Toward A Theory Of Spacepower Selected Essays

"This volume is a product of the efforts of the Institute for National Strategic Studies Spacepower Theory Project Team, which was tasked by the Department of Defense to create a theoretical framework for examining spacepower and its relationship to the achievement of national objectives. The team was charged with considering the space domain in a broad and holistic way, incorporating a wide range of perspectives from U.S. and international space actors engaged in scientific, commercial, intelligence and military enterprises. This collection of papers commissioned by the team serves as a starting point for continued discourse on ways to extend, modify, refine, and integrate a broad range of viewpoints about human-initiated space activity, its relationship to our globalized society, and its economic, political, and security interaction. It will equip practitioners, scholars, students, and citizens with the historical background and conceptual framework to navigate through and assess the challenges and opportunities of an increasingly complex space environment."--P. [4] of cover.

This volume is a product of the efforts of the Institute for National Strategic Studies Spacepower Theory Project Team, which was tasked by the Department of Defense to create a theoretical framework for examining spacepower and its relationship to the achievement of national objectives. The team was charged with considering the space domain in a broad and holistic way, incorporating a wide range of perspectives from U.S. and international space actors engaged in scientific, commercial, intelligence, and military enterprises. This collection of papers commissioned by the team serves as a starting point for continued discourse on ways to extend, modify, refine, and integrate a broad range of viewpoints about human-initiated space activity, its relationship to our globalized society, and its economic, political, and security interactions. It will equip practitioners, scholars, students, and citizens with the historical background and conceptual framework to navigate through and assess the challenges and opportunities of an increasingly complex space environment.

The National Security Space Strategy charts a path for the next decade to respond to the current and projected space strategic environment. Leveraging emerging opportunities will strengthen the U.S. national security space posture while maintaining and enhancing the advantages the United States gains from space. Our strategy requires active U.S. leadership enabled by an approach that updates, balances, and integrates all of the tools of U.S. power. The Department of Defense (DoD) and the Intelligence Community (IC), in coordination with other departments and agencies, will implement this strategy by using it to inform planning, programming, acquisition, operations, and analysis. Contents: Preface * The Strategic Environment * Strategic Objectives * Strategic Approaches * Promoting Responsible, Peaceful, and Safe Use of Space * Providing Improved U.S. Space Capabilities * Partnering with Responsible Nations, International Organizations, and Commercial Firms * Preventing and Deterring Aggression against Space Infrastructure that Supports U.S. National Security * Preparing to Defeat Attacks and to Operate in a Degraded Environment * Implementation * Conclusion - A New Type Of Leadership.Toward a Theory of Spacepower - Selected Essays: This is an authoritative compilation of expert opinions on spaceflight and spacepower, providing a broad, interesting, and up-to-date overview of all aspects of the subject: military theory, the work of Captain Alfred Thayer Mahan, international relations theory, commercial space history, smallsat, launch services, space tourism, civil space authority, Mars, the Moon, space and the environment, national security, space and warfare, arms control, Russian space programs, ASAT anti-satellite systems, Chinese space programs, Indian space programs, South America, Middle East, Africa, space law, and organizing the Presidency for spacepower.Old Thoughts, New Problems: Mahan and the Consideration of Spacepower * On the Nature of Military Theory * International Relations Theory and Spacepower * Commercial Space and Spacepower * The Commercial Space Industry: A Critical Spacepower Consideration * Importance of Ground Equipment for National Security * The Next Space Age: A Commercial Space Paradigm * Future Projections and Implications for Spacepower * Merchant and Guardian Challenges in the Exercise of Spacepower * What is Spacepower? * Two Cultures: Merchants and Guardians * Space Exploration and Spacepower * Economic Development of the Solar System: The Heart of a 21st-century Spacepower Theory * Wealth, Resources, and National Security and Spacepower Theory * The Resources of the Solar System * The Moon and Cislunar Space * The Resources of the Near Earth Asteroids * Mars * Energy * Lunar Power * Fusion * The Long-term Outlook for Commercial Space * History of Civil Space Activity and Spacepower * The Military and the Quest for a Human Mission in Space * Victory from Mars * The Moon: Point of Entry to Cislunar Space * Spaceflight: The Current Template * Spacepower and the Environment * Neither Mahan nor Mitchell: National Security Space and Spacepower, 1945-2000 * Spacepower and the Challenge of Strategic Theory * Exploiting the Cyberspace Arena * Spacepower and Warfare * War Extended to Space * U.S. Military Spacepower: Conceptual Underpinnings and Practices * Creating the Myth of Space Sanctuary * Balancing U.S. Security Interests in Space * International Perspectives: Russia * Manned Program and Vehicles * Russian Perspectives on Spacepower * Spacepower in China * The European "Spacepower"? A Multifaceted Concept * Emerging Domestic Structures: Organizing the Presidency for Spacepower * Space Law and the Advancement of Spacepower * Affordable and Responsive Space Systems

This book presents a comprehensive geopolitical analysis of European space activities. By studying outer space as a physical and socio-economic space as well as a military-diplomatic area, the author helps readers understand outer space as a geopolitical environment. The book also offers insights into the behavior and strategies of different actors, with a special focus on the European space strategy and the nature of the European space program and diplomacy.

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.

Modern technological development has been both rapid and fundamentally transformative of the means and methods of warfare, and of the broader environment in which warfare is conducted. In many cases, technological development has been stimulated by, and dedicated to, addressing military requirements. On other occasions, technological developments outside the military sphere affect or inform the conduct of warfare and military expectations. The introduction of new technologies such as information technology, space technologies, nanotechnology and robotic technologies into our civil life, and into warfare, is expected to influence the application and interpretation of the existing rules of the law of armed conflict. In this book, scholars and practitioners working in the fields critically examine the potential legal challenges arising from the use of new technologies and future directions of legal development in light of the specific characteristics and challenges each technology presents with regard to foreseeable humanitarian impacts upon the battlespace.

This book explains on what basis a nation can claim the status of space power, what are the criteria differentiating a space power from “lesser” space actors, and how their spacepower can be empirically measured and assessed. To this end, it sets forth a comprehensive multidisciplinary framework to enable a dynamic comparison of space actors and of the pathways that lead them in and out of the space powers’ club. Drawing upon a critical review of the existing literature, it conceptualises spacepower as a form of state power based on the complex interplay between the two defining dimensions of stateness, namely the well-studied dimension of capacity and the often neglected yet exceedingly important dimension of autonomy. The book demonstrates that only actors possessing high levels of both autonomy and capacity qualify as space powers. Different levels of either capacity or autonomy produce other types of space actors, including skilled spacefarers, self-reliant spacefarers, primed spacefarers, and emerging space actors. This innovative conceptual framework is complemented by an in-depth comparative assessment that collects and processes a large amount of hard-to-find data on the most active global space actors and aggregates multiple indicators into a compound, non-hierarchical index of space power visualised in the form of a matrix.