New Nuclear Danger

COMMISSIONED BY Congress, John Collins’s 1989 book Military Space Forces: The Next 50 Years, was one of the earliest studies to explore in depth the notion of fighting a war from space and in space. Collins, a senior specialist in national defense at the Library of Congress, was funded by the air force association and the association of the U.S. army, which meant that his book had a particular point of view. Endorsed by prominent members of Congress, including John Glenn and John Kasich, the book described the possibilities and problems associated with space warfare. Other endorsees included Senator Sam Nunn, chairman of the Senate armed services committee, who said, “Space, a distinctive military medium, deserves a new school of thought. This book will be an indispensable starting point,” and former Representative Les Aspin, later secretary of defense for President Bill Clinton, who said, “No other military space study puts all the pieces of the puzzle together.”

Among other topics, Collins discusses the fact that the moon in particular is rich in many natural resources that could be mined and brought back to earth for economic returns. He says that parties “that hope to satisfy economic interests in space must maintain ready access to resources on the moon and beyond, despite opposition if necessary, and perhaps deny access to competitors who seek monopolies.” He warns, however, that rival forces may lie in wait to hijack shipments on return from the moon. Obviously, if America invests huge capital in mining the moon, it must then defend its investments. Antisatellite warfare is analyzed.

Collins’s thinking is dangerous, advocating “soft kill” weapons that penetrate target surfaces without impairing them, and that can selectively disorient, damage, or destroy human beings as well as damage sensitive equipment within satellites or space stations. He also suggests jamming communication systems, spray-painting satellite camera lenses, focusing blinding light onto laser reflectors, or the surreptitious introduction of foreign objects into booster fuel of enemy rockets, and he discusses the merits of laser-beam weapons, and of particle beam weapons consisting of highly energetic protons, neutrons, electrons, or hydrogen atoms.

He talks of the use of nuclear weapons in space and of the efficacy of various forms of nuclear radiation, which, he says, is unimpeded because there is no atmosphere in space, and could therefore cover much more space volume than if used in the atmosphere near the earth’s surface. It would work especially well against targets in low space orbit. However, he concedes that nuclear radiation cannot distinguish friend from foe. Electromagnetic pulse from nuclear explosions could “wound” users as well as the intended victims.

Collins explores war on the moon, saying that strike forces there could use the full range of offensive maneuvers that are now used on earth. Space mines could be easily positioned. He describes how space-based “civilian” vehicles could be used surreptitiously for military activities. He says that lasers, sensors, and telecommunications devices can be concealed within satellites that appear perfectly harmless. Weapons could “piggyback” on satellites that are ostensibly for reconnaissance and surveillance.

He is particularly keen on biological and chemical warfare in space, saying that self-contained biospheres like a space station offer a “superlative” environment for these sort of attacks because they rely on a closed-circuit life-support system that continually recirculates air and water. Clandestine agents could dispense into space stations lethal or incapacitating chemical or biological agents, which—because they are colorless and odorless—are impossible to spot before symptoms appear.

Collins advocates the use of psychological operations (psyops). These techniques of psychological warfare would be used to control elitist and popular opinion as nonlethal weapons systems, or to convince rivals that it would be useless to start or to continue military space operations. Collins says that these psyop maneuvers would “deprive opponents of freedom of action, while preserving it for oneself,” and advocates using psyop propaganda to spread subversive ideas, including the futility of space for the achievement of military superiority, the perils to world peace by militarizing space, and the waste of global resources better spent on people than on a fruitless arms race. He says that U.S. superiority in space “could culminate in bloodless total victory, if lagging powers could neither cope nor catch up technologically.”

During the sixties and seventies, the army, navy, and air force came to rely upon advanced and expanded space technologies in communications, meteorology, geodesy, navigation, and reconnaissance. The military use of space supported strategic deterrence by providing treaty verification, arms control, and early-warning systems of impending nuclear attack. In 1985 the Joint Chiefs of Staff officially institutionalized the military use of space by establishing a new unified command called the U.S. space command, whose motto is Master of Space. During Operation Desert Storm in the Persian Gulf in 1991, military space operations were used to produce what is called a “multiplier” effect, which considerably enhanced communications, navigation, and targeting.

The U.S. space command then took on more responsibilities. Composed of three active elements—the United States army space command, the fourteenth air force, and the naval space command—the U.S. command’s mission statement calls for it to “integrate space forces into war-fighting capabilities across the full spectrum of conflict,” in addition to “dominating the space dimension of military operations to protect U.S. interests and investment,” as previously noted.

In 1996 the space command published a pamphlet called “Vision for 2020” in which it overtly enunciated its goals of war in space.⁶ In 1998 the space command expanded the original 1996 plans in a comprehensive 100-page document, “The Long Range Plan” (LRP), written with the cooperation of seventy-five military corporations, including Boeing, Aerojet, Hughes Space, Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, Sparta Corp, TRW, and Vista Technologies. During the year 2000, a coalition of aerospace corporations engaged in a campaign called “declaration of space leadership,” meant to persuade their congressional allies to introduce the idea of the militarization of space in the form of a House resolution. The declaration calls for funding of “defensive” systems and NASA at levels that “guarantee American leadership in the exploration of space.”

