Another piece on the weaponisation of outer space:

Fantasy films often stay fantasy. Not so with the Star War series. For a long time, military men and military-orientated politicians have striven to let reality catch up with imagination. Conflicts on Earth should also play out in space is the thinking.

 It started in earnest with Ronald Reagan and his ultimately aborted Star Defence Initiative, and was revived by President Trump with all his talk of outer space as just another war fighting domain and his subsequent creation of a Space Force as a separate arm of the US armed forces. Recently, Russia entered the game in a most serious fashion when it tested a space-to-space weapon, that is, a weapon placed in space and targeting satellites. These days we hear a lot about the race to Mars, but the emerging arms race in outer space is of far greater import.

 It is, in fact, hard to overstate the significance of Russia’s move. There will be no stopping Trump trying to trump Russia, and China will then follow. Unless something is done, space will soon be brimming with weapons, and ultimately war in outer space will become inevitable. Because war in space will create masses of debris, moving at a speed of up to 18,000 miles an hour, many of the best orbits for human activity will become useless because satellites will be hit by these objects moving at higher than bullet speed. Elon Musk’s upcoming Starlink telecoms constellation providing connectivity across the globe will bleed and we can forget other symbols of human imagination come true, such as the International Space Station. Many satellites helping us to understand the climate of Earth will be threatened. Space activities are also a 400 billion dollars business, and both weaponisation and actual war in outer space will have a highly negative effect.

 It is not that space has been entirely untouched by weapons until now. Anti-satellite weapons fired from Earth or an aircraft exist and have been tested – with much debris created. This is bad enough, but weapons in outer space itself will take conflict to a completely new level.

 Perhaps we should not be concerned if those with weapons ambitions would only mess up outer space for themselves, but outer space is the province of all humankind according to the Outer Space Treaty, and as outer space has no borders any war there will ruin space for all nations. Debris will go everywhere.

It is probably not too late to stop the weaponisation of outer space. But stopping it will require determined opposition from citizens across the world. Civil society must demand from governments that they take forceful steps to avoid an arms race in outer space. At a time with so many other crises this will not be easy. Yet, when it is done citizens will find that many nations have absolutely no short- or long-term interest in the weaponisation of outer space. Only, leaders must be woken from their Sleeping Beauty dreams. This is the challenge! But in the end you want Star Wars in a theatre near you, not star wars far away and real!