U.S. Race to Militarize Space Poses Many Dangers
While the world media covers the shuttle Columbia?s tragic crash over
northeast Texas, little is said about the ambiguous and deepening
relationship between NASA and the military especially under the leadership
of NASA's new chief, Sean O?Keefe, a Dick Cheney prot? who served as
Secretary of the Navy during the first Bush Administration. The Space
Shuttle, for instance, has been used in recent years for everything from
repairing the Hubble Telescope to studying the effects of weightlessness on
tiny insects to deploying global positioning satellites that provide
signals for most of today?s precision-guided ?smart? bombs. On Monday,
there was a small protest outside the opening of the 20th Annual Symposium
on Space Nuclear Power & Propulsion in Albuquerque, New Mexico.
NASA hopes to carry out tests for the Pentagon?s ?Space Based Laser? by
2016 or 2017, according to Bruce Gagnon, director of Global Network against
Weapons and Nuclear Power in Space. Under the Bush Administration, it is
also looking to develop a new generation of nuclear reactors that could not
only propel interplanetary spacecraft but provide the enormous power
projection capability needed to keep laser battle stations orbiting above
the Earth. The weaponization of space is forbidden by the 1967 Outer Space
Treaty, which the U.S. signed. The United Nations re-affirmed its supported
for that treaty in Nov. 2000 by a vote of 160-0 with the U.S., Israel and
Micronesia abstaining.
NASA also envisions mining colonies on the Moon, Mars, and asteroids that
would be powered by nuclear reactors. All of the above missions would be
launched from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida on rockets with a
historic 10% failure rate. And, while NASA pours billions into
military-related projects, basic maintenance of the space shuttle fleet has
been neglected according to a leading British paper. This reports contrasts
with The Washington Post?s fawning coverage of NASA?s leadership in the
aftermath of Saturday?s events.
[ Indymedia Readers Speak Out | Feb. 3 Democracy Now Coverage | How a
Ronald Reagan State of the Union PR Stunt Caused the 1986 Challenger Crash ]
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