Space Empires

In article k.net,
"Mark R. Whittington" wrote:

http://www.washtimes.com/commentary/...2405-1445r.htm

I'm afraid I'd have to take issue with most of Professor Suri's thesis
in this article. He uses the, by now common, misapplication of the word
"empire". Empires are conquered by military violence from the lands of
other settled, pastoral, or hunter-gatherer people. The building of
transportation nodes and networks between points in Space does not
amount to anything like real empire, any more than a Nordstrom's trading
network or a CERN scientific world wide web network on Earth does. I
could wish this misuse wasn't so widespread.

The Professor also conflates government-sponsored activity with all the
possible expansion into Space, at least by implication. Networks of
enormous industrial productivity can exist without massive governent
subsidy, as they do every day here on Earth. I consider it a good thing
that the present vision Bush propounded did not start with a great flush
of government money. There is every reason to believe that such funds
would simply reinforce the government hierarchies that desire to control
civilian access to Space as a means to make their own structures more
stable. Such behavior is particularly useless without a sustained
consensus for large political funding of spaceflight, which, not in
existence today, must be built.

Lastly, the Professor assumes by implication that political consensus
will be immmediately forthcoming for the funding for military
spaceflight, however useful to the US. This consensus also is not in
existence today. Historically, this has been rare in the high technology
military field over the decades of time that will be needed to make a
"Space Fleet" of any sort a dominating military presence. The major
example history has is the world wide Naval powers, built between 1600
and 1950.

In the concluding chapter of N.A.M. Rodger's "The Safeguard of the Sea"
he notes that armies of the new nation states were expensive, but not
nearly as much as Naval Power over the long term. He notes that only
those nations with the broadest current political participation were
able to sustain a pro-naval consensus. Many nations had the wealth and
the technology to build such Navies. Only 3 nations did so with the
sustained political consensus needed to build the logistical, technical
and operational activities that are vital to such endeavors. They were
first, the Netherlands, then Britain, and then the United States.

It took time to build such consensus, except where the Netherlands were
virtually founded by the "sea-beggars", and it proved very difficult to
sustain there in the face of other priorities. In Britain going ahead
with the spending for a Navy without the supporting consensus for its
proper employment helped lead to Civil War. After the struggle with the
Stuarts was finally settled, the pro-naval consensus was then stable for
220 years. In the US that consensus grew slowly and was only realized by
1900, helped by the American Civil War and other conflicts. Since then
it has proved stable where the other 2 nation's pro-naval consensus has
lapsed.

Sustained Space Power, in any military form, more expensive per unit
than any naval forces, is likely to require an even broader political
consensus than has been the case for Naval Power. It will have to be
employed in a way that does not threaten that consensus, once built, and
will thereby have its own limitations. That doesn't mean it won't grow
in usefullness over the years. It does mean it will have to be used to
encourage the commercial and technical and political networks that
support it, rather than discrediting its use with the people making up
so many of those netwrorks.

Professor Suri's article avoids all of this, in favor of superficial
analogies to large military/political hierarcies out of the agrarian
past, in order to describe what must be advanced industrial networks. It
is insuficient as a starting point for analysis of military endeavor in
Space, much less the commercial growth that should dwarf the military.

Regards,

Tom Billings

--
Oregon L-5 Society

http://www.oregonl5.org/

"jacob navia" wrote in message ...

Happily for the rest of us, the american empire has no money
to finance anything even remotely like a space empire.
...

The U.S. has plenty of money. It outspends the world on
space - in 2001, the U.S. space budget was five times
larger than the second largest space budget (that of
Europe).

...
What the american empire is interested in is not space exploration
but space warfare.

Why would the U.S. want space warfare? It has the
largest investment in space, in terms of Department of
Defense satellites, which means it would also have the
most to lose if a space war were to occur.

The NASA budget is cut, the civilian space
program is destroyed, and the pentagon gets the rests of it.


The Pentagon doesn't need "the rest of it". The U.S.
Department of Defense space budget has outpaced NASA's budget
pretty regularly since the early 1980s.

- Ed Kyle

(ed kyle) wrote in message . com...
Why would the U.S. want space warfare? It has the
largest investment in space, in terms of Department of
Defense satellites, which means it would also have the
most to lose if a space war were to occur.

Close, but exactly wrong. The US has the largest defense
and non defense related on orbit space infrastructure.
Which certainly means it has more targets available than
other countries. But it also means that it can more
afford a loss of a single space asset. In contrast,
other nations have "less to lose" in theory, except
what they do have is in fewer individual assets, so
losing one could be monumental. For example, let's say
China wants to make a dent in American spy sats, or at
least wants to have that option. It will have to first
develop a reliable ability to destroy or disable such
satellites and then will have to scale up production
to what would be necessary to take out a significant
portion of America's spy satellite fleet. In contrast,
if America wants to make a dent in Chinese spysats, or
at least wants to have that option, it doesn't have to
go as far. It only need develop the capability and
produce and field enough systems to take out China's
small number of satellites. An anti-satellite system
capable of taking out only two or three satellites
would be disasterous for China in the hands of its
enemies, but would only be a major difficulty, though
not a disaster, for the US in the hands of its
enemies.

Even the GPS system is robust against the loss of a
small number of satellites. So we start from a
situation where exactly equivalent weapon systems are
quite differently potent depending on whether they're
in the hands of the US or its enemies. That then
leads to a situation where it takes vastly more
resources for the US's enemies to develop systems
which have the same ability to damage combined US
space assets as the US's capabilities to damage
theirs. At this point alone it would make it
worthwhile for the US to go ahead and develop robust
anti-satellite capabilities, because it has a
tremendous advantage. But then you add in the
differences in GDP and technological expertise and
the advantage grows even more.

