Posted on 05/21/2005 12:51:38 AM PDT by thegreatbeast
UNITED NATIONS (AP) -- A scientists' group on Thursday warned the United States against weaponizing space, saying the move would be prohibitively expensive and could set off a new arms race.
The Union of Concerned Scientists, a watchdog group that opposes weapons in space, said the United Nations should consider drafting a treaty that would prohibit interfering with unarmed satellites, taking away any justification for putting weapons in space to protect them.
"The United States has a huge lead in the space field -- it can afford to try out the multilateral approach,'' said Jonathan Dean, a former U.S. ambassador and an adviser on global security issues.
The Union's demand comes as the administration of President Bush is reviewing the U.S. space policy doctrine. Some scientists worry that the review will set out a more aggressive policy that could lead to the greater militarization of space.
On Wednesday, White House spokesman Scott McClellan told reporters that the policy review was not considering the weaponization of space. But he said new threats to U.S. satellites have emerged in the years since the U.S. space doctrine was last reviewed in 1996, and those satellites must be protected.
"There are changes that have occurred over the last eight or nine years, and there are countries that have taken an interest in space, McClellan said. "And they have looked at things that could -- or technologies that could -- threaten our space systems. And so you obviously need to take that into account when you're updating the policy.''
The Bush administration has also included some money in the budget for space-based weapons programs to defend satellites, strike ground targets and defend against missile attacks, said Laura Grego, a scientist with the union.
Any complete weapons system in space would be very expensive, running into the many billions of dollars. Developing a shield to defend against a single missile attack would require deploying 1,000 space-based interceptors and cost anywhere between $20 billion and $100 billion, said David Wright, a union scientists and co-author of a recent report on the feasibility of space weapons.
And such a system would require a huge expansion of U.S. launching capability. The United States currently launches between 10-12 large rockets a year, while with space interceptors, it would need to launch many times more that each year.
Wright argued that space-based ground attack systems were not yet practical either. One, dubbed "Rods from God'' -- which would fire rods of tungsten from space -- would cost 50-100 times as much as a similar attack from the ground.
"The fact that it's still being considered I think suggests that there's some sort of emotional attachment to it for putting weapons in space rather than a hard-nosed analysis,'' Wright said.
Any such move would also likely draw swift international condemnation. In 2002, after the United States withdrew from the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, China and Russia submitted a proposal for a new international treaty to ban weapons in outer space.
But the United States has said it sees no need for any new space arms control agreements. It is party to the 1967 Outer Space Treaty, which prohibits stationing weapons of mass destruction in space.
Well I certainly feel better now that the UN is going to be on the job.
What wankers!
Now that's a counter-intuitive statement if I ever heard one. "It's gonna cost a buttload, so everyone will wanna do it." Makes sense to me.
Wankers is well said, also, Why are we going to trust some "Union" of scientists? Normal Unions are bad enough.
The UN needs to STFU because they don't know what they are talking about. It's like passing a law saying no one shoot unarmed people.
Probably the same group of scientists who think spending hundreds of billions on an unproven theory like Global Warming is, by contrast, worth it.
Which isn't difficult in principle: all you have to do to kill a $50 million satellite is to hurl a rock at it with sufficient speed. It's not attacks on land from space that are a big problem. It's attacks on space from anywhere.
Unlike the ISS or robots on Mars. Now, back to the asteroid interceptors, how much would they cost? Oh, I see, you really are against spending on weapons which secure your freedoms.
Oh, a treaty. Why didn't we think of that. We can get rid of all our weapons. All we need are treaties.
oh, for [expletive]'s sake.
more transparent "let's try to hobble the US as the rest of the world plays catch-up" crap
This American patriot, a watchdog individual opposed to The Union of Concerned Scientists and the United Nations, says the United States should consider launching the UN and the UoCS into the sun, thereby preventing those idiots from interfering with pragmatic exploitation of near-Earth space and taking away any justification for paying them any further mind.
This is an old Marxist group that I think has been around since the time of Stalin. Back then the Reds were not very astute when it came to naming their front groups. They always included the term "Union" somewhere in the name, as in "American Civil Liberties Union" or "Union of Concerned Scientists," etc.
Yes, the US should back down so the Russians and Chinese can secretly work behind the UN's back ...
Yes they are, they have opposed any weapon system.
>>>>United Nations should consider drafting a treaty that would prohibit interfering with unarmed satellites, taking away any justification for putting weapons in space to protect them<<<<<
This is a boatlaod of crap. Even if the rules prohibited interference with unarmed satellites, how does that take away justification for interfereing with armed satellites and which are unarmed and which arent? How does this stop anyone from arming a satellite? What makes the UN think that weapons in space are to protect satellites?
What's a few nukes between Planets ?
What a joke. The idea of continued US superiority always makes the UN lose their erection. Too bad.
What's going to prevent a country from just spending a few million extra to get France to veto any enforcement effort in the UN Security Council?
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