Some links to articles about Robert Joseph’s speech about the new national space policy at the National Press Club yesterday afternoon:
- The AP account of the speech comes first, because it’s timestamped at 1:58 pm Wednesday, two minutes before Joseph’s talk started. (Presumably the AP’s Barry Schweid got an advance copy of speech, and the article doesn’t include any of Joseph’s comments from the Q&A session that followed.)
- A Reuters account, by contrast, focuses as much on Joseph’s comments in the Q&A session as it does his prepared remarks. including his comments on the linkage between space weaponization debates and missile defense, and his lack of comments about reports that China illuminated a US military satellite with a groundbased laser earlier this year.
- The Houston Chronicle notes that instead of worrying about treaties to ban weapons in space, the US should focus on bigger arms control issues, notably nuclear proliferation activities in Iran and North Korea.
- The Washington Times plays up Joseph’s comments that the US would consider using military force to defend space assets. Bill Gertz describes the Chinese laser incident as a “ground-based laser gun”, although it’s not clear from the limited information released to date whether it was a “gun” or a weaker laser rangefinder, and whether the incident damaged or disrupted the spacecraft, or simply got the US military’s attention.
The State Department has not posted Joseph’s speech on its web site. (Update 1 pm: the text of the speech is now posted.) I have an audio recording of the speech (MP3, 4.2 MB, 37 minutes) available if you’re really curious.