The aerospace corporations produced rafts of propaganda designed specifically to convince American children that everything that happens in space is exciting and must be supported, while NASA—working closely with the U.S. space command—has designed a program to reach every science teacher in the U.S. with the efficacy of their space message. The aim is to program children to believe that a large portion of the U.S. national treasure should be spent on Mars exploration, and that war in space is inevitable.⁷

The long range plan opens by stating that the military must guard against allowing its dependency on space to become a vulnerability and thus must develop an ability to “deny” others (the enemy) the use of space. The way a nation makes wealth, it proclaims, is the way it makes war. According to the plan, the time has come for national policy-makers to understand that space is now the center of gravity for both the department of defense and for the nation—exactly the tack that the Bush administration is adopting.

The plan sets out five basic goals:

1. To assure the means to get to space and to operate once there

2. To surveil the region to achieve and to maintain situational understanding

3. To protect America’s critical space systems from hostile action

4. To prevent unauthorized access to, and exploitation of U.S. and allied space systems

5. To negate hostile space systems that place U.S. and allied systems at risk

U.S. space command will observe “high interest areas” on the earth from space so the military will have “complete awareness in peace, crisis, or war.” The plan is to defend America against ballistic and cruise missile attacks from an enemy—aka, Star Wars. The space command will also “hold at risk” a finite number of “high value” earth targets with near-instantaneous force application—i.e., the ability to kill from space. The long term plan continues:

One of the long acknowledged and commonly understood advantages of space-based platforms is no restriction or country clearances to overfly a nation from space. We expect this advantage to endure. . . . Achieving space superiority during conflicts will be critical to the U.S. success on the battlefield.

The LRP, however, does acknowledge that there could be problems: “At present, the notion of weapons in space is not consistent with U.S. national policy. Planning for this possibility is the purpose of this long range plan should our civilian leadership later decide that the application of force from space is in our national interest.” (Is the Bush administration this civilian leadership?)

The long range plan envisions an end state: “By 2020, a robust and fully integrated suite of space and terrestrial capabilities will provide dominant battlespace awareness enabling on-demand targeting and engagement of all ballistic and cruise missiles; and if directed by the National Command Authority [the President] the ability to identify, track and hold at risk designated high value terrestrial targets.” One of the space command members, retired General Ronald R. Fogleman, former chief of staff of the air force and a member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said, “I think that space, in and of itself, is going to be very quickly recognized as a fourth dimension of warfare.”

The long range plan gives an indication of how the military elite in U.S. society view the world and their place in it:

• The United States will remain a global power and exert global leadership.

• It is unlikely that the United States will face a global military peer competitor through 2020.

• The United States won’t always be able to forward base its forces (fight wars in other people’s territory).

• Widespread communications will highlight disparities in resources and quality of life—contributing to unrest in developing countries.

• The global economy will continue to become more interdependent. Economic alliances, as well as the growth and influence of multinational corporations, will blur security agreements.

• The gap between the “have” and “have-not” nations will widen—creating regional unrest.

• The United States will remain the only nation able to project power globally.⁸

At the start of the twenty-first century, for the first time since the air force was created in 1947, there is talk of creating a specific new service within the Pentagon (even though the established Pentagon services ruthlessly guard their domains and are fiercely resistant to change). First proposed by General Ronald Fogleman when he and his staff concluded that the air force should evolve into a space and air force, the service would be quite different from the space command, which is not an official arm of the Pentagon.

The idea gained ground after the Gulf conflict and the Kosovo war, in which use of space was critical. The Pentagon’s GPS satellite constellation guided precision bombs to their targets in bad weather. Spy satellites monitored Serbian troop movements and intercepted conversations among top officials. And satellites tracked the impact point of thousands of NATO bombs (though they did not count the number of people killed or injured). This kind of space-controlled war is easier for U.S. soldiers to handle psychologically because it means long-distance killing, eliminating the trauma of close-up death. In a statement issued on June 17, 1999, the space command proclaimed that “any questions about the role or effectiveness of the use of space for military operations have been answered by NATO’s Operation Allied Force in Kosovo.” ⁹

Republican Senator Bob Smith of New Hampshire enthusiastically supports the concept of a space and air force service, contending that the air force, which controls most of the military’s space assets under the space command, spends too much time on aircraft and not enough time on spacecraft. A thirteen-member congressional panel has been established to examine all aspects of how a space force would operate.¹⁰

The air force organization magazine reported on an air force association conference in February 2000, at which General Michael Ryan pronounced that the military implications of the increased use of space systems are immense. He supported the concepts of the space command, noting that the U.S. must be able to control space when need be, as it controls the atmosphere. Space and air are not separate domains for the air force; they are two parts of the same whole, as closely related as the oceans and seas, he said. “We should think of the aerospace domain as a seamless volume from which we provide military capabilities in support of national security,” he continued. For instance, the Kosovo “effort” connected forty different locations in fifteen countries using a variety of military and civilian lines and satellites, and many new ones were established. We worked over 44,000 spectrum requests, some terrestrial, some atmospheric, some for space systems, and, as you may know, these are very gnarly issues with our host countries,” he told his audience. He added that partnerships with industry were very important. “We are on a journey, combining and evolving aerospace competencies into a full-spectrum aerospace force.” ¹¹ This cyberspace technology is being used just as effectively in the Afghanistan war, and here again the equipment fails to monitor the number and variety of civilian casualties, but was used only to locate “targets” and to guide the missiles, planes, and bombs.

