Weapons in Space
by Raymond M. Coulombe

I had a lot of hope for space. The Final Frontier. A good place for humans to roam free and easy. Limitless horizons. Room to grow. The possibility of meeting sexy green skinned chicks from other planets.

Hey, I was just a kid.

Other people have dreams: people with money and power. Dreams much different than mine.

It was one thing when NASA turned out to be a huge disappointment. Turns out a big government bureaucracy acts just like a big government bureaucracy. Why was I surprised?

Then the X prize came along and rekindled a little bit of the dream. No, not the sexy green skinned chicks, but the dream of working class Schmucks maybe making it to the high frontier. I mean, if a SpaceShip One can make it without even having a flight computer, there's hope for Joe Sixpack.

Events now take a turn for the worse.

As the last vestiges of the old republic are swept away by the empire, construction of the Death Star has begun. This isn't about the movies. The US government negated the old ABM treaty and is posed to launch a new arms race in space. Space based lasers. “Rods from gods,” kinetic weapons that strike with the force of a small nuke. Looks like the first steps to a Death Star to me.

Militarily, it makes sense. Good tactics dictate control of the high ground. In the old days, control of the high ground meant building your fort on a hill. Much easier to rain down death on your foes than to rain up. It also helps to have a good view of the terrain.

Early military aviators viewed the terrain. They were scouts. Only later were planes armed. Space is going the same way. For years, satellites observed. Movements of troops, military construction, ships at sea, all were revealed to the spies in the sky. It was military, sure, but not too threatening to the world. There is a big difference between someone glancing over your fence and someone looking over your fence through the scope of a rifle.

People put up with the eye in the sky. The gun in the sky is another matter. Don't expect the US to have the only weapons up there. Many nations either have the capacity or will soon have. There won't be just one Death Star up there, but many.

Does the world need another arms race? Can the world afford another arms race? Can the planet absorb the environmental insult of space borne attack? I don't think so.

It makes theoretical sense from a military stand point, so I'm not surprised it's in the works. Disappointed, yes. One more blow against my childhood dreams for space. Perhaps cooler heads will prevail. The current missile defense shield works about as well as airport security, which is to say, hardly at all. Maybe enough people will look at the price tag, technological hurdles, and see the wisdom of keeping weapons out of space.

Maybe they'll see the wisdom of searching for sexy green skinned alien chicks.

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