Clueless pundits (was High-flight rate Medium vs. New Heavy lift launchers)

Jim Kingdon wrote:

You're right that a lot of the reaction has been knee-jerk anti-Bush.
This morning on the radio there was a whole thing about how it must
have to do with the militarization of space. Well, I'm sure the
commentator disagrees with the administration about the militarization
of space, but I don't see the connection to NASA or to the exploration
program. What hasn't been based on random observations about the Bush
administration has often been based on random observations about NASA
and/or space, again divorced from what is actually being proposed.

Well, we do know that at least Wolfowitz and Cheney are interested in
militarizing space; as they said so in the
"Rebuilding America's Defenses" report by The Project for A New American
Century.
From chapter V; "Space and Cyberspace" subsection (they also want to
control cyberspace by the way):

"In short, the unequivocal supremacy in space enjoyed by the United
States today will be increasingly at risk. As Colin Gray and John
Sheldon have written, "Space control is not an avoidable issue. It is
not an optional extra." For U.S. armed forces to continue to assert
military preeminence, control of space - defined by Space Command as
"the ability to assure access to space, freedom of operations within the
space medium, and an ability to deny others the use of space" - must be
an essential element of our military strategy. If America cannot
maintain that control, its ability to conduct global military operations
will be severely complicated, far more costly, and potentially fatally
compromised.

The complexity of space control will only grow as commercial activity
increases. American and other allied investments in space systems will
create a requirement to secure and protect these space assets; they are
already an important measure of American power. Yet it will not merely
be enough to protect friendly commercial uses of space. As Space Command
also recognizes, the United States must also have the capability to deny
America's adversaries the use of commercial space platforms for military
purposes in times of crises and conflicts. Indeed, space is likely to
become the new "international commons," where commercial and security
interests are intertwined and related. Just as Alfred Thayer Mahan wrote
about "sea-power" at the beginning of the 20th century in this sense,
American strategists will be forced to regard "space-power" in the 21st.

To ensure America's control of space in the near term, the minimum
requirements are to develop a robust capability to transport systems to
space, carry on operations once there, and service and recover space
systems as needed. As outlined by Space Command, carrying out this
program would include a mix of reuseable and expendable launch vehicles
and vehicles that can operate within space, including "space tugs to
deploy, reconstitute, replenish, refurbish, augment, and sustain" space
systems. But, over the longer term, maintaining control of space will
inevitably require the application of force both in space and from
space, including but not limited to antimissile defenses and defensive
systems capable of protecting U.S. and allied satellites; space control
cannot be sustained in any other fashion, with conventional land, sea,
or airforce, or by electronic warfare. This eventuality is already
recognized by official U.S. national space policy, which states that the
"Department of Defense shall maintain a capability to execute the
mission areas of space support, force enhancement, space control and
force application." (Emphasis added.)

In the future, it will be necessary to unite the current SPACECOM
vision for control of space to the institutional responsibilities
and interests of a separate military service.

In sum, the ability to preserve American military preeminence in the
future will rest in increasing measure on the ability to operate in
space militarily; both the requirements for effective global missile
defenses and projecting global conventional military power demand it.
Unfortunately, neither the Clinton Administration nor past U.S. defense
reviews have established a coherent policy and program for achieving
this goal.

Ends and Means of Space Control

As with defense spending more broadly, the state of U.S. "space forces"
- the systems required to ensure continued access and eventual control
of space - has deteriorated over the past decade, and few new
initiatives or programs are on the immediate horizon. The U.S. approach
to space has been one of dilatory drift. As Gen. Richard Myers,
commander-in-chief of SPACECOM, put it, "Our Cold War-era capabilities
have atrophied," even though those capabilities are still important
today. And while Space Command has a clear vision of what must be done
in space, it speaks equally clearly about "the question of resources."
As the command succinctly notes its long-range plan: "When we match the
reality of space dependence against resource trends, we find a problem."

But in addition to the problem of lack of resources, there is an
institutional problem. Indeed, some of the difficulties in maintaining
U.S. military space supremacy result from the bureaucratic "black hole"
that prevents the SPACECOM vision from gaining the support required to
carry it out. For one, U.S. military space planning remains linked to
the ups and downs of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.
America's difficulties in reducing the cost of space launches - perhaps
the single biggest hurdle to improving U.S. space capabilities overall -
result in part from the requirements and dominance of NASA programs over
the past several decades, most notably the space shuttle program.
Secondly, within the national security bureaucracy, the majority of
space investment decisions are made by the National Reconnaissance
Office and the Air Force, neither of which considers military operations
outside the earth's atmosphere as a primary mission. And there is no
question that in an era of tightened budgets, investments in
space-control capabilities have suffered for lack of institutional
support and have been squeezed out by these organization's other
priorities. Although, under the Goldwater-Nichols reforms of the
mid-1980s, the unified commanders - of which SPACECOM is one - have a
greater say in Pentagon programming and budgeting, these powers remain
secondary to the traditional "raiseand- train" powers of the separate
services.

Therefore, over the long haul, it will be necessary to unite the
essential elements of the current SPACECOM vision to the
resource-allocation and institution-building responsibilities of a
military service. In addition, it is almost certain that the conduct of
warfare in outer space will differ as much from traditional air warfare
as air warfare has from warfare at sea or on land; space warfare will
demand new organizations, operational strategies, doctrines and training
schemes. Thus, the argument to replace U.S. Space Command with U.S.
Space Forces - a separate service under the Defense Department - is
compelling. While it is conceivable that, as military space capabilities
develop, a transitory "Space Corps" under the Department of the Air
Force might make sense, it ought to be regarded as an intermediary step,
analogous to the World War II-era Army Air Corps, not to the Marine
Corps, which remains a part of the Navy Department. If space control is
an essential element for maintaining American military preeminence in
the decades to come, then it will be imperative to reorganize the
Department of Defense to ensure that its institutional structure
reflects new military realities."

Pat

In article ,
Rand Simberg wrote:

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,111160,00.html


Nitpick: Dwayne Day was on the Columbia AIB, not Challenger.

--
Kathy Rages

On Thu, 12 Feb 2004 16:28:50 -0800 (PST), in a place far, far away,
(Kathy Rages) made the phosphor on my
monitor glow in such a way as to indicate that:

In article ,
Rand Simberg wrote:

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,111160,00.html


Nitpick: Dwayne Day was on the Columbia AIB, not Challenger.

Gaaahhhh!

Thanks. I'll see if I can get it fixed.