The military is muscling into cyberspace territory that has become an essential ingredient for the daily lives of millions of people—cell phones, the internet, weather predictions, traffic control and monitoring, and accurate locating mechanisms for ships and terrestrial events via the GPS satellite systems. International currency and stability are dependent upon space. Trillions of dollars are transferred with a flick of the finger through cyberspace. Business and international globalization could not function without space.

Without a distinct separation between the military and civilian life, agendas become blurred, as was demonstrated recently by a project designed to use the space shuttle for a mission to map the earth’s topology. On January 31, 2000, the space shuttle Endeavor took off from Cape Canaveral on a secret military mission: an eleven-day journey to obtain high resolution, three-dimensional maps for 80 percent of the earth’s surface. The Pentagon gave NASA 200 million dollars for the shuttle flight, and most of these high-resolution maps will be classified, under military control, but the American people were not told that this was a military expedition. Instead, it was billed simply as a NASA earth topology mapping mission in the Pentagon-funded Global 3-D Mapping Mission.

While the maps may indeed provide better global mapping, they will also increase the ability of the Pentagon to identify and hit targets virtually anywhere on the planet using space technology. These pictures are designed to provide the military not only with the location, but the precise height of every tree, hill, and mountaintop, the depth of every ditch, valley, and canyon in the mapped area. As John Pike, former space policy chief at the Federation of American Scientists in Washington said, “Smart weapons need smart maps, and right now the military does not have smart maps.”¹² Thus, under the guise of NASA exploration, the Pentagon has developed new technology that will enhance its ability to kill people or destroy property with extraordinary precision.

This detailed mapping by NASA has been enhanced by an experimental satellite launched in September 2000 from Kirtland Air Force Base in New Mexico. The satellite carries a hyperspectral imaging instrument that uses hundreds of very narrow wavelength bands to “see” reflected energy from objects on the ground. Military questions such as, Is this field too muddy for a tank assault? Are breaking waves too high for an amphibious landing? What is the natural foliage? Am I looking at a distant parking lot or a grassy playground? Is this an armored personnel carrier or a school bus? may now be satisfactorily answered.¹³ Thus, although it was initially established in 1958 for “peaceful” space exploration, NASA is becoming progressively militarized.¹⁴

In another example of the militarization of the civilian sector, the air force decided to expand its space-lift partnership between commercial industry and the federal government. Because space launches are almost prohibitively expensive, a White House interagency working group initiated a report titled “Future Management and Use of U.S. Space Launch Bases and Ranges,” to explore the cooperation of the department of defense and the civilian sector in space. Encouraging this partnership, Dr. Neal Lane, assistant to President Clinton for science and technology, said that “U.S. commercial launch rates have more than tripled since the early 1990s and now make up about 40 percent of the launch manifest at Vandenberg Air Force Base, California, and Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Florida.” Proceeding apace, the air force is putting mechanisms in place to benefit both the government and the private sector, in order to maximize the effectiveness of everyone’s investment.¹⁵ So once again, the lines are becoming blurred.

The space command has recently conducted a range of exercises to demonstrate the supposed need to expand the scope of their program. On July 10, 2000, for example, an annual joint warrior interoperability demonstration (JWID) took place at Peterson Air Force Base in Colorado, during which industry and government joined forces to demonstrate that earth-bound war-fighters could be supported by integrating space forces and space-derived information with land, air, and sea forces. During this exercise, demonstrations were conducted at many locations around the world, including Cheyenne Mountain Operations Center near Colorado Springs; the U.S. Pacific Command at Camp Smith, Hawaii; and the U.S. Joint Forces Command in Norfolk, Virginia. Facilities in many NATO nations were included as well as U.S. bases in Australia and New Zealand.

As Air Force General Ralph E. Eberhart, commander in chief of the space command said, “It’s clear this reliance on space will continue to grow. Traditionally we’ve talked about space as a combat multiplier in a combat support role. . . . However, now space has become much more basic and intrinsic than just a force multiplier. Space is a prerequisite. It’s not a luxury any more; it’s a requirement for conducting military operations. Space has proven itself vital to our national interests.”¹⁶

Meanwhile, the air force announced on September 8, 2000, that their aerospace operations center (AOC) at Hurlburt Field in Florida had become an official weapons system. The AOC is essentially a forward-deployed war room described as “light, lean, and lethal.” During an exercise on September 15, 2000, which assessed air force expeditionary forces using new technologies and capabilities in a simulated war-fighting environment, the AOC was the hub for all the information coming in from combined live-fly forces, models, simulations, and technology insertions at eleven different sites across the U.S. Information from space played a major role in this exercise.¹⁷ According to Air Force Chief of Staff General Michael E. Ryan, the AOC will be the eyes, ears, hands, and legs of the commander during a real war operation.

