For anyone active in academic two-person debate, I’ve generated a new version of the popular backfile dump of all arguments and evidence on the site. With over 160 arguments in this update, the backfile checks in at a ridiculous 510 pages so printing it out isn’t an option. I’m working on a new print option for individual argument pages but will keep updating this file more regularly.
Or something like that..
It has been a year since China tested its direct-ascent anti-satellite weapon against one of its own satellites and pundits are mining the anniversary for any significance they can find. Geoffrey Forden has a detailed three-part essay on Wired.com where he argues that with their current capabilities, China is incapable of delivering a knock-out, “Pearl Harborâ€-esque blow to U.S. space assets:
In the end, we’ll show, the US would still have sufficient space assets to fight a major conventional war with China, even after such an attack. America’s military capabilities would be reduced, for a few hours at a time. But they would not be crippled. Back in 2001, a commission lead by Donald Rumsfeld warned of a “space Pearl Harbor,” a single strike that could cripple America’s satellite network. It turns out, there is no such thing.
On the opposite side of the spectrum, Bill Gertz headlines the Washington Times with news that U.S. satellites are having to change course because of space debris caused by last year’s test.
While not wanting to downplay the unprecedented level of space debris following China’s test, Gertz ignores that such satellite maneuvers are a common occurrence anymore, partly due to the accumulated space debris from similar Russian and U.S. ASAT tests during the 70s and 80s.
Arms Control Wonk Jeffrey Lewis and Gregory Kulacki of the Union of Concerned Scientists gave a talk at the Carnegie Endowment on China’s ASAT test in January. They argued, in a preview of a forthcoming paper, that the test was not meant as a show of force and could possibly have been averted if the U.S. had demarched the Chinese government for previous attempts (a point that was hinted at in an earlier New York Times article). From a summary on the Carnegie site:
The unpreparedness of Chinese officials in the aftermath of the ASAT test is not inconsistent with the statements of technocrats, who framed the development of the ASAT as part of a general drive to improve China’s military capabilities in space, not as an effort to provoke the U.S.
In other words, many Chinese feel the test was a mistake, and was bad for Chinese security, and that there are problems with the Chinese decision-making process. People in the general armaments department pursue military technologies for different reasons than policy makers; often, the goals of these groups may be rival.
There is also a writeup in Global Security Newswire, and an apparently less than accurate writeup forthcoming in Space News.
“A Pentagon-chartered report urges the United States to take the lead in developing space platforms capable of capturing sunlight and beaming electrical power to Earth.”
[ Link to Full Report ] from the excellent “Space Solar Power” blog.
There are a few obvious connections to the space security debate (ex. increasing dependence on space assets, or increasing the potential for resource conflicts) but there’s also the potential for the system to be used as a sky-sweeping, death ray which definitely takes the debate in a new direction.
Well, O.K., not really but the report does touch on the force-application potential and its clearly a military system so I’m adding it to my regular keyword watch: Space-Based Solar Power.
High Frontier is a quarterly military service journal (published in association with the U.S. Air Force Space Command) that seeks to “provide a scholarly forum for professionals to exchange knowledge and ideas on space-related issues throughout the space community.” I’ve been hooked ever since the Winter 2005 issue which had a dozen excellent articles from leading strategists on the space weapons debate.
However, sometime over the last few months, there was a redesign of the AFSPC website and most of my links to these articles started breaking. I discovered that not only had the ‘homepage’ for the journal changed, but the initial volume (including my fan-favorite Winter 2005, Vol. 1, No.3) was no longer listed. I doubt there was any intent to conceal the information because its a futile exercise with resources like archive.org around. This massive database functions like Google’s cached pages, capturing and storing pages even when no one is paying attention to them.
After some searching in the archive, I found the missing issues from Volume 1. The dates and naming conventions are inconsistent and it took some work to reconstruct the correct order. For example, there are two issues labeled “Volume 2, No. 2″ on the cover and title page but no issue “Volume 1, No. 2″. I’m assuming that the issue from Fall 2004 is the missing issue in this local archive:
Updated: June 10, 2008, with new issue, Volume 4, No. 3.
Vol 1, No. 1 - Summer 2004
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Vol 1, No. 2 - Fall 2004
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Vol 1, No. 3 - Winter 2005
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Vol 1, No. 4
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Vol 2, No. 1
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Vol 2. No. 2
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Vol 2. No. 3
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Vol 2. No. 4
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Vol 3. No. 1
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Vol 3. No. 2
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Vol 3. No. 3
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Vol 3. No. 4
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Vol 4. No. 1
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Vol 4. No. 2
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Vol 4. No. 3
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I’ve also recently added ‘Sort by Source‘ functionality into the citation system to allow users to view all citations, collected by source. There are several excellent journals where the bulk of this debate is occurring (ex. High Frontier Journal, Astropolitics) and this tool can help identify these sources.
The 2007 Space Security Index has been released and is available on their website. The Index is a cooperative effort of several academic, non-governmental, and governmental organizations and aims to assess space security from year to year based on a select set of indicators:
The Space Security Index is the first and only annual, comprehensive, and integrated assessment of space security. Based on eight indicators of space security, it provides background information and in-depth analysis on key trends and developments in the space field. The project seeks to provide a policy-neutral fact-base of trends and developments in space security based on primary, open source research.
Here is the citation record for the new volume, as well as the two previous volumes:
The latest edition of the online Journal “Re-Public: Re-imagining Democracy” is devoted to the wiki/open politics movement, or how the use of new collaborative tools (wikis, blogs, forums, mailing lists, podcasting, and videos) can transform the ways politics are practiced.
I’m going to be speaking at the Politics Online Conference here in Washington, D.C. this Friday, March 16th. I’m in a breakout panel called “The Policy Commons: Democracy when the Owners Take Control.”
Dave Witzel, my former boss at ForumOne Communications helped organize the panel to promote the idea of the policy commons, or the use of peer-production tools to guide and develop public policy. He wrote a kind review of this project when it first launched last August and he has just launched another Digg-like blog to track similar projects and developments at PolicyCommons.org that is worth checking out.
I’m looking forward to the discussion and will post slides, photos, and any suprise announcements I make here on this blog over the weekend.
Updated:
I’ve uploaded my presentation slides in powerpoint and PDF format.
New analysis from the Center for Space Standards and Innovation shows that the Chinese ASAT test produced 957 pieces of trackable space debris, surpassing the previous record in 1996:
STK-generated videos courtesy of CSSI (www.centerforspace.com)
I’m going to be closing the “syndicate” functionality earlier than expected so this is a heads-up to anyone out there still using this feature on their sites. You can currently syndicate any argument in the database by including some javascript/RSS available on each argument page.
Example:
http://www.spacedebate.org/argument/syndicate/2697/
I was very excited about the possibilities for this feature but found it difficult to implement on a lot of sites so I’m working on a new version that doesn’t require RSS or javascript. If you’re using these links on your site, the links will still work but the method to call them will change. I’ll post here when I have the new version in place.