intense lobbying throughout the 1950s and 1960s. In the same way, making space a `fourth battle field', as a well known general had heartily desired, was not considered favourably at all by the government: why militarize space when the use of intercontinental missiles offered every guarantee of efficacy? Without any true utility, such projects obtained no real support. A balance sheet of military space activity drawn up in 2000 thus confirmed the continuity of the effort undertaken since the 1950s, to the point where military space activity today defines a club effectively composed of the countries which have information gathering satellites, in particular in the remote sensing field.
However, new thinking on the military role of space is taking place today, just at the time when the major powers are questioning the policing role of nuclear armaments in the face of `new threats'. Thanks to the burgeoning possible forms a threat might take, space programmes might take a quite different place among an expanded set of security tools and see their role exceed the narrow applications with which they have been identified up to now.
Civil programmes:
the manned flight–space science duality
As the second historical wing of the development of space activity, it was the major civil space programmes, which initially reflected the competition for political and social pre-eminence between the two blocs at the end of the 1950s. The most spectacular aspect of this competition took the form of `man in space', and became the familiar space race. The Apollo programme, undertaken by the USA as a direct response to the flight of Yuri Gagarin on 12 April 1961, directly mobilized 180,000 people with a budget of $94 billion (in 1990 dollars) and achieved the first Moon landing in 1969,3 reaching a peak in 1965 when it represented 0.8% of US GNP. But competition also extended to space science, especially to planetary exploration with unmanned probes, a less well known area of space activity, but one where competitive pressures were expressed just as intensely.
This characteristic, again the legacy of strong government interest, was expressed by an almost binary civil activity, with all the consequences that entails.
If we consider the American case, which is responsible for over 70% of global public space expenditure, the picture is particularly illuminating. In 2000 the NASA budget ($13.8 billion) was built around two principal pillars: the manned programme (with the two major pillars of the ISS and the Space Shuttle) and the science programme in its broadest sense, including the major scientific Earth observation programmes, but otherwise largely composed of a recently relaunched Mars exploration programme. This duality is expressed not only in budgetary terms but also in the internal balance of NASA, where these major programmes must receive privileged representation, especially when it comes to the managing teams, which have to guarantee the correct representation of the research centres concerned. And then the space industry itself is broadly structured around the demands of NASA, especially in the field of manned flight, with an industry presence in each of the federal states for each of the agency's main programmes being a requirement.
These rules have broadly influenced first US, and subsequently global, space expenditure, only because of the link created among spacefaring countries or groups of countries by the space station programme. For example, for Europe, which is one of the station partners, the ISS remains a long-term structural element, both in terms of its activity and its budget.4 However, two profound identity crises 20 years apart have destabilized these general equilibria since the heights attained by space activity in the 1960s.
De um Trabalho de:
Xavier Pasco, Fondation pour la Recherche Stratégique
publicado por MP às 13:48