In short, the US can get much more bang for their
buck in anti-satellite systems than any other
country and has many more bucks to spend than any
other country.


An interesting counterpoint would be anti-satellite
systems during the Cold War (which, by the way,
were developed and tested by both the US and the
USSR). During the Cold War the US had a more
robust orbital infrastructure but had fewer
satellites (since the Soviets prefered to make
simpler, shorter lived satellites and launch more
of them more often, while the Americans prefered
fewer, more sophisticated, capable, and longer lived
satellites launched less often). This made
America's orbital infrastructure more vulnerable than
the USSR's, because America had more eggs in fewer
baskets, and less ability to send up replacements
quickly. In that case America was doubly at a
disadvantage, because Russian anti-satellite weapons
were cheaper (including, especially, the launch)
than ours. It's like a demolition derby where one
team has 5 new BMWs and the other team has 15 second
hand Yugos. The first team can't afford to take out
Yugos by sacrificing BMWs (and, in fact, the US
anti-satellite systems of the cold war were not
satellite based), wheareas the second team can afford
to send 2 or 3 Yugos against a BMW and still be ahead.
Moreover, even in a tie where both teams demolished
the entirety of the other team's cars the second team
would be ahead because their fleet cost less and is
easier to replace. The only saving grace for the
first team would be if they were rich enough so that,
proportionally, their fleet cost the same as or less
than the second team's (which is about how it was
during the Cold War). Indeed, it seemed to make a lot
more sense during the Cold War for the Soviets to
put more effort into anti-satellite systems, which is
precisely what happened. Though things have changed
since then.

lid (John Savard) wrote in message ...
There
will be many analogies between settlement of Mars and of the New
World, but the difficulty of space travel should mean that it will be
a long time before there are any issues related to the use of
resources in space that can't be settled peacefully and amicably.

Yes, it will be still quite a long time before a Free Mars movement started.

John Savard
http://home.ecn.ab.ca/~jsavard/index.html

Happily for the rest of us, the american empire has no money
to finance anything even remotely like a space empire.

They have vastly more money for doing so than anyone else, so I presume
you're ruling out anyone else even so much as fantasizing of such?


Empty words do not cost anything. Bush hasl not increased
NASA budget, and the next president will have to pay
back the huge deficits left by Bush.

You seem to have forgotten that we "paid off the huge deficits" left by
Reagan and did so while not only expanding and solidifying our hard and soft
power around the globe but we left then-fast-closing competitors in the dust
in the process. But, please, make erroneous assumptions all you like. Hey,
better yet, read another Emanuel Todd piece, it will warm your heart and
tell you the comforting lies you need to hear.


What the american empire is interested in is not space exploration
but space warfare.

How very French of you.

In short, the US can get much more bang for their
buck in anti-satellite systems than any other
country and has many more bucks to spend than any
other country.

But wait, the French guy just told us the US has no money for such things.
Are you telling me he's been mislead by Europhile reporting and writing?

The problem is, the U.S.A. is at the mercy of the lenders, and if the
lenders wished for the U.S.A. or any other country in debt (think
China) to build a space empire with its own space fleet.

Oh for crying out loud. Take a few basic economics courses and get back
with me with your retraction of this ignorance.

(And, let me guess, at the top of all these various lenders are those damned
Jews?)

Slippage in defense will almost inevitably follow.

Ah, of course. It's imminent decline! I swear it's the early 1990s all
over again. No, wait, I mean it's the early-to-mid 80s all over again. No,
wait, I mean it's the early-to-mid 70s all over again. No, wait ...

On Sat, 6 Mar 2004 16:07:52 -0600, in a place far, far away, "t_mark"
made the phosphor on my monitor glow in such a way as
to indicate that:

(And, let me guess, at the top of all these various lenders are those damned
Jews?)

Wasn't that obvious?

(Christopher M. Jones) wrote

For example, let's say
China wants to make a dent in American spy sats, or at
least wants to have that option. It will have to first
develop a reliable ability to destroy or disable such
satellites and then will have to scale up production
to what would be necessary to take out a significant
portion of America's spy satellite fleet.

For the subset of "spy satellite" that means optical/IR and
radar imagers, the fleet is:

- Three O/IR, one quite elderly, the newest apparently suffering
some significant malfunction. All can be, and are, easily tracked.

- Three radar, one very elderly and reportedly suffering
malfunctions back in the '90s. All can be, and are, easily
tracked.

- Possibly one or two kinda-stealthy O/IR. The more certain one,
if it's still in orbit, is very elderly.

None of these are easily replaceable until FIA comes along and gets
working.

So six successful engagements, maybe eight if the other side has
figured out how to spot the two kinda-stealthy-sats, would deprive
the US of all or most its front-line imagers. Even if two were
left, orbital mechanics, geometry, and bandwidth severly limit how
useful they could be in a wartime situation. Of course, there are
the commercial and foreign alternates to fill in the gap if not
attacked themselves.

How many shots per successful engagement it would take is an
interesting question -- I tend to think it's in the single-digits,
so we're talking about 10 shots 100 .

Which is why I continue to be interested in the KT-1. If the PRC
starts ramping up DF-31 production and diverts a significant number
to the KT-1 or similar version, it would be very interesting indeed.