And at Fort Bliss, Texas, a simulated military exercise called Roving Sands 2000 took place, again utilizing cyberspace for coordination. Using sophisticated computerized systems, military teams from different locations in the U.S. engaged in separate missions supporting an overall military objective. Not only was the battlefield a simulated target area, all the missile systems and other tools of engagement were also simulated so that smaller numbers of troops could command a greater range of territory.¹⁸

• The Space-Based Laser Demonstrator, the first step in space-based weaponry, is currently being developed by Lockheed Martin, TRW, Boeing, the U.S. Air Force, and the Ballistic Missile Defense Organization.

• The Alpha High-Energy Laser is the second space-based laser under development. Also constructed by TRW, it underwent its twenty-second successful test firing in April 2000. The success of this test was trumpeted by Space Daily as “a significant step forward in the nation’s disciplined maturation of the technology required to deploy the Space-Based Laser Integrated Flight Experiment.”¹⁹^, ²⁰

The military excitement over and the moral implications of these weapons are reflected in a quote from a 1996 air force board report:

In the next two decades, new technologies will allow the fielding of space-based weapons of devastating effectiveness to be used to deliver energy and mass as force projection [read killing] in tactical and strategic conflict. These advances will enable lasers with reasonable mass and cost to affect very many kills. This can be done rapidly, continuously and with surgical precision, minimizing exposure of friendly forces. The technologies exist or can be developed in this time period.

(There is dissent. Mike Moore, the former editor of the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, wrote in 1999: “The notion that the United States—or any country—might actually place weapons in space, as envisioned by the U.S. Space Command, is so repugnant that the United States ought to clearly repudiate it. Better yet, it should push to amend the Outer Space Treaty so as to definitively prohibit all weapons in space, not just weapons of mass destruction.”²² This attitude is reflected by the international community who repeatedly vote at the UN to endorse the Outer Space Treaty prohibiting the militarization of space. The U.S. consistently abstains.)

The air force is also in the process of developing a plane designed to perform reconnaissance, space control, and strike missions from orbit. Called an aerospace operations vehicle (AOV), it is a two-stage-to-orbit vehicle with a reusable booster. It has a “mission specific” upper stage, which is based upon Lockheed Martin’s X-33 reusable launch vehicle technology demonstrator. Boeing is also involved in the development of the plane, and full-scale development is projected within three years.

The most contentious part of the plane is the upper stage, or common aero vehicle (CAV), a lifting-body-boost-glide vehicle that is designed for immediate attack on earth targets. So although the space plane is not technically an “in-orbit” weapon, and thus avoids Clinton’s ban on these, it is a “strike” system that violates the belief—and indeed the UN Outer Space Convention—that space should be weapons-free.²³

A whole other area of space-based weapons development involves building and protecting satellites, as well as potentially destroying those of other nations. (The Pentagon’s term for satellite destruction is “Navigation Warfare” or “NavWar”.) Because satellites have become essential to commercial, scientific, and national security services, the United States believes that it must control all satellite use. Satellites have no built-in protective mechanisms and are extremely vulnerable to attack, but until recently, no one thought to protect them. As Allen Thomson, a retired CIA analyst, said, attack on a satellite would be like an act of war.

Yet lasers can readily destroy satellites. So can something as simple as buckshot introduced into low-earth orbit where the satellites function. Computer hackers can interrupt signals sent between satellites and their ground operators. And commandos can attack ground stations that serve as control centers or relay points for data. NASA and the air force are also building a space maneuverable vehicle (SMV). Billed as giving the air force a new flexibility in space operations, the SMV has antisatellite applications as well. Other methods of satellite destruction—many of which rely on cyber technology—are in development. An order from the National Security Command Authority in 1999, backed by President Clinton and his secretary of defense, William Cohen, recently instructed the military to gear up to wage cyberwar. Cyberwar involves attacking satellites and infecting them with virus-like systems rendering them inoperable. To this end, Lieutenant General Edward Anderson, deputy commander in chief at the U.S. space command, was assigned the task of creating cyberwar strategies, including massive “denial-of-service” assaults that can be unleashed by launching crippling viruses called trojan horses, and jamming the enemy’s computer systems with electronic radio-frequency interference.²⁴

Because the Pentagon has been planning antisatellite warfare, it is intensely aware that its own satellites are at risk. Indeed, so vulnerable is America’s satellite program that her present critical advantage in warfare could be destroyed if her GPS system was damaged. Private satellites now used for military communications are also vulnerable. For instance, the Iridium satellite constellation could be irreparably damaged if just one receiving building on the ground were destroyed. Signals from GPS satellites travel like radio waves and are available to anyone with a receiver. It is thought that China could develop antisatellite techniques within ten years, while a private Russian company has already developed a handheld GPS jammer with a range of 150 miles. In fact, “enemy” countries already use the American GPS system to enhance the accuracy of their weapons, including Scud missiles in North Korea, Iran, and Iraq.

Antisatellite warfare is a tenuous proposition. How do you destroy other countries’ satellites without endangering your own? How can you separate yourself from other countries when the communication systems are so interdependent? For instance, the army conducted a war game in 1998. The enemy was a fictitious country in the Middle East. During the exercise, China provided the “enemy” with satellite imagery of U.S. troop movements using the same satellites the U.S. uses to monitor its own troops. Should the U.S. destroy the satellites under these circumstances?

