James Wilsdon of thinkthank Demos believes that the recent US enthusiasm for space is down to old fashioned reasons – to maintain its dominance in space technology over Russia and China. He discusses all the recent developments, the new GPS system to be developed by the ESA, Russia and China, and possible US plans to ditch the Outer Space Treaty.
To me at least, all this stuff is fairly old hat – I was only discussing many of these issues three weeks ago with my brother. We agreed on all the points made in this article – and discussed future possible warfare scenarios on the basis of future technology. But rather than base it on the decision to go to Mars – we asked ourselves one question – What would it take to remove the US as the pre-eminent power in the world?
A space based weapons platform was one we considered , along with many others. But space will play a crucial role in future conflict – interesting to find Demos coming to the same conclusion, perhaps just a bit late.