Slashdot Mirror
US Ready to put Weapons in Space
An anonymous reader writes "The Guardian reports "America has begun preparing its next military objective - space. Documents reveal that the US Air Force has for the first time adopted a doctrine to establish 'space superiority'."
If this goes ahead, it will be in violation of the 1967 Outer Space Treaty which forbids the militarization of space."
I'd like to point out that space superiority does not necessarily mean the militarization of space. Already, the presence and testing of ICBMs skirts the issue, and so, too would many other technologies.
That's not that I agree that this should be a direction we want to go, I'm just pointing out that the treaty isn't worth much. To me the millitary objective of space is right in line with the "Star Wars" ideas.
Kinetic stupidity has a new brand leader: Allen Zadr.
... and destroying what satellites would have helped in the "War Against Terror" or the invasion of Iraq?
This is another example of the military trickle-down economy. Pump billions into defense, justify it with fear ("The enemy is everywhere"), then some of that cash will flow down to the national economy.
Trolling is a art,
Seriously, though: Space was never any different than all the other areas that man has adapted to -- sooner or later it was always going to be used to fight wars. That shouldn't be vaguely shocking to anyone. People settle their disputes by killing each other (or, more accurately, sending 18 year olds as proxies to kill each other).
Peace doesn't come from treaties. It comes from the realization that war itself is almost never worth fighting.
Every year during my review, I just pray the words "slashdot.org" aren't mentioned.
Space-based assets are simultaneously very valuable and very vulnerable. In a tense international standoff (Cuban Missile Crisis style) they inject a strong "use it or lose it" incentive to go for a first strike. On balance, this is probably not a plus.
The Guardian is certainly a biased paper. Give it credit though, it doesn't hide it. I don't like it, or read it, but I do respect the quality of writing.
In truth though, is attempting to influence the result of an election in another country wrong? If the Washington Post was to print a series of anti Blair articles in the run up to the UK elections, would that be wrong? I can't see how...
Assasination - fair enough - stupid thing to print - shoddy editorial staff for not picking it up before it went to press.
Bullshit.
I think the whole "if someone tries to advance it's economy / technology / society it's a danger to us"-thinking pretty dangerious and provoking which you imply relating to the subject. In that line of thinking, the world has the right to assume the US has as only motivation world-domination and should be controlled and sumitted - or it should be globally accepted and enforced to do so.
I think we can keep recursing like this until someone returns 1
RTFA. The treaty outlaws Nuclear weapons and WMDs. So long as anything we put up there does not fall under either of those two categories we are still within the treaty. By the way, since the USSR is the only other signatory of that treaty, and they are no longer around, does that mean it is still valid?
Fly me to the moon Let me sing among those stars Let me see what spring is like On jupiter and mars
why? It makes more sense than invading another country in order to change their leadership.
Most corporate FUD is actually lies and smokescreen, intended to promote the other corporation. Most people who talk about the government in a less-than-flattering way do so because there is copious evidence that the current government is not trustworthy, does not have the interest of its people at heart, is in bed with corporate and militaristic interests, and would like nothing more than to rape our natural resources and leave the wilderness ravaged.
Now, what does someone like, say, me, gain or benefit when I talk about how bad the current administration is? Do I do so because I want political power, because I want to be president? Because I want to have the free world at my beck and call. Well, maybe. But be that as it may, the real reason is because unlike Bush, I believe in the existence of a little thing called the Future. And the future won't exist without reasoned and careful behavior. Currently, the administration is pretty reckless, I'd say, stretching resources thin, going deep into debt while trying to permanently reduce future revenues.
These don't seem like reasonable steps to me.
Any corporation that did the things that the government has been doing for the past four years would have been tossed on its collective ass by its investors a few years ago. And who are the investors in this metaphor? Well, they're, uh, us, the voters/taxpayers. Only this year, a lot of people decided that it was more important to pay attention to the PR department than what was happening with the financials, and more interested in the CEO's personality than in the overall company's statement of purpose.
Karma: Chevy Kavalierma.