And how can we distinguish between peaceful and legitimate uses of satellite technology and those that are aspects of an overtly militarized “defense?” For example, it is now commonplace for the Pentagon to intersperse radomes for intelligence gathering with Star Wars radomes. Buckley Air Force Base, located east of Denver in Aurora, Colorado, the largest consolidated intelligence center in the western hemisphere—is jointly used by the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) and the National Security Agency (NSA). Buckley boasts thirteen radomes—big white domes that envelope downloading stations for satellite data. Used for space-based intelligence gathering, they are also an integral component of the Star Wars system and will download information from the new high orbit space-based infrared system (SBIRS-High). A similar comingling of uses is happening at Pine Gap in Australia and at Menwith Hill in England. Because intelligence gathering is top secret, this technique of combined intelligence gathering and Star Wars planning can also be used to prevent local politicians from inspecting American Star Wars bases, vehemently opposed by the general public in those two countries.

Because the military is so dependent upon them, the space command stopped publishing information on the whereabouts of their twenty-seven GPS satellites, previously posted on the NASA web site. Most satellites, military or commercial, have no defenses against attack by laser beams or other objects targeted to destroy them. It is very expensive to add protective mechanisms to satellites because they add extra weight and launch costs become prohibitive. (It costs 10,000 dollars a pound to launch a payload into low earth orbit, and shielding mechanisms are heavy.)

Former Virginia Democratic Senator Charles Robb, a member of the Senate arms committee, said that the development of space weapons, including antisatellite capabilities, would be “a mistake of historic proportions” that would trigger an arms race in space. He noted that other nations would necessarily follow the U.S.’s example, and frantic generals, unable to know exactly who has put what in orbit—would plead for extravagant countermeasures.²⁵

Enthusiasm for the project was somewhat tempered in 1999, when NASA experienced two manmade catastrophes: the Mars Climate Orbiter and the Mars Polar Lander both mysteriously disappeared. The Climate Orbiter was lost after a navigational error sent it skimming too deeply into the Martian atmosphere, because engineers failed to convert English to metric units. The Polar Lander, which incorporated innovative lightweight materials, extraordinarily small microchips, and a low-cost laser-based navigational system, was scheduled to make a soft landing on September 23, 1999, at the Martian south pole. It would drop two probes, which, falling at high speed would penetrate a few feet into the Martian crust to explore for evidence of groundwater. NASA realized just prior to Lander’s arrival that the mission was doomed because of a fatal design flaw. Lander probably blew up.²⁶

But NASA scientists, undeterred, are planning future expeditions, including missions to recover rock samples from Mars and to do deep drilling to search for water, microbes, and minerals. Shell Oil and Los Alamos National Lab are among the outside groups assisting NASA in these investigations. The orbits of Earth and Mars offer favorable flight opportunities once every twenty-five months, when they are in such a position that the trip takes less than a year.²⁷ The current Mars schedule is as follows:

• In the spring of 2001, the Mars Odyssey Orbiter was launched, equipped with remote sensors to study surface minerals.

• In 2003, two small roving vehicles will be launched to land on Mars in January 2004. These are 300-pound wheeled robots capable of traveling 300 feet a day while taking pictures, analyzing rocks, and investigating surface geology and possible subsurface water deposits.

• In 2005, NASA plans to send a Mars reconnaissance orbiter, which will be modeled on the now-successful Mars Global Surveyer still in orbit mapping Mars, for further mapping.

• In 2007, a “smart” landing craft will be launched, equipped with precision guidance and navigation, and hazard avoidance systems so that future missions will be able to land in the prescribed place all in one piece.

• Also in 2007 the first scout mission, deploying instrument-bearing balloons or a small airplane, will be launched.

• Again in 2007, NASA and the Italian space agency may team to place an orbiting satellite around Mars to help relay the increasingly heavy communications load from the Martian spacecraft. France may also participate.

• In 2009, NASA may team with the Italian space agency to deploy ground-penetrating radar to prospect for water while in orbit. These flights are being planned to search for water and traces of life, past or present.

• NASA’s long-term plan is to launch a sample-return mission sometime during 2011 to 2014.²⁸

Human habitation of Mars, a dream of many at NASA and other influential scientific organizations, will present huge physiological problems. An article written by Jerome Groopman, professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School, in the New Yorker in January 2000 summarizes this medical dilemma. Groopman questions whether human beings can survive weightlessness and deep-space radiation for prolonged periods. He worries about the possible psychological ramifications of isolation, stress, and confinement, and the problem of medical emergencies that could arise during the trip. Among other problems, it is virtually impossible for the human body, which evolved under the influence of gravity, to survive intact without it. Blood, which under the influence of gravity normally pools in the legs and lower body, rushes to the head, triggering severe pounding headaches. The fluid-controlling mechanisms are fooled by this redistribution, and dehydration rapidly develops as the kidneys excrete the “excess” fluid. The thickened blood then sends signals to the bone marrow to cease making red blood cells, inducing a mild anemia.

