DISGRACE INTO SPACE

Space is being opened for business the war business and commercial business. Will humanity be able to prevent the armed conflict and rampant greed that has marked human history on Earth from extending into the heavens? Karl Grossman reports.

Even before man first stepped on the moon, the human race was putting together its plans for the ownership of space. The United Nations General Assembly's Outer Space Treaty, which became effective in 1967, was a giant leap in the race into space. Now ratified by most of the nations of the world, it is the basic international law on the mapped and unmapped areas beyond our planet.

'Inspired by the great prospects opening up before mankind as a result of man's entry into outer space/ declares the preamble to the Outer Space Treaty (OST), 'recognising the common interest of all mankind in the progress of the exploration and use of outer space for peaceful purposes,' the treaty goes on to state that 'outer space, including the moon and other celestial bodies, is not subject to national appropriation' and it seeks to exclude war from space.

The trouble with agreements, however, is that there's always someone who wants to move beyond them. Consequently, on 20 November 2000, 163 nations voted in the UN General Assembly for 'reaffirming' the Outer Space Treaty and specifically its provision that space be set aside for peaceful uses. Their reason? The US is ramping up its own plans for the military domination of space.

The US military wants to'control space' and 'dominate' the Earth below as explicitly stated in documents of the US Space Command and its components. The US Space Command 'coordinates the use of Army, Naval and Air Force Space Forces' and was set up in 1985, its website explains, to 'help institutionalize the use of space'. US military documents now refer to space as the 'ultimate high ground'. Huge amounts of money have been put into programmes for space warfare including development of space based laser weapons. One new US programme is the 'Space Based Laser Integrated Flight Experiment'with a'lifecycle budget'of $20 to $30 billion. One spacebased laser already undergoing tests is the Alpha high energy laser which was reported to have had its 22nd successful test firing last April.

With George W Bush as president and Richard Cheney as vicepresident, the US has a national administration committed to expanding US space military activities even further. It is insisting on prompt deployment of a missile defence system which US military documents describe as one 'layer' in an overall space military programme.

What was dubbed'Star Wars' after being unveiled by US President Ronald Reagan in 1983 has never gone away. With its enormously powerful complex of corporate and political backers and avid support of the US military it developed a momentum of its own. With the assumption of power by the Bush Cheney administration, it has received a big boost. As The Washington Post noted upon the Bush selection of Donald Rumsfeld as defence secretary, the new Pentagon chief is the 'leading proponent not only of national missile defenses, but also of US efforts to take control of space'.

To reinforce and advance the OST, in 1979 the Moon Agreement its full title: Agreement Governing the Activities of States on the Moon and Other Celestial Bodies was adopted at the UN. It restates that space be set aside 'for peaceful purposes' and begins what would be regulation of commercial uses of space. It declares 'the moon and its natural resources' as 'the common heritage of mankind', and states: 'Neither the surface nor the subsurface of the moon ... shall become property of any state ... organisation ... or ... person.'

But only 14 nations have signed on to the Moon Agreement and not the US or Russia or other nations currently considered 'space capable'. A main reason? 'The attitude is "we don't want to share",' explains Janet Michelle Cuevas, a specialist in space law and UN representative of the Global Network Against Weapons & Nuclear Power In Space.

Meanwhile, commercial space ventures are increasing and getting rather wild.

When a Russian Proton rocket, for example, lifted off carrying a module for the International Space Station last July, it was emblazoned with a giant Pizza Hut logo. 'Our sponsorship of this critical mission tells consumers around the world that we're always looking to take Pizza Hut innovation to new heights/ said Pizza Hut president Mike Rawlings. Pizza Hut, with 11, 100 stores on Earth, also plans to provide pizza pies for the station's crew.

Virginia based LunaCorp intends to land robotic vehicles on the moon beginning in 2003 for missions'funded by corporate sponsors, exclusive television contracts' among other sources. RadioShack has become the 'first corporate sponsor/ says Luna Corp, of these rovers that 'will prospect for water and prepare the way for human settlements'.

