Space

The Bush administration claims national missile defense can protect the United States from long-range missiles fired by rogue states. But that threat is trivial, and Washington's unilateralist approach to missile defense will only anger China and Russia while alienating U.S. allies.

Seeks to transmute claims of US imperial decline into an agenda for its future role. Strategic doctrine should stress flexibility and the control of space, likened to control of the seas in times past. Areas of paramount geopolitical importance are (1) Eastern Europe and Germany (2) the Middle East (3) Central America, where a combination of anti-Yanqui nationalism and demography may even 'prompt a mood of panic' in the USA. The global role needs to be re-defined against parallels with other declining empires (Rome, Turkey) but also against lack of a successor -- "the Soviet Union will remain internally too weak to become a partner for peace and externally too strong to be satisfied with the status quo". Calls in particular for the upgrading to world status of the US-Japanese relationship -- 'Amerippon'. President Carter's security adviser, 1977-81. An excerpt was republished in 'Eastern Europe: a crisis in need of management' IHT 12 Apr 1988 p4.

American and Soviet space planners are both familiar with the concept of "windows"--transient time periods when the positions and relative movements of the earth and the target planet or planets are such that a probe vehicle launched during the window can reach the target. In effect, the window exists when a number of variable factors, some independent, some interacting, are in phase at the same time.

In1900 the population of scientists and engineers in the United States numbered one in 2,000. Today the ratio is one in 120 and the figure is still mounting. Current federal expenditures for research and development are $15.7 billion. During the postwar era these appropriations built the American research establishment to a level of strength beyond that of any other nation. Throughout the 1950s and most of the 1960s the build-up continued without opposition. Recently the taxpayer has begun to regard the House of Science with a degree of concern, because the costs of technological programs have become staggering in the last few years. Painful choices are being forced on the Congress. Shall program A or program B be funded? Each is so expensive that it seems impossible to fund both. Which will advance the national interest more? The general value of research is also being subjected to a closer examination. At what level of support does science make its maximum contribution to society? If the science we have purchased so far has been beneficial, will twice as much science be twice as beneficial?