Muscles and bones almost melt in a weightless environment. Tendons and ligaments deteriorate, and minor stresses cause both ligaments and muscles to tear like tissue paper. Bone mass dissolves at a rate of 1.5 percent per month. Then there is the danger from radiation emanating from cosmic rays. These are essentially iron particles traveling at the speed of light that go right through the body, causing breakage of chromosomes and destruction of genes. Chromosomal and genetic damage increases the risk of developing cancer, and a recent review by the National Research Council found a 40 percent increased cancer risk from a trip to Mars, more than 10 times higher than the level deemed acceptable.

Sleep deprivation, monotony, claustrophobia, anxiety, and depression will produce mental instability. It has been noted during missions in harsh, lonely environments that more than 10 percent of subjects develop serious problems of psychological adaptation and up to 3 percent develop psychiatric disorders, such as major depression. It has been recommended that older astronauts be chosen for a Mars trip because they would not live long enough to develop cancer from the cosmic radiation, or have fewer years to lose if they did. Also, younger men would be unable to have children because of radiation damage to their sperm.²⁹

There are also grave concerns that the introduction of Martian material into the earth’s biosphere may inject microorganisms that could unleash serious hazards. (Until the recent NASA Mars failures, plans to return Martian samples to earth were scheduled for 2008, but that date has been delayed until 2011.) Barry DiGregorio, who founded the International Committee Against Mars Sample Return, pointed out some pertinent lessons from history:

• In the early- to mid-1300s, one quarter of Europeans died when a flea from China carrying an unfamiliar microbe was introduced into a susceptible population.

• When the Spaniards explored the Americas, they introduced the smallpox virus that decimated tens of thousand of native inhabitants.

• European explorers infected the susceptible native inhabitants of the Polynesian and Hawaiian Islands with many different infectious diseases. Nearly half of these populations died.

At present NASA plans to return the Martian samples to earth in a passive Earth-entry capsule that will enter the atmosphere without a parachute and slam into the Utah desert, where it will sustain a 300-400 G force impact. Engineers say that the capsule will remain intact, but the potential ramifications of a mistake are difficult even to contemplate.³⁰ A report issued by the space studies board of the national research council (NRC), a research arm of the National Academy of Sciences, concluded that space samples will require very careful handling, and NASA must create a special facility to contain any material that might be contaminated with dangerous organisms. While they point out that the risk of bringing back something very dangerous is extremely low, it is not zero. NASA must err on the side of being prudent.³¹

John Rummel, NASA planetary protection officer, said that NASA will quarantine the Martian samples in a high-level containment facility similar to those used to harbor the world’s deadliest viruses.³² But DiGregorio said, “If we make one mistake it could mean the extinction—maybe for our species—or maybe another; for instance, bumblebees or photoplankton, which are a huge part of our ecology.”

The Colorado School of Mines, long involved in the concepts of space mining and minerals extraction, and in space-based market development and minerals economics, is the motivating force behind these extraordinarily ambitious mining plans. Engineering students and faculty are currently establishing an ongoing space utilization roundtable to calculate methods to retrieve useful products and services from space. Everything from tourism, to mining, solar power, water extraction, and manufacturing on the moon is under consideration. Space mining may be ten to twenty years away, but someone has to start thinking about these possibilities now, they say.³⁴

On October 31, 2000, a three-member Expedition One crew was launched from the Baikonur Cosmodrome on a Russian Soyuz rocket to dock at the International Space Station (ISS) two days later. This eighth mission marked the start of a permanent human presence in space, initiating a planned permanent occupancy of ten years. It is intended that the ISS will eventually be the launching pad for missions to other planets.³⁵ A total of sixteen countries are involved in this project: Russia, Germany, Belgium, Canada, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, Denmark, Norway, France, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, the U.S., the U.K., and Brazil. More than 900 researchers from these and other countries are developing experiments to be conducted in zero-gravity conditions in fields such as biotechnology, combustion science, fluid physics, materials science, life sciences, engineering and technology, and earth sciences.

The stated goals of the International Space Station are as follows (most are worthy, but some are troublesome):

• To find solutions to crucial problems in medicine, ecology, and other areas of science

• To lay the foundation for developing space-based commerce and enterprise

• To create great worldwide demand for space-related education at all levels by cultivating the excitement, wonder, and discovery that the ISS symbolizes

• To foster world peace through high-profile, long-term international cooperation in space³⁶

It would appear that the internationalism of the ISS would mitigate against unilateral exploitation and control of space by a single nation. However, I do not trust the present Bush administration, and Congress has rarely acted in the best interests of the international community. The military and space corporations, along with other multinationals, paid billions of dollars for the last U.S. election, and have control over upcoming legislation. Furthermore, the Republican right-wing openly supports U.S. militarization and domination of space.

The surface of Mars is bone-dry and covered with a fine dust of an average particle size of about two microns—the same dimensions as cigarette smoke. The dust is so fine and pervasive that it would gum up space suits, scratch helmet visors, induce electrical shorts, sandblast instruments, and clog motors. The corrosive hydrogen peroxide in the Martian atmosphere could also slowly wear away rubber seals.

Astronauts would need to maintain a dust-free environment because tiny particles of inhaled silicon dust induce a severe lung disease called silicosis. The particles will be electrically charged so the dust will cling to everything. But the dust means something else. Solar power necessary to fuel a mission would become almost impossible to generate, because Martian powder would accumulate on the solar panels. On the Mars Pathfinder mission, for instance, the electrical output from the solar panels fell 1 percent every three days as powder covered them.

