In 2007, China destroyed one of its own satellites by
ramming it with a kinetic kill vehicle.
Security analysts speculated this was meant to send a signal of resistance
to the United States in response to the President Bush’s calls for increased US
militarization of space. This was just one of many instances demonstrating
that outer space is succumbing to the tragedy of the commons, as individual
countries exploit a common resource to the detriment of the overall group. Like the open oceans, nobody owns space, but everyone
has a stake in it. Space must be
safeguarded as a resource for humanity.
To avoid the tragedy, space must be addressed through multilateral
cooperation, not solely by individual state actors. An internationally negotiated code of conduct
for outer space would accomplish this by setting norms for the resolution of
disputes and creating a framework for determining ownership of resources.
Unfortunately, without this framework, the world is treading
down the path towards the militarization of outer space. China isn’t the only country resisting
cooperation in space. The US already uses satellites for military intelligence,
surveillance, and reconnaissance capabilities, and recently sparked
international backlash by testing a military space plane. Because space warfare is such a new concept
to policymakers and the technology is so complex, if space is further
militarized, there is a high risk of miscalculations and unintended
escalation. It would be unwise to risk
another Challenger-like accident, but this time with a weapon pointed at
China.
In addition to increasing the probability of conflict, the 2007
anti-satellite weapon test contributed to another barrier to peaceful space
development. By releasing thousands of broken
satellite pieces into orbit, it augmented the cloud of space debris. This expanding cloud is a catastrophe waiting
to happen. It is approaching a tipping
point, where it could turn into a one massive chain reaction collision. Debris resulting from one satellite collision
could crash into a satellite, creating more debris and so on. By the end of this cycle, we would have lost
the satellites that provide critical climate data, communications, and early
warnings for ICBM launches.
Between debris and militarization, outer space is at risk of
becoming unusable. This has massive
implications for our future. Coal,
natural gas, oil, and even uranium and tritium for our nuclear reactors are all
finite resources. New technologies such
as hydraulic fracturing and discoveries of deposits like those off the shore of
the North Slope in Alaska, can provide short-term solutions. But no matter how efficiently we extract resources,
the Earth will remain a sphere with a mass of 5.97×10^24 kilograms. Even if we find a way to use every last
molecule on Earth, resources will eventually run out. Some argue that alternative energy is the
solution, but it too has limits. There
is only so much space available for wind farms, solar panels, and plants. Any
sustainable plan for future energy production must rely on space in some form
or another. With the ability to use
resources beyond Earth, the opportunities for human expansion would increase
exponentially. Not only would safe
access to space allow us to grow beyond the limits of Earth’s resources, it
would create opportunities for the population itself to expand spatially beyond
Earth’s atmosphere. While currently this
may just be science fiction, the colonization of space would help ensure the
survival of humanity. It would improve our
resilience to ecological catastrophe, asteroid strikes, and interstate warfare by
not putting all of our eggs in one planetary basket.
While all these risks to humanity seem extremely long term, negotiating
a code of conduct for space does not mean giving up on short-term
solutions. We can still search for new
terrestrial ways to sustain life. The
code of conduct would reserve space as our future escape hatch if all else
fails. The human race might not be mature enough to
expand to beyond Earth yet, but we should not let this immaturity ruin the
possibility for future generations.
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