Even more alarmingly, Colorado based SpaceDev 'the world's first publicly traded commercial space exploration and development company' plans to dispatch a device it calls a 'Near Earth Asteroid Prospector' within the 'next three to five years' to Nereus, an asteroid believed rich in minerals. SpaceDev wants to declare Nereus private property and stake a claim to mining rights despite the OST and Moon Agreement.

Mining in space is a main goal of those seeking its commercial exploitation. 'Indeed, the global expansion of European technology and civilisation brought about by the terrestrial age of exploration is but a pale foreshadowing of the opportunities before us as humans move out into space/ writes John Lewis, codirector of the NASA/University of Arizona Space Engineering Research Center, in his book, Mining The Sky. Untold Riches from the Asteroids, Comets and Planets.

And although penetration of space by people and theft. machines is but a few decades old, already the space above the Earth has become contaminated. There are N now 110,000 man made objects larger than a half inch orbiting in the space above the Earth, and the situation has gotten so serious that NASA 'now replaces pitted orbiter windows after most flights' of space shuttles, notes a 1987 US National Research Council report that warns of potentially cata strophic collisions with space debris. The amount of 'space junk' has doubled since 1990 and now poses 'a navigational hazard,' says Norwegian space specialist Erik Tandberg. The US and Norway are planning a giant radar station to be called Globus 11 in Norway's Arctic specifically to better monitor orbiting debris.

'A total of over 3,000 tons of space debris surrounds the Earth today' says Dr. Alexey Yablokov, a noted biologist and president of the Centre for Russian Environmental Policy. The'rapid accumulation of debris'could 'complicate the further development of astronautics since there would be a direct threat of collision with debris fragments which travel at very high altitudes,' says Dr. Yablokov.

Among the junk now overhead are 37 nuclear powered satellites put in space by the US and former Soviet Union. The operation of the satellites is over but the radioactive fuel in them is still hot and lethal and they'll be falling back to Earth in the centuries ahead.

The use of nuclear power in space despite serious accidents involving both the US and Soviet/Russian nuclear space programmes continues. The next proposed US launch of a nuclear powered device is scheduled for 2003 when NASA plans to send a plutoniumpowered space probe called Europa to the moon of Jupiter of that name. The plutonium system is to generate electricity to power onboard instruments.

NASA claims it is necessary, that at that distance from the sun, photovoltaic solar cells 0 can't serve as a substitute (as they now do on satel M lites because of accidents in which nuclear powered satellites dropped to Earth dispersing radioactive material). Yet, also in 2003, the European Space Agency will be sending up its Rosetta space probe which will be using high efficiency solar cells instead of plutonium to produce electricity and Rosetta is to go beyond the orbit of Jupiter to rendezvous with the comet Wirtanen.

NASA!s insistence on using nuclear power in space is due, part, to its desire to coordinate its operations with the US military which regards nuclear power as necessary for the high powered weapons such as lasers it would like to deploy in space in coming years.

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As New World Vistas: Air And Space Power For The 21st Century, a 1996 US Air Force Board report, states: 'In the next two decades, new technologies will allow the fielding of space based weapons of devastating effectiveness to be used to deliver energy and mass as force projection in tactical and strategic conflict... These advances will enable lasers with reasonable mass and cost to effect very many kills.'

'If the US is allowed to move the arms race into space, there will be no return/ says Bruce Gagnon, coordinator of the Global Network Against Weapons & Nuclear Power in Space. 'We have this one chance,' he emphasises, 'this one moment in history, to stop the weaponisation of space from happening.'

Gagnon, the leader of the nine year old Global Network, based in Florida with affiliates throughout the world, adds: 'For years we polluted our lakes, rivers and oceans thinking that the solution to pollution was dilution. Today we know this was a mistake. But space is now viewed similarly that it is vast and limitless and that nothing we do in the heavens will have any consequences.