The aurora created by the Starfish Prime detonation lingers over Honolulu on July 9, 1962. (Wikimedia Commons)
Give Peace a Chance—in Space -- Armin Rosen, The Atlantic
The White House Death Star petition was a joke, but the prospect of war in outer space is anything but.
"The wars of the future will not be fought on the battlefield or at sea," a military academy commandant voiced by Willem Dafoe intones toward the end of a now-classic 1997 episode of The Simpsons. "They will be fought in space, or possibly on top of a very tall mountain." This was meant as a joke, but the latter half of that statement would soon prove eerily prescient when India and Pakistan battled over Kashmir's Siachen glacier -- a strategically irrelevant ice field sitting over 18,000 feet above sea level -- during the Kargil War in 1999. For now, the prospect of military conflict in outer space still resides in the realm of dystopia or absurdity, to the point that a White House petition demanding the construction of a Star Wars-style "Death Star" could be treated as a harmless prank. In rejecting the petition this week, the White House rightly wondered why a debt-strapped U.S. government would spend $850 quadrillion on a weapons system "with a fundamental flaw that can be exploited by a one-man starship." Thankfully, the prospect of an orbital space-to-earth battlestation doesn't even need to be treated seriously.
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My Comment: As if we have the money to spend on space based weapon systems .... but military strategists are doing what they are suppose to do which is to contemplate such a future. It is the politicians ... both here and abroad .... who must make sure that it does not happen.
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