The Militarization of Space

I originally posted this news piece to Archinect, but it is too relevant to not post here.
So, it looks like plans to re-kickstart the Star Wars program are well underway with a big ol'e lobby-fest in Washington for new contracts. Bruce Gagnon, who has tirelessly warned the public for decades about the disastrous Pentagon agenda to militarize space, spells out the latest round of both scientific and economic dangers in this Wired article. If, after reading, you need more convincing, be sure to see his classic film, The Arsenal of Hypocrisy, and then listen to this lecture given by Noam Chomsky at MIT a couple of years back, who warned that "The militarization of space is a real threat to survival, a serious threat to survival... maybe the end of the species."


Others, however, are talking about militarizing space as a way to combat global warming. Touting the speculative inventiveness of so called 'geoengineering', this BBC article details a few radical plans that would certainly alter the course of the Earth's climatological evolution forever. For example, some want to build a massive solar shade (55, 000 orbiting mirrors) in front of the planet to reflect enough sunlight that would be able to counter carbon dioxide levels; or, there are even new revived discussions about using hydrogen bombs to blow the earth further out into orbit away from the sun to help cool the planet. An effort that would require the energy of "five thousand, million, million hydrogen bombs to move Earth's orbit 1.5 million km out, which would compensate for doubling CO2 in the atmosphere."


All the while, the Bush administration has called for a permanent lunar base to be operational by 2020 in attempts to beat the top nations who are racing to urbanize the moon, in what is being treated as the real estate boom of the future.
Some crazy reads, to be sure, check 'em out.

UPDATE: 7:48 PM
Military space systems: the road ahead (via)
A better way to forecast storms ... on the sun (CS Monitor)