Therefore, the preferred choice for power generation becomes nuclear, in the form of a 100-kilowatt nuclear reactor.³⁷ And this brings us to some of the worst of the Star Wars hazards that will threaten planet Earth: nuclear-powered rockets; orbiting nuclear reactors; nuclear reactors destined for asteroids, the moon, or Mars; and plutonium-fueled space probes to investigate other planets—all of which pose potentially severe risks to the earth’s biological systems.

NUCLEAR POWERED SPACE PROBES

Despite these disasters, NASA has continued for thirty years to use plutonium 238 for its space exploration power systems and has launched a total of twenty-five missions with radioactive power packs. Plutonium 238 is 280 times more carcinogenic than the more prevalent isotope, plutonium 239. Glenn Seaborg, plutonium 239’s discoverer, called plutonium 238 the most dangerous material on Earth. And plutonium 239 is almost the most carcinogenic substance known to the human race—as previously stated, one pound, if adequately distributed, could induce lung cancer in every human being on the planet.

NASA is playing with the most deadly of materials with seeming impunity, evidently not caring if one of its rockets malfunctions and sprays plutonium 238 onto countries that happen to be located beneath. Previous plutonium 238-fueled NASA missions included the Apollo lunar scientific packages, and the Pioneer, Viking, Voyager, and Ulysses deep-space probes. More recent missions include the Mars Pathfinder mission, launched in 1996, and the Cassini mission, launched in 1997.

Eight plutonium 238-fueled RHUs will also be required for each Mars Surveyor mission over the next decade. Approximately thirty will be launched. Each plutonium 238 capsule will weigh 0.7 pounds. Small amounts of curium 242, curium 244, and cobalt 57 will also be required for scientific instruments. Each of these radioactive elements is almost as toxic as plutonium. According to the General Accounting Office report, Space Exploration: Power Sources for Deep Space Probes, NASA is contemplating eight more nuclear-fueled electric generator space missions by 2015.

HEALTH CONSEQUENCES OF PLUTONIUM 238 PRODUCTION

By law, the department of energy is responsible for the supply of plutonium 238 for the space program. Historically, the military reactors and reprocessing plants at Savannah River, South Carolina, were used to manufacture this plutonium. However, these dangerously polluted facilities were closed down in 1996 when the end of the cold war determined that plutonium 239 for bombs was not needed (plutonium 238 and 239 were manufactured in parallel).³⁹

Because the plutonium 238 supply of the U.S. was limited, in 1992 the DOE signed a five-year contract with Russia to supply it. In 1997 this contract was renewed for another five years. But because the long-term viability of Russian plutonium could be in jeopardy, and the inventory of plutonium 238 for space missions might be depleted by 2005, the DOE is considering restarting old military nuclear reactors or using civilian light-water reactors for its plutonium 238 production. ⁴⁰

Episodes of worker contamination are frequent. The plutonium 238 for the Cassini mission was manufactured at Los Alamos Lab. The total amount of radiation exposure increased during this production period at Los Alamos and the number of people contaminated with plutonium 238 rose from 139 to 244 (between 1993 and 1995). More recently, eight more Los Alamos workers were exposed to plutonium 238 at potentially dangerous levels in March 2000. These people received medical treatment, but in truth, there is no effective way to decontaminate workers once plutonium 238 has entered their bodies.⁴¹

Significantly, the European Space Agency has developed high-efficiency solar space cells to replace nuclear generators. In 2003 this agency will launch its Rosetta probe to travel beyond the orbit of Jupiter and to rendezvous with a comet named Wirtanen—the first such probe. Wirtanen is 675 million kilometers from the sun, where the sunlight is twenty times weaker than on earth.⁴² If solar power is capable of supplying the very small amount of electricity needed for these missions, why does NASA persist in using plutonium 238? To ascertain the source of pressure for nuclear space probes, follow the money.

The militarization of the space program has had a significant effect upon NASA’s nuclear commitment. One reason that NASA insists on using nuclear power instead of solar power is because the military is enthusiastic about nuclear weapons in space. One recent NASA plutonium 238 space launch was the Cassini Saturn probe, which flew atop a Lockheed Martin Titan-4 military rocket. Cassini carried 72.3 pounds of plutonium 238—more plutonium than had ever been launched into space. The Titan-4 rocket is an unreliable, dangerous old rocket with a one-in-ten record—one catastrophic accident in every ten launches. Not long after the Cassini launch, three Titan rockets blew up, either on the space pad or shortly after launching. NASA designed Cassini to circle Venus and then to return toward earth via a “gravity assist” slingshot in order to increase its momentum to Saturn. Cassini circled the earth above the atmosphere at 42,300 miles per hour, at an altitude of 700 miles on August 1999. Luckily, unlike Apollo 13, the vectors were accurate, and Cassini with its plutonium load did not enter the atmosphere to disintegrate and spread its deadly cargo across the planet.

