Analysis & Opinions

The U.S. government is currently working on creating a so called Space Force. Legislation to establish the branch is expected to be included in the Pentagon's budget proposal next year, but it would still need approval from Congress.

If the Space Force branch is established, tech companies and defense contractors in Massachusetts stand to make millions — if not billions — in new contracts.

You may not realize it, but you probably interact with some space object every day. Maybe it’s your car, your television or even your internet — each relies on some space-orbiting satellite to function. Satellites are accessed by millions of devices a day and are robust providers of service. But trusting these satellites as much as we do is risky as they are all extremely vulnerable to cyberattacks.

President Trump has hurled so many thunderbolts recently that people may have missed the one that could have the greatest long-term impact on America’s national security — his directive to the Pentagon last week to start creating a new military service that he dubbed the “Space Force.”

Space is the new frontier of warfare. That was the theme of a “Space Symposium” here this week that gathered thousands of military and corporate experts from around the globe. A variant of the Boeing simulator may someday be training the 21st-century version of space-drone pilots.

This interdependence between the US and Russian space programs persists even though the two countries are now living through what some pundits describe as a new Cold War. There was a time not so long ago, however, when the two nations viewed space solely as an area of strategic competition. The steps that Washington and Moscow took to transform their space rivalry into cooperation can serve today as a model for working together to help prevent nuclear terrorism, no matter how strained relations may seem.

ON TUESDAY, MARCH 1, 2016, Commander Scott Kelly returned home from the International Space Station after twelve months working off the Earth, for the Earth. His year in space will pay scientific and medical dividends for years to come, helping pave the way for future astronauts to travel to Mars and beyond.

"Given the budgetary constraints under which spacefaring nations like the United States and India operate, cooperation is a valuable means to furthering our understanding of Earth's ecosystem."

"if both the top-down and bottom-up methods of trust building are never going to be risk free, is there a more plausible third option? For example, what if Washington and Beijing forget about trust-building and instead opt for a relationship based on mutual deterrence? Unfortunately, the risks of this option — arms racing, a return to a Cold War-like MAD doctrine, and forever teetering on the brink of conventional conflict — might not just upend US-China relations, they might sabotage regional and global security as well."

"Missile defense represents the most severe collision of space, nuclear weapons and politics. Accustomed to technological miracles, Americans assume that technical problems can always be fixed with enough money. Engineers are not asked if missile defense is a viable solution to the horrific threat of nuclear warheads carried on missiles, and political analysts do not care about the difficulties involved in developing hardware. In the end, this disconnect could produce a situation where a U.S. president is asked to rely on a system that technical experts cannot assure him will work but that political advisers insist must be brandished."

"TENSIONS IN the United Nations over space-based weapons ran to new heights recently when the United States delivered a hard-line statement on its right to develop such weapons...."