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With SpaceX's Starship having finished it's static fire tests they will soon be gearing up for the first orbital launch. So far, space travel and industry have avoided getting polarized (although Musk has gotten some frankly ridiculous hit pieces for the whole Ukraine Starlink fiasco), but I don't expect this to continue as it gets cheaper and easier to sent things to and from space.
If you look at the cost per metric ton for space travel right now, it's around $11.3 million/ton. That means that if you want to get a ton of material into space, you're shelling out quite a bit. This limits space endeavours to major governments or multinational corporations for the most part.
According to Musk, Starship will be able to lower the cost to only $20,000 per metric ton to get into space. This is multiple orders of magnitude in terms of cost reduction. Now I'm not super optimistic this number will be hit anytime soon, but if it is, it will enter us into a new era when it comes to space and technology.
My question is - how does this play into the Culture War? Musk has been increasingly right-coded, but it also seems like space and 'moonshots' have long been a darling of the left. On top of this, there's a strong nationalist angle if we can get and maintain an edge on Russia/China in space industry.
I'm curious if anyone else has more fleshed out ideas on this topic, in terms of how space industry will affect the Culture War. Or do most of y'all think this is a non-starter and nobody will care about space in 5-10 years?
$11.3 million.
Also, the culture war will probably be kept out of space development due to how important it is. Space is the ultimate high ground and it is easy to command. You can't really block off thousands of kilometres of shoreline very easily, even with aircraft carriers. There's the horizon to worry about, land-based missiles, aircraft, ships can stay in protected harbors. (you really need satellites to watch for blockade-runners)
But with space, you can watch everything that happens. There is no stealth in space and almost no stealth from space. I suppose you could hide mobile missile launchers in warehouses or armored trains, play shell games like we do with ICBMs.
But you're certainly not going to be able to hide or defend your grounded spaceships. These things are huge, obvious and vulnerable. Even if you put in a lot of effort, someone will spot them hours before they launch, while they're all vulnerable on the launchpad or getting ready to launch. Then down comes a laser or kinetic shell and you've lost a billion dollar spaceship to $30 worth of electricity or a $50,000 chunk of processed moon-rock. Imagine if the Royal Navy could just charge into French ports during the Napoleonic War, or if both sides knew precisely where eachother's ships were? It would be a massive stomp for the British, for the stronger navy.
Control of space means control of nuclear weapons. Powerful lasers in space counter nuclear missiles flying on a high arc. Even if they fly low, they are still fairly visible from space and could be targeting by patrolling aircraft with less-powerful lasers, or ground based missiles. Controlling space means you could deny the enemy reconnaissance satellites, so they wouldn't have time to see your first-strike until it came across the horizon, weakening their ability to launch a second strike. Or you could launch rods from god style attacks, which are even faster than ICBMs.
It's much easier to build spaceships in low-gravity than in high-gravity conditions like Earth. Flying from Earth imposes immense design costs, you need a very sturdy ship with very high thrust-weight ratios capable of leaving our atmosphere. It's much more efficient to have low thrust engines that burn for a long time. Controlling space means controlling the best places to build spaceships, in the asteroid belt. There is a ludicrous amount of construction materials there.
Controlling space means total world domination.
Interesting points from a strategic perspective. How do you feel about the possibility of an international space treaty /non aggression clause going forward?
Why would the strongest states adhere to a treaty that limits their strength?
There's SALT, START and the test ban treaty as a tentative example. But most of that has broken down by now, along with the anti-ballistic missile treaty.
Another example would be the Washington Naval Treaty which set everyone's capital ship strength at a certain ratio to the British. The Japanese and Germans cheated and then WW2 happened, whereupon everyone left. It was a major failure. Similarly, the treaty on conventional forces in Europe has broken down.
My belief is that space is more like conventional military strength in that there's rough parity between attack and defence. The more warships you have, the better you are proportionately.
With nuclear weapons, it's easy to defend and hard to attack in strategic terms. Destroying the enemy's nuclear weapons in a first-strike is very difficult, they can hide them in various places. And the defending side's missiles can probably get through missile defense, that's still very cost-inefficient. So it's much harder to gain a decisive advantage such that you can really exploit your nuclear forces. Mutually Assured Destruction.
Arms control treaties make most sense for nuclear weapons, less sense for symmetrical weapons like capital ships or conventional forces that can attack and defend. Space is more like the latter. Nuclear treaties are already breaking down, so what chance is there for space?
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