In its final environmental-impact statement, NASA said that if the flyby did not go as planned, and Cassini made an inadvertent reentry into the atmosphere, the plutonium 238 would have been released and “approximately five billion of the . . . world population at the time . . . could receive 99 percent or more of the radiation exposure.” NASA also acknowledged that if plutonium rained down on areas of natural vegetation, it might have to “relocate animals”; if it fell on agricultural land, it might need to “ban future agricultural land uses”; and if it rained down upon urban areas it would have to “demolish all or some structures” and “relocate affected population permanently.” Dr. Gofman of the University of California-Berkeley, who is also the codiscoverer of uranium 235, predicted a death toll of 950,000 as a result of a Cassini accident.

The Outer Space Treaty specifically states that “states shall be liable for damage caused by their space objects.” However, in 1991 NASA and the department of energy drew up a “space power agreement” to cover American nuclear space flights using the government-sponsored Price-Anderson Act as its basis. Price-Anderson allocates a domestic liability of 8.9 billion dollars in the event of a nuclear accident, but just 100 million dollars for damage incurred in all foreign nations.

NUCLEAR POWERED ROCKETS

At the thirty-sixth Joint Propulsion Conference in Huntsville, Alabama, in July 2000, at least a dozen papers were presented devoted to space propulsion using nuclear thermal rockets (NTR). (This particular project had been terminated in 1973 because of growing antinuclear feelings among the U.S. population, but it is now back on the drawing board.) Stanley Borowski, a nuclear engineer who manages the NTR studies at NASA’s Glenn Research Center, enthusiastically sees NTR as a “three-fer,” offering three mission types for the price of a single engine: “We could use it to fly missions to the moon, to Mars, and to near-Earth asteroids—all with the same vehicle,” he said. (As one of NASA’s spokemen, Borowski speaks to audiences ranging from kindergartens to retirees and receives a nearly uniform response. He must be a very persuasive speaker because the audiences are enthusiastic: “Why hasn’t this country developed this option yet?” they ask.)⁴³

Some add that the NTR could be used for defending space systems, for reboosting the international space station, and for the eventual colonization of Mars. Russia will participate in the NTR program because they developed robust fuel nuclear rods that could be used in the nuclear engine. It has been suggested that the air force invest a small part of its budget in development of the nuclear thermal rocket, which could be used to assist the North American Aerospace Defense Command in the tracking and defense of U.S. space systems. Borowski predicts that the rocket could be ready to fly in ten years. NASA and the department of energy have recently undertaken a major public relations campaign to sell the nuclear rocket to the public. A conventional rocket would take a year to get to Mars, they explain, but the nuclear option would cut travel time in half.

NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, will be coordinating work on the nuclear rocket with Los Alamos National Lab, NASA in Cleveland, and the University of Florida’s nuclear engineering department. In January 2000, at the seventeenth annual Symposium on Space Power and Propulsion, 600 conferees from NASA, DOE, aerospace corporations, nuclear academia, and the air force met to discuss the expansion of nuclear power in space. NASA scientist Roger Lenard, who works at the Marshall Space Flight Center, said, “Want to go to Mars quickly? Detonate some nuclear warheads and months later you’re there.” He had another proposal: How about a nuclear-powered “space tug” capable of deflecting a comet or asteroid heading for impact with earth? Less exotic proposals focused on using nuclear power to fuel human exploration and colonization on the Moon, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn.

NUCLEAR POWERED WEAPONS

Some of the weapons that are currently proposed in the Star Wars plans, including laser-beam weapons, particle-beam weapons, and others, will require orbiting nuclear reactors for their power sources. The 1996 air force board report points out that because “power limitations impose restrictions” on space-based weapons systems, making them “relatively unfeasible . . . a natural technology to enable high power is nuclear power in space.” The report’s authors seem amazingly confident that their ideas will be viable. “Setting the emotional issues of nuclear power aside,” they say, “this technology offers a viable alternative for large amounts of power in space.”

OZONE DEPLETION AND THE SPACE PROGRAM

Solid fuel used in U.S. rockets and in the space shuttle releases chlorine atoms into the stratosphere. The space shuttle, for example, releases 240 tons of concentrated hydrochloric acid (HCl) at each launch. Chlorine, which splits off from the HCl molecule, is the substance that combines with and destroys ozone molecules. Scientists in 1989 predicted that if NASA continued to launch solid-fuel rocket boosters at a rate of ten per year, this would induce a 10 percent depletion in the ozone by 2005.⁴⁴^, ⁴⁵^, ⁴⁶ Yet the number of civilian and military launches have increased alarmingly since that prediction was made. (For each 1 percent decrease in stratospheric ozone there will be a 4 to 6 percent increase in skin cancer. We are experiencing these effects in Australia, where we see a proliferation of skin-cancer clinics within our cities, and where the hole in the ozone layer of the southern hemisphere was larger in the year 2000 than ever before.)

INTERNATIONAL CONCERN

At the opening of the conference for disarmament in Geneva in January 2000, UN Secretary General Kofi Annan called for nations to join together to maintain space “as a weapons-free environment.” China received wide support for a proposal to create “an international legal instrument banning the testing, deployment and use of any weapons, weapons systems and their components in outer space, with a view to preventing the weaponization of outer space.” Nevertheless, the U.S. is attempting to block the proposal.