The now almost forgotten and underrated 1985 movie Real Genius started with a scene of a military spaceplane equipped with a powerful laser that could assassinate world leaders standing outside of their villas. In the (lousy) 1979 movie Meteor both the United States and Soviet Union had developed orbiting nuclear-armed battlestations capable of firing missiles at the Earth. Much more recently, but no less fictitiously, numerous newspaper and magazine articles have discussed the so-called “rods from god” concept of satellites equipped with heavy tungsten rods that could be tossed down from space to smash an enemy (preferably Osama bin Laden) on a moment’s notice. All of these ideas are futuristic, but none of them reflect what military space programs will look like fifty years from now.

If you want to know what military space will look like in 2057, look at an iPhone.

With an iPhone you can access a map, convert it to satellite photography, and overlay embedded information like addresses and telephone numbers and soon all kinds of additional data like property values and even crime statistics. Eventually this kind of power is going to reach the average soldier in the field, drawing upon satellite data like GPS signals, near-real-time reconnaissance imagery, and weapons performance for enemy targets. In fact, a very early predecessor of this technology exists today. Last week Air Force Times reported about a hand-held video player called iRover, for Remotely Operated Video Enhanced Receiver, which can receive reconnaissance video from unmanned Predator reconnaissance aircraft.
If you want to know what military space will look like in 2057, look at an iPhone.

Advances in electronics are occurring much faster than advances in space technology, and consumer electronics are advancing much faster than military electronics. Thus, the major improvements in military space programs will occur at the microscopic level—and on the ground—rather than on satellites in the sky. Unfortunately for the military, it is also true that by the time improved electronic capabilities reach the men and women in uniform, the civilian world has already leaped much farther ahead.

This is the likely future for military space: impressive progress in delivering information to the battlefield, but fewer changes in the satellite systems than we would normally expect. The reason has to do with the inherent inertia of large space projects, inertia not imposed by physics, but human beings.

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Day, Dwayne. "SpaceWar 2057." The Space Review. October 4, 2007.