“The stars will never be won by little minds,” observed the great science-fiction writer Robert Heinlein. If we aren’t careful, though, they just might be won be the scheming minds of governments hostile to the United States. A notable New York Times piece the other day reported that the “Pentagon is rushing to expand its capacity to wage war in space, convinced that rapid advances by China and Russia in space-based operations pose a growing threat to U.
S. troops and other military assets on the ground and American satellites in orbit.” There are two things to be said about this — one, it’s about time, and two, we need to be doing much more.
Space is indeed the final frontier . . .
for romantic nonsense that ignores human realities and the imperatives of war-fighting. For all the talk of how pristine space is, it is an incredibly unforgiving environment. Yes, it looks beautiful, but so do the air and sea.
And sure, space has provided the occasion for compelling art, but so what? We don’t let Herman Melville or JMW Turner convince us that we should ban all battleships or submarines. Playing defense in space — or simply trying to protect our assets — doesn’t make any more sense than doing so on the ground, in the air, or on the sea. Would we ever just give our troops lots of Kevlar vests and station them in elaborate concrete bunkers, but deny them the use of rifles or artillery? Would we ever want our warplanes merely to be capable of evading and survivin.