Editorials
EDITORIAL: THE PROMISE & PERILS OF SPACE THE SPACE AGE blasted open twenty-five years ago on October 4, 1957, when the Russians rocketed Sputnik I 560 miles above the earth. That event undoubtedly...
...Then there's the weather...
...A little more than a decade and $25 billion later, in July of 1969, the U.S...
...satellite system, NAVSTAR, due to be operational by 1988, will enable our submarines to threaten Russia's hard-silo land-based ICBMs...
...officials have made more accurate estimates of Soviet wheat harvests than the Russians themselves...
...Militarily, it offers little to deter, much to encourage a traditionally paranoid Kremlin to believe a surprise attack might work, and much in the offing to make the Russians, despite any momentary lead they may now have, feel insecure for the future...
...and in general much of the added expense is compensation for their inferior technological base, in computers, materials, and optics...
...So much for the bright prospects of space technology...
...agriculture and aviation alone, into a $5.5 billion saving annually...
...that the U.S...
...Moreover, as a recent study by Daniel Deudney of the Worldwatch Institute shows, the U.S...
...and the USSR to abandon anti-ballistic missiles a decade ago...
...The effects on climatology, geology, and agronomy may be equally striking...
...Like Galileo's telescope or Gutenberg's printing press, the new space technology is obviously altering the way we feel, sense, and think about our world...
...The communications revolution needs scarcely a mention...
...negotiators at the Geneva START talks have every reason to expect the Russians are as eager as we ought to be to resume negotiations for an arms accord on anti-satellite weapons-suspended after the invasion of Afghanistan...
...The larger throw-weight reflects not superiority but the reverse, their lag in miniaturization...
...It's true that the advances of technology-on both sides- are about to, or have already, undercut the stability reached through previous arms agreements-most of which hinged on the invulnerability of satellites monitoring compliance...
...As Walter Ong has argued in a cascade of books over the years, a technological innovation of this scope shifts the human sensorium, our basic way of perceiving things...
...In short, the new generation of space technology holds as much peril as promise...
...Outrageously expensive, the highly sensitive radars that track and guide satellite ray-guns are easily blinded-for instance by a single nuclear explosion in space or the upper atmosphere-making for a command and control nightmare...
...communication satellites have cut transmission costs- developing nations are now the highest users (thirty-eight percent) of such systems...
...that another new U.S...
...that laser and particle-ray weapons suffer from the same disabilities that led the U.S...
...Arguably the most important contribution provided by space activities is not information about the universe but about the earth: how atmosphere, oceans, sunlight, and life forms interact ecologically and how human action alters those systems to make the planet habitable or inhabitable...
...Hence the U.S...
...The grim side, if a recent (October 3) article in the New York Times Magazine by Robert Jastrow is any indication, is that Russian advances in space technology are being used to back up the Reagan administration's rush to fuel the arms race...
...That event undoubtedly brought out our best and worst, the "right stuff" and our craziest-as the American romance with vast empty spaces has ever done...
...It's given us something of a god's eye view of our planet...
...advantage, particularly with satellite guidance systems for hard-silo bombing...
...Using "remote sensing" data from general purpose satellites (LANDSATS), U.S...
...system in planning, IONDS, ought to increase the effectiveness (read accuracy) of our ICBMs by as much as forty percent...
...Many astronomers expect this will revolutionize their science...
...The only sad news here-for those desiring a split-level on Mars or wanting to mine the sun or an asteroid-is that for the present time-frame, few experts think space-colonization or majority industry feasible...
...A new ecological mentality bids to make our narrow humanisms and nationalisms appear as small-minded as they are...
...will soon test its own "direct ascent" killer satellite, a far more sophisticated weapon than the Russians', and far more destabilizing...
...currently does on space, send double the number of missions, and have greater throw-weight in their launchers...
...Practical, civilian benefits of the new technology have followed the "trickle-down" route from the preeminent military use...
...What, as of this date, has that "little step" brought us-and mankind...
...In the long run, this ecological or systems-approach thinking, as yet in its infancy but clear in the work of someone like the late Erich Jantsch or the late Gregory Bateson, may equip future generations to assume the care and feeding of the planet in ways that we and our ancestors could not possibly achieve...
...Moreover the Russians have clearly cut into the U.S...
...and forest-product companies are finding that satellite images provide a more reliable means of assessing tree-health than ground observation does...
...Examples proliferate: Brazil, the second largest user of LANDS AT photos after the U.S., now has firm data on the extent of Amazon deforestation, while Pakistan recently used such images to discover a rich lode of copper in a remote region...
...shuttle places into orbit a telescope of 2.5 meters diameter with a resolution ten times better than any ground-based device, the observable volume of space will expand by 350 times...
...military satellites orbit too high to be reached by the Soviet's killer satellites...
...Further, such weapons may be countered by decoys or a little cleverness in the finishing or performance of warheads...
...Russia's arsenal of the first "killer satellite" system (targeted at other low-flying satellites), its development of laser and particle-beam weapons and a new generation of sophisticated reconnaissance and surveillance satellites, has upset the superpower balance, Jastrow argues, and once again we are told we lag behind...
...Symbolists beware...
...Within fifteen years, satellite observation should enable meteorologists to make five-day forecasts as accurate as their current twenty-four hour projections-which should translate, for U.S...
...True, the Russians spend twice as much as the U.S...
...Similarly, LANDS AT images are being used in arid areas of the Middle East to track the patterns of moisture and to give warnings of locust outbreaks...
...Finally, for the would-be astronomer in us all, when in 1985 the U.S...
...The parable for space technology may have been set by that first star-gazer, Thales: for a while it may get you a corner on something like the olive trade, but it tends to make you forget what's on the ground-the fall into the well from which there may be no returning...
...Apollo 15-our '' moondoggle'' according to many scientists of the time-landed on the moon's Sea of Tranquillity while the unmanned Russian Luna 15 crashed into the moon's Sea of Crisis...
...On the whole, however, Jastrow's fear-mongering is disingenuous...
...The answer is mixed...
...arms partisans ignore: • that most U.S...
...The number of missions, on the other hand, stems from the shorter life-span of Soviet satellites in comparison to our own...
...that the U.S...
Vol. 109 • October 1982 • No. 18
