Space, the Final Frontier… Next War Zone

 

Posted by The Irish Sun, December 23, 2021

“Time to let the American broomstick fly and hear the sounds of freedom.”                                                            SpaceX Official as Russia threatened to stop supplying rocket engines to U.S. companies, notably, Northrop Grumman and United Launch Alliance

The shared global space mission, including both Russian and American space travelers, is scheduled to bring astronauts back to earth on March 30th. A Soyuz capsule will remove these residents from the International Space Station and return them to earth… in Kazakhstan, a Russia-friendly nation from which many Russian space missions are launched. A bit touchy given the explosive situation between NATO powers and Russia over Ukraine. American Astronaut, Mark Vande Hei, “who on Tuesday [3/15 broke] the U.S. single spaceflight record of 340 days — is due to leave with two Russians… The astronaut and flight engineer will have logged 355 days in space by then, setting a U.S. record. The world record of 438 continuous days in space belong[ed] to Russia.” Marcia Dunn, Associated Press, March 15th. 

To make matters worse, Russian Space Agency’s hard-line leader, Dmitry Rogozin, is a major outspoken champion of brutal autocrat Vladimir Putin. The relations on board the space station are thus less than cordial, and the future of that joint space program is very much in jeopardy for obvious reasons. “Vande Hei , 55, a retired Army colonel, moved into the space station last April, launching on a Soyuz from Kazakhstan with Pyotr Dubrov and another Russian. He and Dubrov stayed twice as long as usual to accommodate a Russian film crew that visited in October.

“As the situation 260 miles below intensified last month, Vande Hei acknowledged that he was avoiding conversations about Ukraine with Dubrov and Anton Shkaplerov, their Russian commander. Three more Russians [blasted] off Friday [3/18] from Kazakhstan to replace them… ‘We haven’t talked about that too much. I’m not sure we really want to go there,’ Vande Hei told a TV interviewer in mid-February… Space station operations continue as always — in orbit and on Earth, according to NASA… ‘It would be a sad day for international operations if we can’t continue to peacefully operate in space,’ said NASA human spaceflight chief Kathy Lueders, noting that it would be ‘very difficult’ to go it alone…

“Besides threatening to pull out of the space station and drop it on the U.S., Europe or elsewhere, Rogozin had the flags of other countries covered on a Soyuz rocket awaiting liftoff with internet satellites earlier this month. The launch was called off after the customer, London-based OneWeb, refused his demands that the satellites not be used for military purposes and that the British government halt its financial backing.

“The European Space Agency also is reeling. After missing a 2020 launch deadline for its Mars rover — a joint European-Russian effort — the project was on track for a September liftoff from Kazakhstan. Now it’s probably off until 2024, the next opportunity for Earth and Mars to be properly aligned. And Russia has pulled its staff out of the French-run launch site in South America, suspending Soyuz launches of European satellites.

“All this comes on top of the Russian government’s anti-satellite missile test in November that added countless pieces of junk to the debris already encircling Earth and put the space station’s four Americans, two Russians and one German on alert for days.” AP. Russia’s commitment to the International Space Station program expires in 2024, but as our “NASA astronaut caught a ride back to Earth on Wednesday [3/30] after a U.S. record 355 days at the International Space Station, returning with two cosmonauts in a Russian capsule to a world torn apart by war .

“[American] Mark Vande Hei landed in a Soyuz capsule in Kazakhstan alongside the Russian Space Agency’s Pyotr Dubrov, who also spent the last year in space, and Anton Shkaplerov. Wind blew the capsule onto its side after touchdown, and the trio emerged into the late afternoon sun one by one… Despite escalating tensions between the U.S. and Russia over the war in Ukraine, Vande Hei’s return followed customary procedures.” Associated Press, March 31st. Is that space program over? Can this cooperation find a path to continue? Or is amped-up militarization of space the next big step?

With America’s new “Space Force,” under the aegis of the US Air Force, it is equally clear that space offers so many military opportunities to those nations able to access orbital flight. Beams of lasers, like the stuff of our own “Star Wars” defense strategy, could hit ground targets or disable nearby satellites, tanking GPS systems and weather tracking ability with devastating results. Add the damage to communications and spy satellites, the bad gets so much worse. The ability to launch targeted rockets and missiles, perhaps with nuclear warheads, could also enable a massive electro-magnetic pulse that would destroy just about every form of electronics within its targeted area. 

“EMPs, or electromagnetic pulses, are intense bursts of electromagnetic energy that can be utilized to damage electronics. Man-made nuclear EMPS are impressive weapons of war that are sparingly used due to their highly destructive nature... Man-made EMPs are generally created through nuclear explosions… Essentially, these weapons emit a pulse that damages or destroys the electronic systems in an object due to damaging current and voltage surges.” InterestingEngineering.com 12/29/19. Computers and cars would be damaged beyond repair. Credit cards? Gasoline pumps? Telecommunications? The Internet? Our entire financial system? 

“Jeffrey Manber, now with the private Voyager Space company, helped forge U.S. and Russian ties in the mid-1990s, with the first piece of the space station launching in 1998. He sees the outpost as ‘one of the final holdouts of collaboration’ between the countries. But, he added, ‘there is no going back if the partnership is ended and the result is a premature ending of the ISS program.’” AP. I suspect that, indeed, there is no going back.

Regardless of the outcome of the Ukrainian invasion, Russia has brought a very long-term era of hardship and isolation, as the world’s number one villain, to itself to its people. “‘Russia is done,’ said New School political scientist Nina Khrushcheva, whose great-grandfather was Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev, an ethnic Russian whose rise through the communist ranks mostly took place in Ukraine.” Alexander Nazaryan, reporting for the March 14th Yahoo!News. A villain with impaired financial resources but able to reach into space with a wide array of weapons? 

I’m Peter Dekom, and the world faces a renewed focus on a highly militarized, exceptionally dangerous, escalation in orbital space as a major area of probable global conflict.