Space Politics

In the comments to a post on Friday about Charles Krauthammer’s op-ed in the Washington Post, one person noted, “It would be good if a couple short letters to the editor appeared in such a national paper pointing out that less expensive and more quickly developed alternatives, such as operational Air Force launch vehicles, exist, […]

One of the biggest complaints that the space industry has about policy is the current state of export control regulations, which place satellite and launch vehicles, and their key components, on the Munitions List, requiring companies to go through a licensing process that is lengthy, cumbersome, and expensive. As I note in an article in […]

China’s ASAT test last month was supposed to shake up how the US and other countries perceived the threat posed by such weapons and their reaction to them. So far, though, government officials from China and the US are sticking to the same positions they espoused prior to the January 11 event. A Chinese Foreign […]

Bloomberg published a somewhat cryptic article yesterday citing comments by a Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson suggesting that China wants “a new global treaty to govern the use of outer space.” The spokesperson offered no other details other than to say that Chinese representatives would be attending a UN COPUOS subcommittee meeting in Vienna next month.

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There’s been plenty of discussion of the potential negative effects of the Chinese ASAT test earlier this month, from the debris created by the test imperiling other satellites to the increased threat now faced by US low Earth orbit satellites. But who will benefit? An Aerospace Daily article earlier this week suggests that both missile […]