Lots of space to worry about.....

If you want something more to worry about, perhaps this is it. Now, it seems we Americans also own space! And now we are going to have to defend it from others who think otherwise - at least according to those in the know in our state department.

What puzzles me is why we don't consider arms-control pacts to keep space free of offensive weapons requested by other nations. Is this similar to our lack of cooperation regarding global warming and even the international court?

Speaking of the international court, I find it interesting that Rumsfeld is being prosecuted in a court in Germany for war crimes. http://tinyurl.com/ycfzxa

Grnted, we have a lot of hardware out there which produces a lot of public service and convenience. We certainly wouldn't want to have it compromised by rogue nations who are at war with us - or would like to be, but then, we had the same problems in the past with the high seas and the world now operates quite well with maritime laws. What is wrong with having international space laws? ....but I'll bet this administration wouldn't want anything like that!

I hate to make this partisan, but I'm certain that our nation will not be the supreme nation of the world for many more years - the odds are very much against us. It worries me that the nations we are snubbing might have memories of our international behavior and not look kindly on us from their ultimate lofty perches when they're in positions to make the rules...

U.S. cites growing threat to its space assets
By Jim Wolf Wed Dec 13

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A number of countries are developing ways to knock out U.S. space systems, threatening vital national interests, the State Department's point man on international security said on Wednesday.

Robert Joseph, undersecretary of state for arms control and international security, did not name any such states but served notice Washington was taking steps to head them off. "We will seek the best capabilities to protect our space assets by active or passive means," he said in elaborating for the first time publicly on a recent Bush administration revision of U.S. space policy, the first in nearly 10 years.

He referred to such possibilities as maneuvering out of harm's way, redundancy, system "hardening," encryption and rapid frequency changes.

In reply to a question, he added that nothing in U.S. policy ruled out basing weapons in space to defend space assets.

At issue is everything from the Defense Department-run Global Positioning System used for precision navigation and timing signals to spycraft systems that track missiles and commercial satellites vital for communications.

"The United States is more dependent on space than any other nation," Joseph said. As a result, U.S. space infrastructure could be seen as "a highly lucrative target."

The updated U.S. space policy, released two months ago, rejected a push by China, Russia and others for new arms-control pacts to keep space free of offensive weapons. It outlined a stepped-up drive to guard space assets in light of growing U.S. reliance on them amid reported growing threats.

Joseph declined to comment on published reports citing Donald Kerr, director of the U.S. National Reconnaissance Office, as having said in September a U.S. satellite had been illuminated by a laser in China.

"As a matter of policy, we do not talk about specific threats or vulnerabilities," he told a forum organized by the George C. Marshall Institute, a public policy group.

But he said not all countries could be relied on to pursue exclusively peaceful goals in space. "A number of countries are exploring and acquiring capabilities to counter, attack and defeat U.S. space systems," he said.

"Given the vital importance of our space assets, foreclosing technical options to defend (them) in order to forestall a hypothetical future arms race in space, is not in the national security interest of the United States," Joseph said.

In reply to another question, he appeared to discount international efforts to keep the United States from developing what could become the first known weapons in space designed specifically to apply force.

"What normally one finds when you strip away the veil on the issue of weaponization of space ... is a desire to constrain U.S. options for the development of our missile defense capabilities," he said. "I find this quite odd because it is those missile defense capabilities that are designed to counter offensive ballistic missiles," Joseph added.